Anova - Precision Cooker 3.0 - Black

Anova - Precision Cooker 3.0 - great for cooking - makes a great present for someone who loves cooking - easy to use, stylish and doesn't take up a lot of space

Very happy to add the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 to my kitchen! I’m new to sous vide cooking, but do a lot of grilling, smoking, and general cooking. It’s a bit of an odd way to cook, but the temperature and moisture control benefits are astounding and I needed a lot less than I thought to get started. Outside of the precision cooker itself, I just needed a big pot and ziploc freezer bags, which I already have in my kitchen. Setup is a breeze. Simply clamp the cooker to your pot, fill the pot with water above the minimum marker on the cooker, plug it in, and you’re ready to go. There’s seemingly no on/off switch, but you can pause cooking which I guess is the same thing. You don’t need to use the app, but it makes it easy to control and check the status of the cooker remotely, and there’s a genuinely great community cooking recipe platform available. The only hiccup I’ve had with the app is that it sometimes will not connect. However, I think if I turn the app on first and then plug the cooker in, it’ll successfully connect more often. Cooking with the Precision Cooker 3.0 is super easy. The app makes it easy to control, but the best part about it is that it doubles as a community cookbook. Users create and share sous vide recipes and include the time and temperature they used for the cook. There’s some goldmines in there, but as I learned with eggs, your experiences will vary. It took a failure with eggs for me to understand the difference in cooking sous vide, but I followed it up with some of the best asparagus and pork tenderloin I’ve ever made. And it was easy too. All I did with the asparagus was clean it and add a little pat of salted butter. In a sealed bag, it’s basically poaching the asparagus in butter and its own juices. Delicious. Same for the pork tenderloin, but I quickly learned another wonderful, and less talked about benefit of sous vide cooking. I started with the tenderloin moistly frozen. All I did was lightly season the outside, put it in the ziploc with garlic, onions, and butter, then set it to 140 degrees and let it do its thing for about 4 hours. After a quick sear on the pan, it was arguably the best and easiest pork tenderloin I’ve ever made. By dialing in the temperature and having a sealed bag, it helps ensure you don’t overcook your food and all the moisture and juices get re-infused with what you’re cooking. It creates an extremely wide margin of error for cooking and it’s honestly incredible how easy it is to make some great dishes. I literally threw a frozen piece of pork in a bag with some veggies, played video games for 4 hours, and then spent 5 minutes searing up the best pork tenderloin ever. If you’re on the fence about trying sous vide, do it! PROS - Changes temp quickly - Nearly silent - Easy to setup and use - Well built - Wifi / bluetooth enabled - Community recipes in app - Delicious food - Removable stainless steel skirt for easier cleaning CONS - No case - Sometimes app doesn’t recognize machine - No alarm when cook timer is finished - Long cook times

The Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 is a sous vide immersion circulator that uses precise temperature control to cook food evenly and perfectly. I’ve often heard that it is a great tool for anyone who wants to cook restaurant-quality meals at home. As long as you know what you’re doing in terms of recipes, cooking time and temperature, it's easy to use. Simply place it in a pot of water, set the desired time and temperature, and let it do its thing; it will maintain the desired temperature to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Anova, so you can be sure that your food will be cooked flawlessly every time. It’s versatile and can be used to cook a wide variety of foods, including meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, and even eggs. Adjustable clamps help it fit all kinds of pots. This precision cooker comes with the free Anova app that allows you to control the cooker from your phone. The app has a library of recipes that I’ve used to great success, and it also allows you to monitor the cooking process remotely. The setup is easy and quick and the app is user friendly and stable; it connects to the precision cooker rapidly every time. My advice, if you’re not used to a precision cooker, is to look for recipes before you start experimenting on your own. Also, be patient as precision cooking is traditionally lengthy. I’ve tried a chicken breast recipe from the app and it came out amazingly tasty. My family was impressed. During the course of a weekend, I prepared shrimp, a medium rare flank steak and some vegetables that were as delicious as the chicken breast mentioned earlier. I’m convinced that this precision cooker is really making a difference in the cooking results. In my opinion, this precision cooker is a great investment for anyone who wants to cook delicious, made to perfection meals at home. It is easy to use, accurate, and versatile. If you are looking to reward yourself or to impress your family and friends with mouthwatering food, the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 is the perfect choice.

I have been wanting to cook sous vide for such a long time rather than having to buy prepared sous vide meals and the time has finally come. The first thing I made was sous vide egg bites. The recipe was so easy and the Anova was simple to use. I actually setup the Anova as I was using it for the first time and it was so easy. Reminder, I completed the setup during my first time using the Anova. To setup the app and device it was super simple. I downloaded the Anova app, mounter the Anova on one of my cooking pots, and plugged it in. The app pretty much took it from there once I selected the device. You need to heat up the water using the Anova prior to adding your ingredients (in ziplocks w/no air or vacuum bags). The device will beep when ready! It’s convenient that the Anova is so easy to use to make your favorite sous vide meals. I also found out the stainless steel bottom of the Anova is removable for cleaning the device. The stainless steel cover can be put in a dishwasher but I preferred to hand wash mine. I also wanted to note I put my pot on the counter top under a large heat pad which made things easy to do during prep, cooking and cleaning at the end. Now back to the first meal! I made breakfast, sous vide eggs! Wait till you see the pictures if you haven’t already. I whipped a batter egg mixture and filled up some small 4oz glass jars (following a recipe). Be careful not to put on the glass jar lids too tight! I insert my Anova, filled the pot with water, and fired up the device (as explained in the prior paragraph). The Anova is easy to use and control on the app. To be honest I did not touch my Anova buttons at all and controlled everything on the app including temperature and the timer. To make sous vide eggs it took about an hour. The Anova stayed on temperature the entire time and is super accurate and consistent. After an hour of cooking in the pot my sous vide eggs came out more beautiful than I imagined. I felt like a master chef! Not to mention the eggs were to die for! The Anova is a great device to cook with and will add a large variety of new meals for you and/or your family. Anova is the staple for cooking in sous vide style and I highly recommend it for consistent and accurate temps/results.

I have heard so much about sous vide precision cookers and could not wait to try this Anova. The day it arrived I ran out to the local grocery store and purchased 2 sirloin steaks and 2 filet mignon steaks. I brought them home and immediately slathered them in olive oil and some salt and pepper. I then placed them in my vacuum seal bags and sealed them with my food saver vaccum sealer. I now had 4 perfectly packaged steaks ready for my large pot and my new precision cooker. I used my 5 quart stock pot filled with water. I placed the Anova in the pot and made sure the water level was not past the max fill line. Filled with excitement, I was ready to cook! I downloaded the app, created an account, then followed the instructions to pair a new device. Everything was running pretty smooth as it discovered my new 3.0 cooker and began to pair. The app states that it could take a few minutes, but after over 5 minutes I began to worry. After several more minutes it did not look like it would successfully pair. So I had to force close the app and relaunch. The app now showed that my new Anova was registered or paired, but not connected. So I restarted the actual precision cooker to see if it would connect to the app. It never did. So I decided to to add another new device in an attempt to pair my new cooker. It found the cooker, connected to my network and showed that the pairing was successful, I was relieved. Then the app stated that a firmware update was required, so I launched the update. The update screen stated that it would take a few minutes, but this also ran for over ten minutes! I had to force close the app again. I was now over a half hour into trying to start the cooking process and my steaks were beginning to look sad. When I restarted the app I chose not to run the update. The app showed my cooker as being connected, but after trying to look at the device settings, the cooker kept disconnecting. The precision cooker continued to connect and disconnect intermittently. I was very frustrated. I browsed the app and found a steak recipe I liked and you can select "cook this recipe" in which it sets up and runs the precision cooker for that recipe. Luckily my Anova was connected at the time and it actually started cooking. I breathed a sigh of relief and continued with my day until the hour had passed. When the steaks were done cooking I took them outside to my grill, which had been preheated at high heat. I seared the steaks with the high heat and got them some beautiful grill marks. After a few minutes of resting I served up the steaks for my wife and I. The first few bites made me quickly forget the awful experience of setting up the device. I was taken to a wonderful place of perfectly cooked steaks that was better than the best steak house I could ever remember going to. The outer char/grill marks gave the steaks a wonderful texture, while the interior was extremely tender and perfectly seasoned throughout. We both agreed that these were the best steaks we had ever prepared at home. I have made steaks in almost every other way imaginable, with my go to being in a cast iron, basting with garlic butter and seasoning. This new method will be our new go to, and cannot ever imagine going back to any other way. Overall, I really love how the steaks came out. So much so that I forgot to to take a photo of the finished product because we ate them so fast. The setup was painful, but the app is actually very intuitive and useful. The cooking times are very long, at least an hour for steaks, so be prepared for that. I feel that once you start cooking some food with this, you will never go back.

I’d never tried Sous Vide cooking style before. Let me say that I was very skeptical at first, not convinced of what was advertised. But given that I am a “grilling” aficionado who uses different kinds of meats and vegetables (well I even grill fruits) and I like what I cook to be at the right cooking point and temperature, and given that it guaranteed such a thing, I decided to give the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 a try. Now, after using it, my wife and I are sold for it. For example, a nice piece of ribeye steak cooked on the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0, followed by a pass on the grill for the extra touch (adding the extra salt you want 😊), and voila, what a delicious piece of meat you get. Overall, we are delighted with this device, albeit a couple of times we undercooked and overcooked meals when following existing recipes. Special attention needs to be paid to the details in the recipes, for example, the thickness of the meats, and determining whether it merits to adjust the cooking time and the temperature. Operation of the device is easy, and can be fully manual, or controlled by your phone. Perhaps I’m being biased by my first-time experience, but I’d give this device a 5-star rating. - Pros: easy to use, attachable to any pot that’s deep enough, Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature display, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity with app control. - Cons: (expected) slow cook, need to follow existing recipes (or do a trial-and-error procedure to get the right temperature and time). >> Before use << Follow the Quick Start Guide that comes in the package. For wireless/Bluetooth configuration, you’d need to download the Anova Culinary App from your app store, set up an account with them, and connect to the cooker. For the pot or container, you’d need to have a tall enough one for the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 to properly fit. We’ve been using a 12-inch-tall pot, which unfortunately needs more water than needed to cook something for two people, but it is great if you are hosting a party for multiple guests. I think this device deserves a couple of containers only to be used by it, so we are contemplating buying clear ones or perhaps just going for stainless steel or some other material. >> Reaching the right temperature << Let’s say it is your first use, you pour cold water in the container and attach the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 to it, turn it on and start heating the water up. Now, get ready to wait for a long time before the right temperature for cooking is reached. I’d guess you’ll figure that out on your first use, but just stating the obvious. At around 2F increase in temperature per minute for a 3 gal or so water container, you’d be waiting for about an hour to go from 50F to 150F. So, what we do now, is to add/remove hot/warm/cold water to the container until the temperature is about what is desired. That way, in a couple of minutes the right temperature is set, and we can start cooking our favorite meats (and vegetables). >> Cooking << So far, we’ve only followed existing recipes available through the Anova app and haven’t adventured to create our own ones yet. The first two meals we cooked, came out great: - The first one we tried was “fried” chicken legs, thighs, and breast. We placed the chicken parts in a sealed container, waited a long time for the temperature of the water to reach 155F, placed the bag in the container and the 2-hour cooking process started. After that, we added some condiments and flour to the chicken pieces and fried them for a few minutes. Let me tell you, that was one of the best fried chickens I’ve ever had. Not only it was perfectly cooked, but it was also very moist and delicious (this coming from a guy that doesn’t enjoy chicken too much.) - The second meal we tried was Swordfish steak with asparagus. We followed the first asparagus recipe we found, placed the asparagus in a Ziplock bag (not completely vacuum sealed), and it came out a little undercooked (well, we gave it a quick pass on a pan). We also used Ziplock for the big piece of Swordfish steak and cooked it for 30 min at 130F in the Anova Precision Cooker. It came a little undercooked, so I gave it a longer pass on a pan to sear it, and the issue was resolved. The result, however, was a delicious piece of Swordfish steak with asparagus. This device, and well the big container we have been using, come in handy when cooking for a large group of people. We hosted a party where we cooked Salmon. We sealed several bags with pieces of Salmon seasoned with a little bit of Lemon, salt, and pepper, placed the sealed bags in the Anova container and at 115F for about 45 minutes, our guests were delighted with moist and flavorful pieces of Salmon. We are not going to use this device every day, as we sometimes are in a hurry and need something cooked sooner than what could be achieved with the Anova Precision Cooker, but for sure, we plan on using it at least a couple of times every week (we’ve been using it every other day for the past few days.)

Why invest in yet another way to make dinner? To make it delicious of course! The Anova Precision Cooker helps to cook food exactly as you’d want to eat it: Full of flavor, healthful, and without too much thought. Likely you wouldn’t be looking at this unless you already know what sous vide cooking is. Anova is one of the leaders in this cooking subculture and it’s not accidental. This precision cooker heats the water quickly and keeps it at your desired temperature for as long as you need it. I started with cold water meant to keep my frozen chicken breast cold until I was ready to remotely turn on the water bath. The Precision Cooker 3.0 brought the 6 quarts of water from 45 degrees to 149 degrees in under 10 minutes. The timer on the cooker is smart enough not to start counting down until the water is at the desired temperature. From tap water, it was even faster. Anova’s cooker connects to your WiFi very easily, using their app. This lets you remotely start the Cooker from another room or another house. It also lets you save recipes for future use. Finally, you can see your progress towards a delicious meal. The app is also helpful for looking up time/temperature settings for various items you may consider making. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a good place to start before going to the great unknown of Google. The cooker can attach to the side of nearly any pot. I used it with both a stock pot and an instapot. This worked very well with the instapot as the outside is very well insulated. I found some silicon covers online which help keep the heat in and control evaporation. When it’s time for clean up, the bottom slides off easily after a strong twist. That provides easy access to clean the heater, the propeller, as well as the outside. Fortunately, this shouldn’t be needed often as the hot water you’re cooking it doesn’t touch the food. Anova continues to innovate in the space they own. While the innovation isn’t overly significant, It’s nice they don’t take their #1 status for granted. Kudos for continuing to put out a quality, well made product!

Summary: This thing is a game changer! I have only had it a few days and only cooked a few items, but I see it as a common use item in the house as it makes cooking extremely easy and adds time to total meal prep but saves time since it cooks in the background and the food comes out perfect every time. Unboxing / Setup: There is not much in the packaging, simply the unit and documentation. The unit is rather large but at first glance is uncomplicated. After plugging it in and setting it up via the Anova Culinary App (Android and iOS), connecting it to Wi-Fi and updating the firmware, I was good to go. Of note, it only supports Wi-Fi 802.11 B, G and N so ensure you have a 2.4ghz network set up. Use: The first recipe I tried out was some chicken tenderloins. I found a simple recipe (there are also lots of recipes in the app) consisting of salt, pepper, and oregano. After mixing those together, tossing with the chicken I placed them in zip lock bags as I forgot it normally needs vacuum seal bags. I cooked it at a lower temp for about an hour and a half then took it out to sear it in some olive oil in a pan to crisp the outer sides of the meat. WOW! This food tasted amazing and was very juicy! The first bite will turn you into an instant believer. I also made some potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, oregano and garlic powder. After an hour of cooking at 190 degrees, these are some super good potatoes cooked to perfection! The instructions for the unit explain how to use it with zip lock bags as well as with vacuum seal. Using zip lock bags, all you need to do is fil a pot of water, dip the bag in the water which will displace the air, and seal it when all the air appears to be out. It works well! Issues: The unit itself is large and requires a large stock pot. I used a 12” one which means you will use a lot of water to cook. I thoroughly suggest finding some recipes where you can cook multiple items at the same temperature to maximize efficiency. You can probably cook entire meals in this. The device uses a lot of plastic whether it is zip lock bags or vacuum seal bags. There are some reusable silicone ones you can purchase if you do some research and I highly recommend this.