Anova - Precision Cooker 3.0 - Black

My 5-year-old sous vide finally died and I purchased this as a replacement. Its extremely quiet, wifi setup was straightforward.

I use my sous vide all the time to make batched chicken and salmon for meal prep. Using it is very easy and hands off and results are very consistent. It’s a convenient way to cook. The drawback is you are cooking things in plastic. Do note that you need additional set up materials like a large pot of water and things to weight it down and keep it in the water. There is also a learning curve involved to do sous vide cooking and it doesn’t work for everything you might want to make. But the Anova app is super helpful and easy to learn and explore with.

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!

Anova is known for being one of the first major players in bringing Sous Vide Precision cooking to the home, with smart features that were far superior to others. In the box you’ll find the Cooker, and some basic materials. The benefit of the Precision Cooker 3.0 is the WiFi connectivity and smart app, which allow you to start/stop cooking, set temperature, timers, and even monitor the device remotely. There is a clamp on the device making this far easier to place in various containers for your cooking use. The Anova apps comes fully featured with recipes and even step by step instructions to prep and cook your meal. I was honestly quite blown away by the sheer number of recipes in the app, and just how easy it was to follow along. The result is perfectly cooked meats, with little worry that you’ll overcook anything. I was also impressed with just how quickly it got the water to temp! Thus far, I’ve made about 10 steaks, burgers, chicken, and even used this to boil some eggs. The device boasts about 1100 watts of cooking power, the touch screen is easy to use and view the temp and cooking timer. Cleaning up is also easy, assuming the bag you used didn’t leak into the water. Compared to the previous generation device, I also found this one stayed connected to WiFi without once dropping off and the temp appeared to be consistent throughout the container I was using.

Excellent! It was everything I expected it to be. I would definitely recommend this item at any price, well maybe $199.00. The only thing better than this purchase was the sales person who was very helpful and informative. Any body can use this item, it is very simple and easy to use and the food turns out perfect every time.

Easy to use and gives accurate temps for Sous Vide cooking.

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.

Easy to use. Does the job. The App keeps you informed during the cook.

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.