Skip to main content

Once something you only saw on ‘Top Chef,’ sous vide hits shelves at Target, Best Buy

Anova Precision Cooker
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Target is pushing hard to help consumers figure out their smart-home situation. In addition to the Target Open House in San Francisco, it recently opened a location in Minnesota to demo Internet of Things products. And back in March, it began selling Anova sous vide machines, with plans to have the device in up to 1,800 stores by October.

Best Buy will also begin selling the Anova, which is an immersion circulator that lets you sous vide in your own kitchen. Once the purview of only high-end restaurants, sous vide is a cooking technique that involves slowly cooking food in a temperature-regulated water bath. Instead of using a stove, you clip an immersion circulator onto your pot; it heats the water and keeps it moving around your sealed plastic bag of chicken, steak, or what have you, keeping the food at just the right temperature to cook, as well as juicy.

Recommended Videos

Anova AppAnova — like a glut of other similarly priced devices on the market — wants to make sous vide more mainstream. Despite its French name and unfamiliar equipment, these appliances actually amount to a technique that’s more foolproof than making something on your stove or oven. “It enables you to produce results that are impossible to achieve through any other cooking method,” Anova’s Jordan Houston Ramsdell told Digital Trends. While many aspiring amateur chefs might not think anything of picking up a $30 slow cooker they’ll occasionally use to make chili, the Anova’s $199 price tag might make some balk at buying a device they aren’t sure they’ll use frequently.

If you learned to cook knowing that your chicken should be 165 degrees Fahrenheit (about 73.9 degree Celsius) to ensure it’s safe to consume, then putting raw thighs in a bath of 140-degree Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) water for an hour might make you squirm. “I think that’s the biggest hurdle we have to overcome,” Taylor Dawson, product evangelist at GE’s FirstBuild, told me when I was reviewing the company’s Paragon induction cooktop, which can be used to do sous vide.

But the Anova, the Paragon, the Nomiku, and other sous vide devices all come with apps that walk you through recipes or steps for making a variety of food via the sous vide method. Many people say you don’t need a vacuum sealer to make your meal, just heavy-duty ziplock bags, but there is some concern about the safety of using plastic bags in heated water, especially if they’re not BPA-free.

And while we love a sous vide steak, vegetarians can actually find plenty of recipes that will keep them satisfied, from corn on the cob to scrambled eggs. “We have customers using the Precision Cooker for home brewing, baking, tempering chocolate, and even ice cream,” says Houston Ramsdell. You can find recipes for mulled wine, chocolate chip cookies, and Greek yogurt done in the sous vide method.

I did an informal poll of my friends, family, and co-workers about sous vide. Some had never heard of it; others were already posting pictures of their creations on Facebook, and one adventurous soul had already purchased an immersion circulator for his smartphone-illiterate mother. Now that consumers can pick up an Anova at Target when you’re on a paper towel-and-box-of-wine run (they go hand-in-hand), you could find yourself sampling a sous vide pork chop the next time you head to your parents’ for dinner.

Update 6/13/2016: Updated to reflect Anova began selling its device in Target in March.

Jenny McGrath
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jenny McGrath is a senior writer at Digital Trends covering the intersection of tech and the arts and the environment. Before…
Early Black Friday chest freezer deals: up to 40% off today
The Insignia 7-cubic feet chest freezer placed in a garage.

Update 10/29/24: This starts our Black Friday coverage of chest freezers, and we like what we see so far. The following deals are from a variety of good brands, show a wide range of prices, and most importantly come in various sizes, so you can pick what is right for your home.

While Black Friday officially starts on November 29, retailers are getting started early this year. That means great early Black Friday deals, including on things like chest freezers. Here, we search high and low for the best deals on chest freezers to hit the market. That means we're looking at sources like Walmart's, Amazon's, and Best Buy's early Black Friday deals among others to get you the best deals possible. Whether you're wanting to store ice cream, meat, or a party's worth of frozen pizza, these are the best chest freezers for you.
Hisense 5 cu. ft. Garage Ready Chest Freezer — $165 $189 13% off

Read more
Best cordless drill early Black Friday deals: DeWalt and more
A DeWalt drill being used.

Update 10/28/24: This marks the beginning of our drill coverage for 2024's Black Friday shopping season, and all of the major brands have at least one great deal. While we're excited for what is to come, this is a fantastic start and there's really no reason to not go ahead and get prepped by buying something now.
If you're buying anything this Black Friday, there's a big chance you might want a drill/driver to go with it. A drill/driver is one part drill, one part (screw)driver and it can help out in many situations. For example, say you take part in one of these early Black Friday TV deals, you very well might want to wall mount it. Then, say you grab up an easy coffee maker from Keurig's early Black Friday deals. An extra side table in your study would sure go nice with that and a drill/driver could very well make the table's construction much easier.
Really, with so so many of your early Black Friday purchases, there might be a chance to pick up a cordless drill or driver and get to work. As such, we've compiled a list of the best cordless drill deals throughout Black Friday deals that are available now, so you can get a head start on prepping for the savings that are to come.

Skil Pwr Core 12 Drill/Driver — $50 $59 15% off

Read more
Best Roomba deals: Top robot vacuums from as little as $170
iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum.

If you come home and don't really look forward to doing the day-to-day dusting and vacuuming that's required to keep everything clean, then robot vacuums are a great solution. Probably one of the best-known brands is Roomba, and if you're looking to pick up a new one, then Roomba has a lot of great options you can pick from.. Whether you're looking for a budget-friendly option or something a little bit more high-end that comes with a self-emptying station, we've gone out and collected some of our favorite Roomba deals below.

That said, if you don't necessarily want a Roomba, you can check out these general robot vacuum deals, and for the more substantial messes, there are always these vacuum deals and cordless vacuum deals too.
iRobot Roomba i1 -- $170 $220 22% off

Read more