I cook sous-vide often enough that it makes sense to me to have a permanent setup on my kitchen counter. Can I leave the Anova unit in the water bath continuously or does it need to be removed and dried between uses?
Interesting question. How big is your pot/container? I’ve been keeping mine attached to my preferred pot, but dumping the water and letting it air dry in the pot. My rationale for dumping the water is to keep it from getting funky in the <140 F range, but I’m only doing a couple portions at a time in a 4.5 quart sauce pot. My water will leave deposits and a ring on my pot if I don’t dry it out. I assume the same would happen on the Anova, but I wouln’t think it would harm anything an occasional de calcification cleaning couldn’t fix.
One issue here is that in Western Australia we often go a couple of months between rains and I feel bad about using up 10+ litres of perfectly good drinking water just to cook a couple of chicken breasts (or whatever else). Plus a pot with over 10 litres of water in it is heavy!