Alright so this seems like a bit of a stretch to post around here, but we’ve talked about it enough on the podcast and enough people have contacted me about it from hearing about it on the podcast that I’m calling an audible here and posting about a piece of culinary equipment on TouchArcade. To be fair, it does have an app and you can control it with your iPhone, so, maybe it’s not that much of a reach. Anyway, the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker is currently on sale for $79.99 for Prime Day. I keep track of the prices of these things pretty closely as they’re my go-to gift for anyone even remotely interested in cooking, and this is the cheapest I’ve ever seen a retail packaged, non-refurbished unit.
So what is this sous vide garbage all about anyway? Well, it was a pretty huge trend on online cooking sites and communities a few years ago when early units started popping up on Kickstarter. Previously, sous vide cooking was reserved for the highest of high-end restaurants, as the equipment to do it was super expensive. Recently, home versions of said equipment has gotten super cheap and if you regularly cook meat (or avoid buying meat because you often mess it up) you need one of these. Cooking via sous vide makes it basically impossible to overcook meat, and every steak (or whatever else) you make will be perfect every time.
It does this through the magic of precisely controlling the temperature of water. The way the Anova works is by clipping it on the side of a pot (or if you really want to get fancy you can get one of these containers like they use on TV), filling that pot up with water, and setting the temperature of the device to the temperature you want your meat. For instance, if you want a steak medium rare, you set the Anova to 140 degrees, it heats the water to 140 degrees, and it will never get hotter than that. You throw your steak (or other meat) in a plastic bag (I’ve got a simple vacuum sealer but this is COMPLETELY optional) and dunk it in the water.
Every sous vide recipe will have a minimum time you let your food soak, but the truly amazing part about sous vide is that you can leave your meat in there for hours beyond that and it’s totally fine. (There are some exceptions to this, as meat can get a little weird if you leave it in too long, but we’re talking like… leaving it in overnight.) If you’ve ever tried to cook steaks or pork chops or whatever else for a large group of people at a party, you no doubt know how stressful this can be. Nothing ever cooks at the same rate, and it’s inevitable that some will be overdone, and the first you pull off the grill will be cold by the time you’re done cooking the last of them. With sous vide, you can hold all those steaks and chops at the perfect temperature and then just flip them on the grill for long enough to sear them on both sides and they’re ready to go- Perfect every time.
That brings us to the only additional step in the sous vide process: When you take your meat out of the bag, it will look weird. It’s perfectly cooked, but without the browning on the outside everything just sort of looks off. Moments before serving, you take your meat out of the bag, dry it off with a couple paper towels, and then sear both sides. You can do this by having them on a grill for a few seconds, using a cast iron skillet (or any other skillet) or if you really want to get fancy, get a Searzall attached to a torch. Going as crazy as the Searzall is COMPLETELY unnecessary but, it’s an option if you really want to go all out (or buy a gift for someone who already has a sous vide machine).
A WORD OF WARNING: And this is not to be taken lightly- Buying a sous vide machine will break restaurants for you. When you can buy a steak from the grocery store and hit a flawless medium rare every single time, you will feel real, real dumb paying $30 for a steak at a steakhouse that’s definitely overcooked but not overcooked enough to feel like going through the process of sending it back. It’s real weird going to your previous favorite local steakhouses and saying to your dining partner, “Ehh… I definitely could have made this better at home."
And it’s just so frickin’ easy too. The only margin of error is either leaving your food in the water for hours longer than you should have or over-searing… And worse case, if you “over-sear" you’re still going to be lightyears closer to your ideal temperature than just eyeballing things on a grill or in a pan. You quickly get a feel for just how little time your meat should be seared for, and within a week or two you’ll be consistently cooking unbelievable steaks.
Last, but not least, the Anova comes in two varieties:
- $79.99 – Anova Culinary A2.2-120V-US Sous Vide Precision Cooker Bluetooth, Immersion Circulator, 800 Watts, Black
- $108.96 – Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker | WI-FI + Bluetooth | 900W | Anova App Included
Having fiddled with both, I see absolutely no reason to buy the more expensive version. 800 watts vs 900 watts is mostly inconsequential unless you’re doing massive water baths for gigantic parties. Also, considering the only real controlling of the unit you’ll ever be doing is setting the temperature, WiFi connectivity is totally unnecessary. (I actually don’t even use the Bluetooth of the one I have.) All these connectivity options really do is allow you to set the temperature of the device automatically instead of just scrolling the mousewheel-like temperature setting on the device itself. I guess the WiFi version also works with Alexa, which, again, it’s hard to think of something more silly than telling Alexa what temperature to set your sous vide machine instead of just doing it yourself.
If you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about these things. For additional reading on things you can do with it, I find Serious Eats to be the best resource (arguably even better than the official apps). Check out Sous Vide 101 for all their articles, with How to Get Started With Sous Vide Cooking and The Food Lab’s Complete Guide to Sous Vide Steak as great starting points. If you’re the kind of person who loves eating meat, but hates buying and cooking it as you always screw it up, a sous vide machine will be the best thing you ever add to your kitchen arsenal.
