Review: Impress Your Crew With This Sous Vide Powerhouse
Cooking the perfect sous vide egg is deceptively challenging for something which is a simple staple of Australian brekkie.
The cooking process term sous vide means “under vacuum” in French and describes the cooking of food placed in a temperature-controlled water bath with a circulator and ingredients in a protective vacuum-sealed bag.
This method of cooking allows for a gentle and precise cook of whatever proteins or vegetables are used and allows for the maximum flavour to be achieved by sealing in flavours of the food, seasonings, juices of items cooked, or marinades.
Having dreams of becoming a chef as a teenager, I was keen to try out the Anova Precision® Cooker 3.0 to see how it could aid me in my culinary exploits.
Overall, my eggs turned out rather well and had a very delicate taste. Placing the egg in a plastic bag was a little awkward but I made it work. Personally, I think if Anova could include a small glass bowl or something to cook something small in for a nominal uptick in price, I’d pay it for the ease of it already being included.
In 2014, the first Anova Precision® Cooker launched and now the latest version features Wi-Fi has internet connectivity meaning consumers can control a cook on the an app from work.
With the latest, third generation of Anova’s flagship sous vide circulator, the newest model offers key improvements like incorporating dual-band Wi-Fi, upgraded to 1100 watts of power, and a two-line touchscreen display.
In case you need to know how it looks on your counter, the specifications of the product dimensions are 78mm W x 138mm D x 325mm H (3.07in W x 5.43in D x 12.8in H), and 0.9kg (1.98lbs). There’s also an adjustable & detachable clamp with a removable skirt which makes for an easy clean with plastic and stainless steel materials that are IPX7 water and splash resistant.
As for the cooking specifications, the Anova Precision® Cooker has 65mm shut-off water level sensors with up to 8 liters/min flow rate and a precision temperature of C (32˚-197˚F) or +/- 0.1˚C (0.2˚F).
As a person who loves her veggies, my one complaint would be the small number of veggie options and recipes. Primarily, there are only meat or egg recipes with some vegetables if you could potatoes as green veg.
For carnivores, it might be a little off-putting to have grey or odd-coloured meat after the cook. Plus there is the additional step of having to brown your food. However, the reason chef’s do use this technique is the amount of flavour this cooking method dishes up which is pretty impressive.
In a twist we didn’t see coming, with your Anova Precision® Cooker you can use it to infuse your spirits after only a couple of hours using the sous vide method. Who knew?!
Overall, this device isn’t life-shattering but I enjoyed the result and I would recommend purchase to anyone looking to up their cooking game.
Product is available at Anova.com retailing for $329.00 and Amazon for $339.00.
Conclusion
The Anova immersion circulator is compact but packs a major cooking punch. The flavour of the food I cooked was pretty impressive and I’d recommend the purchase even first-time sous vide consumers.
Pros
- Impressive flavours from cook
- Holds temperature well
Cons
- Not enough veggie recipes
- No ice bath option
- Cooking Container is an additional and steep $152.10
Review 8/10