I am enjoying steaks but wondered about when to drop them in the bath. It seems to me that I should be able to setup the apparatus, drop the steaks and turn the whole thing on, simply monitoring when they finally get to the recipe temperature. Is there any reason not to do this? My understanding is that the goal is to hold the protein at temperature for a period of time, so I’m just figuring the lower temp is prologue. 
For the most part, you’re right - you really shouldn’t do any harm with dropping the steaks in when the bath is pre-heating.
That being said, there’s a reason that ANova named their sous vide water circulator the “Precision Cooker” - one of the attractions about having a sous vide appliance is being able to reproduce the same results time after time.
Putting your 1 1/2" rib steaks in for 90 minutes and having X result is desirable - not only from knowing what that is, but being able to tweak it next time increasing / decreasing the cook time (and possibly the temperature) to create a different result.
If you’re not precise about your controls, you won’t be precise with the result. Just saying - you can set the bar higher - as in as high as the best steak houses in NYC and produce similar results.
If you really want to make the best steak you’ve ever had, might be good to start a journal and keep track of your experiments.
1 Like
As long as the anova heats up in a timely fashion, it is perfectly safe and in my opinion won’t affect the end result as any temperature below the final temperature will not affect the cooking process except for that it will be cooked for slightly longer.
1 Like
Thank you very much!