Review: Anova Precision Cooker for Sous Vide Cooking

The Anova Precison Cooker is a heating unit that fits in your own cook pot. It plugs into your wall outlet and circulates the water in the pot at a constant temperature. That’s pretty much the way that most professional sous vide cookers work in restaurants and commercial establishments. But the Anova unit I tried is made for those of us who only want to cook for families and friends.

In fact it would probably work in a restaurant setting but may not stand up to constant use… or it might do fine. But what really makes this a ‘home’ appliance is that it can connect to your smart device via Bluetooth. The fact that it can connect doesn’t mean that it must be connected in order to use it. I’ll cover the options later.

I liked the way the Anova attaches to the cook pot. It has a removable collar with a screw clamp that you can position anywhere along the edge of the pot you find most convenient. Once the clamp is secured you slip the heating unit into the holder part of the clamp and adjust the height (or depth) that the unit goes into the water. This is convenient because it allows you to use a lot of different size pots and amounts of water.

I slid the heat unit into the water and plugged it in. The LED panel has 2 display lines that alternately show temperature and a timer. It starts off with the temperature. You can switch between farenheit and centigrade display by touching the Play button. I left it on centigrade for this run. The blue roller switch on the front of the unit controls the temperature or the timer depending on which mode is selected at the time.

I rolled the temperature up to 38.7c and touched the Play button. The unit started circulating the water and heating it up to my desired temp.

The other way to control temp and time are through the Bluetooth connection to a smartphone. I connected by Android phone after first downloading the Anova app (also available for iOS).

The Anova app is a combination recipe book and cooker controller. It’s a nice concept to be able to look for recipes within the app and then by selecting the food you are cooking, the app sets the cooker to the right setting for that food. In practice though setting the cooker is pretty simple. And being a Bluetooth connection, as soon as you move out of range (about 10 feet or so) you can’t see what’s happening. So the app is good for setting time and temp and then disconnecting. Anova is introducing a WiFi connected unit also. A WiFi connection will allow you to stay connected farther than will the Bluetooth so you can roam around your house and still see that the cooker is working.

The meal I chose to prepare was a pork chop marinated in Bourbon with red pepper, black pepper, and salt.

Since there was liquid in the mix I couldn’t use a vacuum sealer. The suction would have sucked out all that Bourbon. So I used a zip seal bag. The method for removing the air is called the ‘immersion method.’ Basically you dip the mostly sealed bag into water, forcing the air out the top of the bag. When as much air is out of the bag as possible you seal up the bag. Simple.

When the water was up to cooking temp I clipped the sealed bag to the side of the pot and set the timer for 3 hours.

In practice you can leave your meal in the hot water for as much as 8 hours. I took mine out about 4 hours after I put it in. The meat was cooked to exactly 38.7c, which for pork is just past pink. Of course the uncharred meat looks pretty sickly when it comes out of the bag.