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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Anova Precision Oven

Anova Serves Up a Generous Helping of AI With Launch of Anova Precision Oven 2.0

Last week, Anova announced the second generation of its Precision Oven, just over four years after it began to ship the first generation Precision Oven. The Anova Precision Oven 2.0 is packed with a number of new features, including an in-oven camera and Anova Intelligence, a suite of new AI features designed to power new ways for users to assist in the cooking process.

In fact, the company listed a bunch of features currently offered by their AI-powered cooking and a number of features that they are working on. The features the Anova Precision Oven 2.0 currently has include:

  • Ingredient Recognition: The AI system automatically identifies what’s inside the oven with the internal camera.
  • Suggested Cooking Methods: The oven’s AI will suggest cooking methods tailored to the ingredients, ranging from basic roasting to more complex sous vide style.
  • Packaged Food Conversion: The oven will scan the packaging, and the AI will choose the right settings.
  • Recipe Conversion: The company says the Anova Precision Oven 2.0’s AI can convert nearly any recipe to make it work with its settings, with the caveat that this feature will improve over time as it gains more data.

According to Anova, upcoming features for Anova Intelligence include:

  • Assistant Mode: Anova’s AI-powered co-pilot will simplify complex cooking techniques and offer personalized cooking guidance.
  • Complex Meal Creation: When preparing multi-component dishes, the oven will suggest optimal settings for each ingredient, “streamlining” the cooking process for recipes that typically require juggling multiple cooking techniques.
  • Cook Recall: The oven will recognize repeat recipes for dishes you prepare frequently and return to your last-used settings.
  • Doneness Detection: Powered by the internal camera, the oven monitors the cook’s desired crispness level and alerts them when it reaches the preferred doneness level.
  • Auto Shutdown: The oven will detect when a cook cycle has finished and whether food has been removed, then notify you before automatically shutting off.
  • “Clean Me” Reminders: Equipped with an internal camera that monitors for dirt buildup, the oven will remind you when it’s time for a cleaning.

With the addition of the camera and new AI features, it looks like Anova hopes to fill the void left after Weber sunsetted the June oven about a year ago. While some features (like auto-shutdown) don’t seem all that interesting, I am intrigued by features like the coming co-pilot mode.

In addition to the new AI features, the second-gen oven includes even tighter temperature management (powered by three internal temperature sensors and a more powerful on-board processor) and better steam management. The new oven also includes a new app and an additional recipe subscription service for $1.99 a month or $9.99 annually.

All of these new features come with a hefty price tag increase at $1199, double that of the launch price of the first-gen oven. While some may pass on the 2.0 due to the price increase, given the void left by June and the cult following Anova has, I expect the new Anova oven to sell fairly well when it ships.

CES 2022: As LG and Others Embrace Steam, Could 2022 Be The Year of Steam Cooking?

When asked at Smart Kitchen Summit in 2017 what appliance he was waiting for to make its way to the consumer kitchen, award-winning chef Philip Tessier said, “the combi oven.”

As it turns out, Tessier wasn’t the only chef that day who thought a steam-powered consumer kitchen was a good idea. When asked the same question a couple of minutes later, Serious Eats’ Kenji López-Alt agreed.

“I was going to say combi ovens too,” said López-Alt.

The combi oven, also known as combi steamer, combines traditional convection (dry) heating and moist heat using steam to enable the cook to do all sorts of things they can’t do with traditional ovens: Sous vide cooking, steaming vegetables, and baking moist delicious bread to name a few.

While steam cooking has been a long-time fixture in pro kitchens, it has never taken off in a big way in the consumer kitchen. But that might be changing. In 2020, Anova finally started shipping their countertop Precision Oven, and the critics embraced it. Since that time, the company has had trouble keeping the $599 appliance in stock.

Other upstarts such as Tovala and Suvie are also bringing different spins on steam-powered cooking to consumers. And LG, which introduced steam cooking into their convection ovens in 2018, is now adding Steam Cook functionality to the microwave.

In some ways, steam cooking is following the same early path pioneered by sous vide circulators. Like sous vide, steam cooking is a technique long-embraced in the pro kitchen, and it is also finally reaching consumer price points and showing up in friendlier form factors.

However, while sales of sous vide circulators eventually hit a wall because most consumers didn’t have the patience to cook meat in water baths for hours on end, my guess is steam cooking has a much wider appeal. A big reason is that unlike sous vide, steam cooking arrives in the kitchen via traditional-looking appliances (not to mention steam ovens like Anova’s allow you cook sous vide without the water bath or the plastic bag).

If 2021 was the year air-fry was everywhere, I suspect in 2022 we might begin to see the year the chefs get their wish and steam cooking begins to enter the mainstream.

Watch the ‘Seattle Food Geek’ Explain How the New Anova Steam Oven Works

If you’re a sous vide or precision cooking nerd, chances are you’ve heard of Scott Heimendinger.

Not only did Heimendinger basically invent the consumer sous vide circulator back in 2010 and eventually turn that invention into a company and a successful Kickstarter campaign, but the culinary experimenter known as the ‘Seattle Food Geek’ also spent much of the past decade working at Modernist Cuisine, ground zero for high end culinary experimentation.

So naturally when I heard last year Heimendinger was lending a hand to Anova to help bring their steam oven to market, I became excited to see whether the pairing of these two sous vide pioneers would finally create a steam oven that might break through in the consumer market.

With the Anova steam oven shipping this year we should find out soon enough. In the meantime, you can check out this video I filmed this past week at CES of Heimendinger walking us through a demo version of the oven Anova with product designer Harry Lees.

CES 2020: A Look at the Anova Precision Steam Oven

Anova Reveals New Connected Steam Oven

Anova, a company best known for making sous vide wands, showed off online yesterday the new product it’s been working on: a connected steam oven.

That the company is branching out from wands into ovens isn’t new. Anova first announced its precision oven at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October of 2016. But it looks like things have changed since that initial inception, and the product has been on a bit of a journey. In a corporate blog post yesterday providing an update on the steam oven, Anova CEO Stephen Svajian wrote:

In 2017, we were acquired by Electrolux and our work on the oven temporarily ceased. We started working on the oven last year and this year got approval to push it forward.

Anova’s original Precision Oven announcement was highlighted it’s multi-function cooking, with the ability to sous vide, sear, broil, bake and steam. For the new oven, Anova is still keeping all of that functionality, but yesterday’s blog post focuses on steam cooking:

Steam is a much better conductor of heat. Steam, combined with heating algorithms written in the age of endless computing power, can maintain temperature with levels of precision would make your old-school oven blush. Yet, we were unsatisfied with the levels of precision in crazy expensive, state-of-the-art ovens. You see, ovens have two temperatures. The temperature of the air inside the cavity and the temperature that the food experiences. The temperature of the air is referred to as the “dry bulb temperature.” The temperature that the food experiences is lower because water evaporating off the food cools it off. This temperature is called “wet bulb.” To achieve the best results, the oven needs to understand both. In addition, most current steam ovens don’t allow users to control relative humidity.

The company didn’t provide any other details about the oven (size, power, price, availability, etc.), though Anova says it still plans on debuting the new oven at CES in 2020. In a bit of a surprise to us here at The Spoon, Anova revealed that Scott Heimendinger is working with the company to develop the oven. Heimendinger is also Technical Director of Modernist Cuisine.

When it does come to market, Anova’s won’t be the only connected steam oven. Tovala is on the second generation of its connected oven, which also uses steam to cook and costs $299.

Anova has been on a bit of a roll this year. In May it launched a new Pro version of its sous vide cooker, and in August the company launched a smaller, lighter version of its main sous vide Precision Cooker. Last week, Anova also launched its own vacuum sealer for sealing food for sous vide cooking.

Anova’s new oven is something we will surely be talking about with Svajian, who will be speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit next week. Get your tickets now!

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly inferred that the new oven did not have the same multi-functionality as previously announced. That was incorrect and the post has been updated.