Is there milk in the fridge? Alexa will keep track

She can turn off your lights, play your favorite music, order paper towels, and even tell you a joke. But maybe the most useful place for Alexa, the Amazon Echo intelligent personal assistant, is in the kitchen.

"Alexa lets me concentrate on what I'm cooking instead of all the moving parts," said Jason Vargas, 34, a cooking enthusiast who lives in Kensington.

He is one of the more than 5 million Alexa owners, using the device since it was introduced in 2014, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners in Chicago.

By setting the timer, providing weight and measurement conversions, and restocking Vargas' pantry, Alexa is quite literally his right hand when his is covered in chicken juice.

"It frees me up to be better at cooking my food," said Vargas. When he  runs low on an ingredient, Alexa will give him his previous order history, including the brand, size, and cost of what he's ordered in the past. When he confirms his preference, she places the order through his linked Amazon.com account, and "a couple days later, there will be flour at my door," he said. "I can order everything from hand soap to chicken stock."

But it's the connection between Alexa and Joule, a tool that slowly cooks food in water, that Vargas finds most useful. Joule is a sous-vide device, "which literally translates to 'under a vacuum,' " said Jessica Voelker, a writer at ChefSteps, the Seattle food and technology company that introduced Joule ($199) in November 2015.

It works by putting the food into a sealed plastic bag and placing it in water kept at a specific temperature. "You are controlling the outcome of the food precisely, as well," Voelker said. And not just foods accustomed to cooking in water, but practically all foods -- steaks, chicken, seafood, and vegetables. For example, a steak cooked at 129 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour will come out rare. But if you leave it in for an extra half hour, it will remain rare because the temperature won't exceed 129 degrees.

Joule is controlled entirely by a phone app; there's no physical display on the device. "We did that so we can continue to update the software that is used to control it and use other technologies as they emerge to control it," said Voelker. Hence, Alexa, which Vargas uses to control Joule through voice commands.

"I use Joule almost every day," said Vargas, who got it  November 2016 and Alexa a month later. Already aware of the temperatures at which he prefers to cook most foods, "instead of going into the Joule app, I just ask Alexa to heat Joule to the right temperature and she'll start Joule straight away."

When he wants something crispy, like fried chicken or a seared steak, he will brown it before and after cooking it with Joule. "That caramelizes it and adds flavor," he said. "But if I don't have time to put a crust on it, I know it will still taste really good."

Amy Mullen enjoys European cookbooks, which specify ingredients in grams, so she has Alexa make the conversions into ounces. Since getting Alexa in November 2015, Mullen hasn't needed a written shopping list, instead voicing her needs into the app's shopping and to do lists.

"It's become part of how I organize everything," said Mullen, 41, who lives in Queen Village. "If I'm out of carrots, I say, 'Alexa, add carrots,' and it automatically goes into my shopping list."

The system isn't perfect -- "I wish it did a little more organization, for coupons and even departments within the grocery store," she said.

In fact, there is a skill for that -- OurGroceries -- one of the more than 8,000 skills created by other companies for Alexa since 2015, all free of charge. My Chef Kitchen Assistant by Chefling offers inventory management, shopping list creation and sharing, and recipe searching, answering questions like: "What protein do I have in the fridge?" or, "How old is the steak?"

Other recipe skills include Best Recipes from Hellmann's and Unilever, Overnight Oats from Quaker, and Allrecipes, which provides access to more than 60,000 recipes.

"Voice technology suits itself well to addressing the needs of home cooks," said Esmee Williams, vice president of consumer and brand strategy for Allrecipes  in Seattle,  who launched the Alexa skill in November 2016. With three-quarters of Allrecipes'  traffic going through the mobile app, Alexa can ease the challenge of logging on, scrolling, and searching with dirty hands. Having instructions delivered conversationally is also appealing to some cooks, who can tell Alexa the ingredients they have on hand or ask for recommendations. Customer reviews and suggested substitutions are also available.

Since the October 2015 launch of the Campbell's Kitchen recipe app, the company has gotten nearly 49,000 unique sign-ups and recommended more than 174,000 recipes, said Harrison Sebring, digital strategist at Campbell Soup Co. in Camden. "Notably, over the holiday season, three times the number of users were utilizing the skill compared to other periods in 2016," he said. Chicken recipes with short preparation times have been the most popular, and 70 percent of users filter by recipes that take under 30 minutes to prepare.

Scheduled for release later this year, LG refrigerators will come equipped with Alexa, which can let you know when the milk will expire, set your oven timer, and leave messages for your kids. It's the 29-inch glass panel that makes the LG Smart InstaView refrigerator smart.

"The kitchen is the hub of the home," said Taryn Brucia, director of public relations for LG Electronics. "With the home becoming increasingly smart, there's a value in making sure everything is at your fingertips, whether it's a recipe, expiration tracker for your food, or a memo to share with your family."