How to Use Cooking Modes
The Anova Precision™ Oven 2.0 includes Cooking Modes on the oven's home screen to make it simple to get cooking quickly.
| Mode | Temperature Range | Steam |
|---|---|---|
| Sous Vide |
77–208.4°F
(25–98°C)
|
100% |
| Dry Sous Vide |
77–197.6°F
(25–92°C)
|
Off |
| Bake |
213–482°F
(101–250°C)
|
Off |
| Convection Bake |
213–482°F
(101–250°C)
|
Off |
| Steam Bake |
213–482°F
(101–250°C)
|
10–100% |
| Steam Roast |
213–482°F
(101–250°C)
|
10–100% |
| Air‑Fry |
213–482°F
(101–250°C)
|
Off |
| Broil |
400–482°F
(204–250°C)
|
Off |
| Steam |
200–220°F
(93–104°C)
|
100% |
| Proof |
77–100°F
(25–38°C)
|
0–100% |
| Dehydrate |
77–165°F
(25–74°C)
|
Off |
| Manual |
77–482°F
(25–250°C)
|
0–100% |
How to Use Anova Intelligence
How to Use Staged Cooking
Most traditional recipes call for cooking at a single temperature for a set amount of time. Although it may be perfectly fine to bake brownies at 350°F (177°C) for 20 minutes, many foods, especially proteins, benefit from dividing the cooking process into stages with different cooking temperatures and times.
If you’re already familiar with sous vide cooking, this strategy will be familiar. First cook your food using low heat until it reaches a perfect doneness from edge to edge, then sear the outside of the food using high heat. This prevents the inevitable risk of single-stage cooking: telltale bands of gray on the outside of a steak, dry and stringy poultry, or vegetables that are charred on the outside but still raw on the inside.
Depending on the food you’re cooking, you may want to choose to finish it on the stovetop instead of in the Anova Precision™ Oven. Thinner proteins, such as steaks and chicken thighs, are better finished on the stovetop for quick searing. Other foods, like large roasts, can be cooked start-to-finish in the Precision™ Oven, with a browning stage added after sous vide cooking.
- When to Use Multi-Stage Cooking
- When to Use Single-Stage Cooking
Large Roasts and Whole Poultry
For large roasts, such as prime rib, you’ll want to cook using Sous Vide Mode, low and slow, until the probe reaches its target temperature. Then, once the roast is fully cooked on the inside, transition to a very high searing temperature with no steam to focus on searing the exterior.
Certain Vegetable Preparations
Many vegetables, such as asparagus, can be cooked until tender using Sous Vide Mode, followed by a broiling stage to char the exterior.
Bread
Many breads, especially artisan-style sourdough loaves, benefit from baking in stages. You’ll first bake with steam to allow for maximum oven spring, and then switch to dry heat to brown and crisp the crust. Many bread recipes also include stages for preheating a baking steel or stone and others include stages for proofing the dough — all in the Precision™ Oven.
Multi-Component Recipes
Sometimes you don’t even want to heat up the stove to sauté vegetables. Many Precision™ Oven recipes, such as shepherd’s pie, make use of a multi-stage cook to prepare different components of a dish.
Small Proteins
Slim proteins with a high ratio of surface area to interior, such as most steaks, don’t brown efficiently in the Anova Precision™ Oven. For that reason, we recommend cooking in a single stage using Sous Vide Mode and then finishing in a ripping hot skillet or on the grill, just as you would when cooking using traditional sous vide methods.
Traditional Baking
Baked goods like cakes and cookies usually don’t need more than a single trip into the Precision™ Oven at one consistent temperature. Fluctuations in temperature, fan speed, or steam percentage, can all be detrimental to the final result.
Grains
The Anova Precision™ Oven does a great job evenly cooking rice and other grains in a single steam stage. No need to add anything more complicated.
Steam-Roasted Vegetables
High heat and a blast of steam is an excellent setting for hearty vegetables like broccoli and potatoes. These settings cook vegetables quickly, tenderizing the centers and crisping the exteriors in one single step.
Tips for Using Manual Mode
Sous Vide
If you’re adapting a traditional oven or stovetop recipe to the Anova Precision™ Oven, don’t worry about the sous vide button. Simply turn it OFF. If you’re looking to cook sous vide, we recommend using the Sous Vide or Dry Sous Vide Cooking Modes.
Heating Elements and Rack Placements
The Precision™ Oven defaults to the rear heating element for all manual cooks; this is a good heating element to start with.
- For more browning on top of food, add the top heating element.
- For more browning on the bottom of food, use rear+bottom (in the Precision™ Oven 2.0) or bottom (in the Precision™ Oven 1.0).
- For more browning on both the top and bottom of food, use top+bottom.
Similarly, the oven will default to the 3rd (middle) rack position. Move the racks closer or further from the heating elements if food is browning too quickly or slowly, or if you are using a tall cooking vessel.
Oven Temperature, Convection, and Steam
The Precision™ Oven allows you to add steam and/or the convection fan to your cooks, and both of these elements increase the efficiency of the cooking process.
Convection
- If you add the convection fan, decrease the oven temperature by 25°F (14°C) and start checking for doneness 5 to 10 minutes sooner than the recipe states.
- The convection fan will default to high; we recommend leaving it at this setting unless you notice that the fan is drying out the food or causing a delicate food, such as a souffle, to deflate.
Steam
- When adding steam to a non-sous vide cook, think about the percentage as the steam output; 100% steam will be the maximum output of steam possible for the entire cook, while lower percentages will be fractions of that output.
- Like convection heat, steam speeds up heat transfer and can also decrease cooking time. For baked or roasted foods, start with a relatively small amount of steam (10 to 50%).
- For traditional steaming, use the Steam Cooking Mode.
- Steamed foods do best when the air and steam are allowed to circulate on all sides.
- If you have a perforated pan, use it to allow for steam circulation around the entire food.
- For larger items, such as artichokes, you can steam directly on an oven rack.
- If you don’t have a perforated pan and are steaming smaller or more fragile items, you can instead place the food on a wire rack and set that directly on the oven rack.
- Rice works best if it is steamed in a thin layer. Use a sheet pan or large baking dish.
- Placing a sheet pan on the lowest oven rack can help catch drips and make the oven easier to clean, but it is not necessary.
If you don’t add the convection fan or steam, you can keep the temperatures the same as your traditional recipe; however, due to the Precision™ Oven’s higher level of precision control and smaller cavity size, we recommend checking 5 to 10 minutes earlier than the recipe suggests.
Food Probe
If you’re cooking protein, you can utilize the food probe to ensure precision. If you’re using a relatively high oven temperature, you won’t get the same edge-to-edge even doneness as with Sous Vide Mode, but you will know exactly when the protein has reached its perfect doneness. You can even use the probe to monitor doneness with some baked goods, although it will be difficult to insert securely in batter-based recipes.
Convection
Convection
DIVE DEEPER
Non-Traditional Sous Vide Techniques
Dry Sous Vide Mode
For plenty of food, cooking in a wet sous vide environment is best. Meats and vegetables turn out perfectly and evenly cooked, and if you want to sear them after cooking, you can pat them dry before finishing over high heat. But for foods with skin, like whole chickens, the wet sous vide environment is not ideal. Once waterlogged, it's a challenge to get the skin crispy. In the Anova Precision™ Oven, you can cook sous vide without adding humidity. The food will still experience the correct cooking temperature, but the oven won't generate any steam. This means that the surface of your food will stay dry during the cooking process, allowing for better crisping.
Because Dry Sous Vide Mode is all about driving down relative humidity, it does need to set the dry-bulb temperature a bit higher than the wet-bulb temperature. This difference increases as you increase the set temperature. In order to preserve the precision of sous vide in this mode, we've placed a limit on Dry Sous Vide Mode at 197.6°F (92°C). Cooks at or below this temperature will behave as you'd expect, with edge-to-edge perfect doneness and dry skin.
We do not recommend using Dry Sous Vide for foods that have been sealed in a bag or container.
Sous Vide Express
Sous vide produces great results, but sometimes you want to trade absolute perfection for an increase in cooking speed. This is where the food probe gives you options. In traditional sous vide cooking, you can't usually use a probe to monitor your food's temperature; instead you have to rely on long cooks following time and temperature tables. But in the Anova Precision™ Oven, you can monitor your food's internal doneness with the food probe. This means you're free to adjust the oven temperature slightly higher than the target probe temperature to speed up cooking by up to 50% without adding guesswork to the equation.
As you might imagine, there's a bit of a tradeoff. The closer the oven temperature is to the probe temperature, the more gently the food cooks and the more uniform the doneness will be from edge to edge. The higher the oven temperature, the less uniform the doneness will be. A good rule of thumb is adding 5°F (2.5°C) to the oven temperature for every pound (450g) of food. For foods weighing less than 1 pound (450g), stick with 5°F (2.5°C).
Sous Vide FAQs
Is Sous Vide Mode the same as sous vide?
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.
Is vacuum sealing necessary for Sous Vide Mode to work?
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.
What's the difference between cooking in a bag versus cooked unbagged in the Anova Precision™ Oven?
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.
Should I always skip the bag? Or are there good times to use one?
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.