Frequently Asked Questions

Unless the recipe specifies otherwise, you should start the cooking timer when the food is added. All of the recipes in the Anova Oven App have been developed to account for the natural drop in temperature when the oven door is opened.

• When sous vide mode is turned on, the oven can fluctuate up to ± 0.7°F (0.3°C).
• When sous vide mode is turned on and the set temperature is at or below 212°F (100°C), the oven can fluctuate ± 1.8°F (1°C).
• When sous vide mode is turned off and the set temperature is above 212°F (100°C), the oven can fluctuate ± 10°F (5°C).

Yes, this is normal! All foods contain water (some vegetables contain A LOT of water!). Especially if you’re cooking without steam, this moisture needs a way to escape in order to prevent pressure from building up inside the oven. You’ll see steam coming out of the front of the Precision™ Oven 1.0, and will feel moisture escaping (but likely won’t see much steam) from the Precision™ Oven 2.0.

If you’re cooking with sous vide mode and full steam, you likely won’t see much steam escaping. At these low temperatures, we’re not worried about pressure building up, so we don’t need to vent the oven.

Yes! At the high temperatures you’d use for the baking steel, the steam will not affect the quality of the steel. If you’re especially concerned, be sure to run the steel through a high temperature dry heat cook afterwards to ensure it doesn’t retain any moisture.

We recommend using only well-seasoned cast iron skillets for lower temperature steamy cooks.

The words “sous vide” literally translate to “under vacuum”, but it's the meaning behind the words that matters. For instance, sauté is from the French, “to jump,” but the technique doesn't strictly require aerobics, fun as they are. So, the question we must answer is, “If your food isn't 'under vacuum', is it still being cooked sous vide?” Yes.

Sous vide cooking is defined first and foremost by cooking at a precisely controlled temperature, typically at or slightly above the temperature you want the core of your food to reach. Although cooking in a sealed bag in a water bath is a common way to cook sous vide, it's not the only way.

There are lots of accepted sous vide scenarios that don't involve a bag at all. A favorite technique among sous vide enthusiasts is to cook whole eggs right in their shell, where nature has done the packaging for us. American chef Thomas Keller famously poaches lobster tails directly in a bath of circulating butter. Neither scenario involves vacuum bagging, but the results are unmistakably sous vide.

Because we're using the oven to cook foods using precise temperature and humidity control for edge-to-edge even doneness, we are going to go ahead and call it sous vide. Precision is, after all, the hallmark of this style of cooking.

Generally, no. That’s because traditional ovens only measure and control dry-bulb temperature. The Anova Precision™ Oven directly controls wet bulb temperature — the temperature your food actually experiences — and maintains the temperature you set very precisely.

Yep! You can also use the food probe to monitor doneness if you want to double check your cooking times.

No, vacuum sealing is not necessary for sous vide. In fact — and this is very counterintuitive — foods inside a sealed vacuum bag aren't under vacuum at all! A vacuum is defined as a space that contains little to no air (or matter, generally speaking). Because vacuum bags are flexible, they bend around the food inside them, making tight contact. This doesn't leave any empty space for a vacuum to form, so food inside a vacuum bag actually experiences normal atmospheric pressure.

If you’re using a chamber vacuum sealer — where the entire bag goes inside a rigid chamber — then your food does experience a vacuum when the machine reduces the atmospheric pressure inside the chamber before sealing the end of the bag.

You may notice, for instance, that foods with a lot of water start boiling during this process. That’s because the boiling point of water depends on the atmospheric pressure: the lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point (for a given temperature). But, once the bag is sealed and the machine releases air back into the chamber, the boiling stops. The food is no longer under vacuum, as the pressure of the atmosphere pushes against the bag, which pushes against your food.

However, there is one case where your food remains under vacuum — sealing in a rigid container. If you’re using a rigid vacuum canister, or you place a rigid container inside your vacuum bag, then the food is, indeed, under vacuum after sealing. Recall that a vacuum requires space with little to no air in it. The rigid walls of the canister are what maintain this space, fighting against the pressure of the atmosphere outside.

The inside of a sous vide bag quickly rises to 100% relative humidity during cooking — in a water bath, or in the Precision™ Oven. As the food in the bag heats up, some of the food's water evaporates, quickly saturating any air remaining in the bag. So all bagged food experiences 100% relative humidity.

In the Anova Precision™ Oven, you can replicate this environment by using Sous Vide Mode and setting the steam to 100%. The Precision™ Oven will fill the cavity with humid air, replicating the 100% relative humidity conditions in the bag.

We like to use bags in Sous Vide Mode if the cook is longer than four hours and we want to make sure the surface of the food does not dry out. Sometimes a dry surface can be beneficial, such as when you want to get a really hearty crust on the exterior of a roast.

It can also be beneficial to bag your food if you want a marinade or other flavor-packed sauce to have close contact with the food. Sure, you can cook the food in a pot filled with sauce, but by using a bag, you can use less marinade and you ensure that the sauce is touching all surfaces of your food.

We do not recommend using bags in Dry Sous Vide Mode.

The food safety rules for sous vide time and temperature that you’re accustomed to for water bath cooking apply just the same in the Anova Precision™ Oven. However, if you’re practicing cook-chill sous vide and plan to store your food long term, we do recommend vacuum bagging your food before cooking. Combined with proper time and temperature, this ensures that the contents of the bag are pasteurized and remain protected from outside contamination.

Vacuum sealing your food creates an anaerobic environment — an environment that lacks oxygen. This inhibits the growth of certain spoilage bacteria, which is why we always recommend sealing your food before doing cook-chill sous vide. However, the spoilage bacteria of interest operate on longer time scales than you’ll experience for the vast majority of Precision™ Oven cooking. So sous vide recipes can be safely translated into their bag-free variants in the Precision™ Oven. However, if you are concerned about oxidation, or are doing very long cook times, following hygienic practices and pre-sealing your food before cooking in the oven will minimize risk.

Foods cooked sous vide in vacuum bags lose juices as well — your sous vide steak typically sheds some juice into the bag during bath time. The same is true in the Precision™ Oven. But with the Precision™ Oven set to 100% relative humidity, those juices will collect in a pan, so you’re free to retain them for use in a sauce or gravy. However, if you want to keep your food immersed during cooking in a marinade, sauce, or a fat, sealing your foods in a bag will help maximize surface contact.