Avona Nano review: Sous vide machine is $75 as Amazon Black Friday deal

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If you’re looking to introduce some sous vide into your
supper, the Anova Nano is certainly a good place to
start.
Amazon

• You don’t have to tell anyone that you didn’t, in fact,
  graduate culinary school if you can keep your dinner guests
  impressed with all the sous vide cooking you’re doing.
• The Anova Nano, the long-awaited
  sub-$100 sous vide machine, will help you create meals that
  taste like they ought to cost $100 (per serving).
• It’s smaller and actually sleeker than the previous Anova precision cooker
  offerings, making this one of the most appealing sous vide devices on the market
  today.
• Right now, the Anova Nano is $25 off as a Black Friday deal on
  Amazon. 

If you don’t spill the beans, we
won’t either. You didn’t slave over dinner for hours on end,
carefully overseeing each component of the meal to ensure that it
didn’t go over or wasn’t underdone, nor did you poke and prod
your proteins with a thermometer (at the risk of losing all those
precious juices) to ensure the proper finish. No, you sly dog —
you discovered sous vide cooking, and if you’re the slyest of
them all, you probably discovered the Anova Nano.

While equipping your kitchen with
the tools to make a five-star meal may have once been outside
your budget, that’s no longer the case thanks to the Anova and
its newest product, the Anova Nano.

This highly anticipated device
was first announced last June, when it was made available for
pre-order for home chefs looking to add a bit of French technique
into their repertoire. But now, the Anova has been made widely
available, and for less than $100, widely accessible, too. In all
seriousness, that’s probably less than half the amount you’d need
to pay for a meal at a restaurant utilizing sous vide
techniques.

Anova app includes an ever-growing database of recipes
and cooking tips, as well as the ability to control your Nano
from afar.
Amazon

As its name suggests, the Nano is
smaller than its siblings, weighing in at a diminutive 1.6
pounds.

That’s still not quite as light
as the ChefSteps Joule sous vide stick, but still, it’s
nearly a pound lighter than the Anova Precision Cooker 4.0.
Plus, it’s just over a foot tall, which is again, much more
manageable than the nearly 15-inch original Anova. This new size
not only makes it a bit easier to handle once it’s in the pot,
but also makes for easier storage. After all, if you’re at the
point in your cooking career that you’re adding not just spatulas
and whisks but sous vide machines, you probably already have
drawers full of culinary tools and appliances.

Unlike the other Anova units, the
Nano is entirely made of plastic, which frankly, doesn’t really
bother me. It allows for a more streamlined aesthetic (a la the
Joule), and of course, cuts down on the weight. Moreover, the
Nano features a built-in clamp, which makes it a bit easier to
attach to pots and water containers.

If
you’d rather cook without your smartphone, you can control
everything on the Nano with its slightly shrunken
display.
Amazon

The Nano doesn’t have the same
Wi-Fi capabilities as the most expensive option in the Anova
lineup, but honestly, you won’t miss it.

You still have access to the
Anova app, which includes the same, ever-growing database of
recipes and cooking tips, as well as the ability to control your
Nano from afar. It’s also a very quiet machine — of course, it’s
not as though other sous vide sticks sound like blenders, but it
is worth noting that with the decrease in size, it seems that
Anova has also managed to make the Nano even more whisper quiet
than before.

If you’d rather cook without your
smartphone (rather than risk dropping it into a precisely
controlled pot of water), you can control everything on the Nano
with its slightly shrunken display. The LED indicators are still
just as useful, and you can still increase times and temperatures
from the device itself, but because it’s gotten a bit smaller,
you may find yourself wishing you had slightly more delicate
fingers. Or, maybe it’s just a good way to get the kids involved
in the actual dinner preparation process, rather than just
inviting them in for the finished product.

This new size not only makes it a bit easier to handle
once it’s in the pot, but also makes for easier
storage.
Amazon

Otherwise, you can use the new
and improved Anova Culinary App, which will come with MultiStep
and MultiCook features in a future software
update. 
The former
allows you to tell the Nano to raise or lower the cooking time
and temperature for different parts of your meal, whereas the
latter allows you to keep tabs on multiple Anova Precision
Cookers at the same time.

In short, if you’re looking to
introduce some sous vide into your supper, the Anova Nano is
certainly a good place to start.  

Buy the Anova Nano Sous Vide
Precision Cooker at Amazon for $75 (normally $99) [You
save $24] 

Looking for more deals? We’ve rounded up
the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday
deals on the internet.