Systems, methods, and articles to provide customized control of a cooking appliance, such as a sous vide cooker. A user provides a selection of one or more ending characteristics for a food product. A processor-based device determines one or more output food preparation parameters based on the user's selection of the one or more ending characteristics. Measurements of temperature, power delivery, or other characteristics may be obtained during cooking process. A cooking program controlling the cooking process may be revised or updated based at least in part on the obtained measurements or analysis of the measurements. Estimations or projections about the cooking process may be presented to a user via a user interface of the cooking appliance or a user interface of a computing device (e.g., smartphone) associated with the user.