The first time I cooked with my unit, everything went fine. The filets turned out wonderfully and I was in love with my new toy. The second time I used my unit, it went haywire on me. I was cooking another filet to be followed up with a lobster tail. I set my Anova Precision Cooker to 135F. It heated up to 135F so I dropped in the filet for a 2 1/2 hour bath. About 1 1/2 hours into the cooking, I noticed a lot of steam coming from the Cambro container and more closely noticed that the water was starting to BOIL!! The readout on the Anova showed 134.9F and the preferred temp readout was still 135F. I got out my instant read thermo and it read 197F for the water bath!!! WTF??! So I immediately unplugged the machine while Hubby and I were discussing what to do. Filet was totally ruined!! So I plugged the Anova back in and the preferred temp readout still showed 135, but the actual temp readout showed 192F at this point.
I would definitely contact tech support and at a minimum get their recommendation. In had one do something very similar and they sent me a new unit.
I would agree with Dr_Rok. This particular machine has failed you once and should not be trusted with expensive food again. There are some temperature sensors with alarms available, and search shows them to be under $50. You might consider adding one of those to your unit as it cooks. I intend to get one for myself.
I’ve had my unit for only a couple days but, I’m getting a good feel of how it actually functions.
It feels like the unit displays 2 distinct temperatures. There seems to be the “idle/pre-heating” temperature, and the “cooking” temperature.
When idle or pre-heating, the unit will display the temperature of the water the unit is sitting in.
When cooking, things are slighlty different. When cooking, the unit seems to display a “customer comfort zone” number. Because the unit is constantly adjusting water temperature, it’s normal to have temperature fluctuation, but users don’t like to see fluctuations. They like to see the number they set and nothing else. So to keep the user happy, and the unit working, there seems to be a “smoke and mirror” system that tells you the temperature is x, while it’s actually y. I’m guessing the behavior only starts once the set temperature has been reached and the buzzer went off. If that is the case, then I think the problem is in the programming and not the hardware.
How can you tell? Plug your unit in, let it cook for some time, then pause it. Suddenly the temperature reading changes on the unit. The new temperature is the actual water temp, while the temp that was displayed during the cook was the “customer confort zone” number. The confort zone number is usually within 1~1.5 degrees(higher) of the desired set temperature.
The possible programming problem I have in mind could definitely lead to a behavior like the one described in the opening post. As if the unit looses track of which number is which until the unit is reset(unplugged).
Some users have posted problems when they use celsius VS fahrenheit… So for sure there is a bug in the program that runs the unit.
I’ve noticed that same thing, where if you stop the unit, the temp suddenly goes up. Here is what is happening IMO. Say you have the water temp set to 140 degrees, and are using an open container. The heater coil in the Anova is always on actively working to heat up that water. Water is constantly flowing around the heater coil, cooling it off and preventing it from over heating. If you shut the Anova off, you stop that flow of water, and the temp around the heater coil will rise instantly.
Check your bath temp with an instant read thermometer, then shut the unit off, and check it again. You will see it is really close, if not exactly the temp you set. Do this with an empty bath though, so the temp of your food does not impact the test.