Smart Sous Vide Precision Cooker Nano

This is an amazing way to cook! I've never had chicken breasts so moist. Our first roast beef was beautiful!

Wanted to try sous vide, but the ATK top picks all required phone connectivity. This looked like the next best option. I didn't realize that sous vides were so accessible these days, my last few sous vide experiences were with friends who had to rig their own water baths by drilling holes in cheap ice coolers! In contrast... this little guy is less than $150 and I can use it with several pots or food storage containers I already own. I did get the Anova round silicone lid that matches this to keep water from evaporating, it works great.The temp seems accurate when measured with my Thermapen. It seems like it heats up pretty fast, not sure what the standard is? Since I got this, I've made beef ribeye, bison ribeye, freezer burned boneless skinless chicken breast, thick cut pork loin chops, and two batches of creme brulees. (Going off of a mix of ATK recipes and Kenji Lopez-Alt articles.) Every. Single. Thing. has turned out INCREDIBLE. I'm absolutely capable of reverse searing a ribeye or doing creme brulee in a water bath in the oven, but this machine is literally set-it-and-forget-it. Knowing that the meat can't be overdone has given me so much more time to do a nice veggie side dish. I feel like I can make a restaurant quality dinner any day of the week.My typical sous vide work flow is to bring it to temp sometime after lunch and throw some protein from the freezer in there. Then whenever I'm done working, I can put together a side dish, then season, sear and serve.A vacuum sealer totally isn't necessary, but once I'm through my freezer stash, I'm thinking it would be nice to get one so I can pre-prep some cuts from the butcher and freeze for later use. In the meantime, I've started looking for cuts that are sold vacuum packed from the freezer section.Also, doing creme brulee in this thing is dangerous... because it's SO easy... I've had more creme brulee this week than I have in like the last two years lol. Now my only conundrum is, do I get a second one? So I can sous vide a ribeye AND sous vide some polenta as one of the sides?TL;DR, highly recommended!

So I have had the Anova for a couple of months and I've made steaks about 7 times, chicken 3 times, brats once... I'd say every time the food has been cooked perfectly. I start with hot water out of the sink so I have not timed how long it would take to get to temp from say 'room temp', but so far the Anova for the price has done an amazing job.The recipes and app are very straight forward, most of the recipes are from what people post so it's hard to tell if this is the ultimate guide for cooking everything but nothing I've made has turned out bad.. I even went mid-well on some smaller steaks because I didn't know if my neighbors like mid-rare and it turned out fantastic.I will say I will have to tweak recipes though to my liking.. either way the Sous-Vide is a success for making food taste great, safely cooked and keeping things moist, that in itself is worth it. I'd like to see how Hamburgers would turn out.

This thing is absolutely amazing! I've been sitting on this thing in my cart for quite some time and I finally decided to get it. I wish I didn't wait so long to make this purchase. It prepares my steaks to the perfect temperature every single time. It doesn't matter if you leave steaks in for 3 hours or 6 hours, the steaks never over-cook. The only difference about leaving steaks in longer is they get more tender! I recommend seasoning steaks for a day or so, then throwing them in to get the most flavorful steaks! This is so easy to use because once you set your steaks in, you don't have to monitor them - just pull them out after your time is up... and like I said, if you're running late or hit heavy traffic, you don't have to rush to get home and take them out. They'll still turn out perfect! At first, it seems like waiting for a steak for 4-5 hours is an eternity, but just trust the process and enjoy the most delicious steak you'll ever make. There are tons of videos on youtube where other people take the guesswork out of the equation for you, so again, it's super easy to use. My wife doesn't go near the gas grill but loves this thing and she raves about how easy it is to use. Also, pro-tip: when you buy meat in bulk, season all of them at once, and freeze what you don't use that day/night - then all you have to do is thaw them in the fridge for 24 hours and all the prep work is done! Honestly, the steak that's been frozen and thawed out taste even better than fresh steak but I think it's because the meat has more time to absorb the flavorful herbs that have been seasoned with.

I used this with my Power Pressure XL bowl to cook two chicken breasts and a small boneless pork chop. It was much more convenient that using the big pot and my bigger Anova machine.140 degrees and 2.5 hours later I've got three perfectly cooked juicy pieces of meat for my jambalaya.When it was done I checked the water temp of Anova's reading with my thermometer - there was a .2 degree variance. Not bad. Not bad at all!