Your Next Kitchen Scale Will Do the Measuring for You

Ditch that dumb chef’s scale you have, and while you’re at it stick your measuring cups way back in the cupboard. The upcoming Drop kitchen scale brings smarts to your measuring. It’s more assistant than measuring device, in fact. It connects to your iPad over Bluetooth, and an app watches the weights of ingredients as you add them to a prep bowl. It tells you exactly when to stop pouring. But if you go over, no problem. It will recalculate the rest of the recipe so the proportions are still right.

Drop will also let you go light on a recipe if you run out of the main ingredient, again rejiggering the proportions for you. It looks like a useful real-time assistant to have around, especially if you often want to halve, double, third or one-and-a-little-moreify a recipe.

The upcoming product is designed primarily for baking, where getting the proportions right in a mix is critical. But since most American recipes are based on volume, not weight, the Drop app will come with its own precise weight-based recipes. It may also have pasta and other categories, and a way for people to add their own recipes, too. It should cost under $99 when it’s available later this year (sign up on the website to get an alert when it ships).

The Orange Chef Prep Pad, another scale with a companion app.

If you want a smart scale today, check out the Orange Chef Prep Pad, another Bluetooth scale with a companion iPad app. Its app is geared toward health: As you measure out ingredients, it tells you exactly what the nutritional value is of the thing you’re preparing. A precision cooking app may come later.

Rafe Needleman can be reached at rafeneedleman@yahoo.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @rafe​.