NYT Cooking's AI assistant saved dinner but nearly ruined a cake

The tester had already been using AI as a kitchen helper through Alexa Plus on an Echo smart display and the Samsung Food app on her fridge. What made her try the NYT Cooking assistant was the friction of scrolling through hundreds of reader comments at 7PM on a weeknight, even though those comments had often solved her problems. The assistant, trained on user comments, promised the same answers without the search.

In practice, the tool's value showed in small gaps. Asked to adapt a One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Ginger recipe, it suggested a shorter browning time for tenders and steaming green beans on top of the rice instead of chard. It missed the missing cilantro at first, then accepted Thai basil when asked. The resulting dish took the same amount of time as the original.

Baking exposed the limits. Converting the cake to muffins halved five eggs to three, a smart move. But because the new recipe cannot be saved separately, the original recipe and the AI version blurred together: the assistant answered a butter question with the modified amount without saying which version it was using. The tester recommends deleting your version to avoid exactly that.