Robot smoker.

Apropos of yesterday’s beefypalooza, I saw this pick of consumer electronic goodies from CES in the New York Times over the weekend. And I was… unsure of my response.

It’s basically the Nespresso machine of smokers.

At CES I saw more grills, smokers, and meat thermometers than in my local Home Depot, but the standout was the countertop GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker.

Smoking adds distinct flavor to all kinds of foods, but it’s typically done over lower temperatures for long hours, requiring the cook to camp out in the backyard by a hot black metal bin to feed the fire and actively manage the smoke and the temperature. To do it well, in other words, you need passion, time, and skill.

If the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker works as billed—the company says you can set it to specific recipes and let it do the work, or you can independently control the heat or smoke level—it can effectively turn smoking into a readily accessible cooking technique for anyone who wants it, just like air frying or sous vide. Imagine popping a few eggplants into a microwave-sized appliance to make killer homemade baba ghanouj on a weeknight, or smoking your own spice blends or chiles whenever the mood strikes.

I got a sneak peek at this cooker late last year on a research trip to the GE Appliances manufacturing plant in Louisville, Kentucky, where I got to sample some perfectly prepared wings hot out of the box—tender, smoky, sweet, and moist.

A few more important details: The smoker uses the same pellets as traditional pellet smokers do. It fits 40 wings, a brisket cut in half, or a whole chicken, and it has the same technology to keep the smoke safely inside the appliance and out of your home as the hearth oven made by Monogram, GE Appliances’s luxury brand.

And of course the Times would use a smoker to pop in “a few eggplants” to make baba fucking ghanouj.