The Anova Precision Oven is worth the investment
This post is part of our ‘This Is Fire’ series, where our editors and writers tell you about the products they can’t live without in the kitchen.
After I burned out the control panel on my stove from adding steam when baking bread, I started searching for alternatives. Most steam ovens (otherwise known as combi ovens) were large, expensive commercial beasts. I thought I had struck gold when I found a small countertop oven that boasted about steam. It didn’t live up to that promise and quickly found its way to the donation pile.
When the Anova Precision Oven was born, I clicked the “buy” button so fast I nearly sprained a credit card. Not only does the oven cook and bake with steam, but it also has the ability to do bagless sous-vide cooking!
Anova Precision Oven
- Precision temperature control
- Steam up to 100% relative humidity
- Great for baking
- Can do bagless sous vide
- There’s an app for that
- Eats up countertop space
- Can release steam when cooking
- Not inexpensive
The Anova Precision Oven (or APO to its users) cooks with two different steaming modes. The sous vide mode uses wet-bulb temperature control, which is a bit technical but it basically measures the temperature of the water in the oven. Wet-bulb cooking can only be used for temperatures at or below the boiling point of water, much like sous vide. The second method, convection, measures air temperature, just like a normal oven.
Bagless sous-vide cooking has come in handy for larger foods that would be difficult to stuff into a bag—I’ve used it for beef roasts and leg of lamb. I’ve also used the APO for sous-vide cooking crème brûlée in jars, and the result was excellent.
There’s an app with recipes, but I’ll admit that I mostly use it for looking up time, temperature, and technique rather than strictly following the recipes for spices and flavors. One recipe I tried was for bagels, where the steam feature replaces the usual boiling. The result was good and the method was easier than boiling before baking.