It's surprising how little good information is published about cooking with combi steam ovens. Reminds me of cooking sous vide in 2007, trawling forums and blogs for dubious n-of-1 insights… then a few years later, info became ubiquitous!
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There’s a reddit, icymi!
I’ve been eyeing the Anova one… seemed to have reliability problems, but supposedly awesome when it works.
Have you got one? would you recommend?
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I hadn't seen the Reddit! Not learning a ton here yet, alas, but it's something—thanks.
I have a Miele combi. I often use it as a straight steam oven (sous vide without bath, cooking veggies). Still learning about how to use it effectively in combi mode. Challenging.
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I vaguely remember there being a lot of recipes and how-tos late last year. Possibly try “top in last year” for that, if you haven’t. But I only spent a little time because the sense I got was that the Anova (then new) works maybe half the time, so…waiting for it to get debugged
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Didn't find much in terms of actual posts, but this linked from the header seems quite good!
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Also, follow He’s their marketing person and is totally frank about the pros and cons. He’s an expert in sous vide cooking.
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Thanks, ! (To be precise, former chief innovation officer.) But happy to answer questions about home combi oven cooking!
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Thank you! I'm mostly interested in exploring the results it can produce which cannot be achieved by sous vide or a normal steam / convection oven. The promise of wet-bulb control is exciting, but I've had trouble translating that into ordinarily-unachievable results.
Some of the more interesting results have been with dense vegetables, for which I can strategically increase the wet-bulb temperature; and with roasts, for which I can vent moist air to drop it. But neither has been honestly all that striking.
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Great question. Here are some examples. First up: roast chicken. You can set the wet bulb temp BUT without generating any steam. The meat cooks like sous vide, but the skin stays as dry as possible for better crisping in a subsequent searing stage.
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As it happens, I did this tonight! :) I've found that it improves the results relative to a normal convection roast, but not by a huge margin. Maybe I'm not doing it right! I brine overnight; combi at 150° @ 0% humidity until probe hits 145°, rest 1hr, then crisp at max.
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Next: omelette. Eggs are so temperature sensitive that a few degrees make a huge difference in the final texture. In the APO, the temperature control is precise enough that you can nail a sheet pan omelette that remains flexible enough to fold or roll.
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Great suggestion!
Proofing is a bonus, too, since you can set the temp as low as 25C. It can't get colder than your kitchen, of course, but most ovens are woefully shitty at holding very low temperature. APO let's you hold both low temp and a relative humidity value.
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You can do essentially everything you can with water bath sous vide, but the oven form factor makes it so much less work. Even I very, very rarely break out the water bath these days unless I have a long cook and I need to keep the oven free for other uses.
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Yep, that use case is by far my most common! It's very nice not to have to fill the water bath for a quick sous vide cook (and sometimes to be able to avoid bagging at all)
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I hope some of this helps. You can see recipes at oven.anovaculinary.com to get a sense of some of the more unique results. Most of the time 0% or 100% RH makes sense for cooking proteins.
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Very helpful—thank you!
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