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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Anova Precision Oven

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.