The Role of Recipes in Bringing Out the Attractiveness of Products

A toaster oven that makes toast that is crispy on the outside and soft inside, or an electric griddle that expands your repertoire with multiple plates, among many others. All cooking appliances by Zojirushi are equipped with original features. Our job is to make the best use of these features and provide recipes that make customers happy, saying “I am glad that I chose this product.” Especially in the case of new products, we not only develop recipes, but also verify matters such as “can it cook delicious meals safely?” and “are there any problems with this cooking program?”
While the persons in charge of planning and design work hard to develop new functions that have never been seen before, our goal is to use these functions and develop recipes that our customers will enjoy as delicious and convenient, so that they can be delivered to their tables on a daily basis.

What to Cook? The New Microwave Oven by Zojirushi

For example, the EVERINO microwave oven, launched in 2022, features unique functions that utilize temperature control technology cultivated over many years. In order to make it easier for everyone to understand and experience its appeal, we decided to enhance the automatic menus that can be cooked with a single touch.
Since it was also Zojirushi’s first product to incorporate infrared sensors, we thoroughly investigated the characteristics and verified the optimal cooking programs. After trying recipes from other companies’ products, we began to develop recipes that were not only comparable to those already available on the market, but also more convenient and delicious than them.

Cooking Hamburger Steaks Over 100 Times

EVERINO is equipped with all the functions of cooking, such as baking, simmering, and steaming, and can be used to prepare a wide variety of recipes. More than 30 automatic menus were already included in the first model. Among them, we strove to perfect the hamburger steak as a standard dish made with the unique “Reji-guri” cooking function (automatic switching from microwave to grill). The outside of the hamburger steaks locks in the flavor while the inside remains soft. In order to build a program that could cook this with a single touch of a button, we cooked basic hamburger steaks that serve four people more than 100 times.
To determine the cause of any problem and make the best use of it in the next trial, we kept the ingredients and the shape of the uncooked steak uniform so that the conditions did not change, and repeated the process of checking how well the steak surface was done, internal temperature, state of the juice, etc. then tasted it each time we cooked the hamburger steak. While incorporating the opinions of other employees and monitors, in the end we trusted our own senses, which have supported the “Zojirushi taste,” and completed an automatic menu and recipes that “allow everyone to enjoy cooking delicious food.”

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  (Above) Testing hamburger steaks

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  (Above) Checking the internal temperature and doneness in detail

In Pursuit of an Easy-to-Use Instruction Manual

By the way, where do people who have just purchased a new cooking appliance check for recipes? Zojirushi provides this information as “Cooking Notes” included in the instruction manual. In fact, one of our jobs is to review and coordinate the contents of this instruction manual. This is because using a cooking appliance is directly related to recipes for “how to cook” things.
For EVERINO, we also thoroughly verified the structure of this instruction manual and the way the recipes are written to make them easier to understand and cook. "We try to make the instruction manual “easy for anyone to understand, and make them want to start cooking.” We believe that paying attention to each and every one of these elements leads to a sense of safety regarding our products and make them more useful for our customers."

The Desire to Generate "A Joy for Cooking"

Recipe development continues even after the product is launched. The recipes included in the instruction manual are mainly simple ones that use familiar ingredients. Therefore, we try to be creative with our recipe offering online, depending on where they are posted, such as flavors and ingredients that incorporate trends that are not on the regular menu, and multinational menus.
Some of these diverse recipes are suggested by cooking specialists. Another one of our roles is to check each of these recipes and see, “Does it match the characteristics of our product?” and “Are there any safety issues?” As we examine various menu items, we learn ideas and ways to use the products that we have not thought of. We want our customers to feel the excitement of cooking with EVERINO and the joy of cooking that is well done for many years to come, just as we feel: “We didn’t know this was possible” and “We want to try that.”

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  (Above) “Beef Curry,” which is included in the Cooking Notes

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  (Above) “No need for gochujang (red pepper paste)! Yangnyeom chicken without deep frying” invented by cooking specialist Yuri Yamamoto

Deliciousness and Safety Unique to Zojirushi

Since these are products for cooking, it is only natural to focus on deliciousness. However, we also value safety and security equally. We take into consideration not only the basic quality and safety of the product, but also the customer’s environment, where it will be used, in detail. Sometimes even other employees within the company are surprised at how thorough we are, but we try not to overlook any small detail that concerns us.
What we make is not just recipes, but a member of Zojirushi’s family of products. Our goal is to make them easy and enjoyable for everyone to use. "We are relieved that EVERINO has been well received by a wide range of customers. The best end result for us is that the customers enjoy the experience of cooking delicious food with a sense of safety and think, “I am glad I bought this” or “I will choose Zojirushi again the next time.”