Costco is selling the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker Kit that comes with a WiFi enabled immersion heater and matching cooking container with a fitted lid.
While I absolutely love my Anova Sous Vide immersion heater I do not recommend buying the full cooking kit that is for sale at Costco.
What is in the Kit?
The Anova sous vide kit comes with a circulating immersion heater and a plastic tub to hold a water bath. The tub is fitted with a custom lid that has an insert for the immersion heater.
The immersion heater, which is consistently ranked as one of the best on the market, secures onto the side of tub with a manually operated clamp.
You can set the desired temperature that you want the immersion heater to maintain with either a thumb dial or by using the WiFi connectivity and the Anova app.
I have been using various models of Anova immersion heaters for over four years and have never been tempted to use the WiFi connectivity. I simply dial in the desired temperature with the thumb dial and walk away.
How to Use
To use the kit you need to fill the plastic tub with hot tap water, inert the immersion heater and use the control dial to set the temperature of the water bath.
I use my Anova immersion heater for cooking perfect Medium Rare steaks so I set the water bath to 133F.
Season and seal your food into a food grade vacuum seal bag (not included with the kit). Place the sealed food into the water bath and allow it to cook at the set temperature for the desired length of time.
I cooked this top round steak for six hours in a 133F water bath and it came out perfectly cooked and incredibly tender. If you are a fan of steak then you absolutely need to get a Sous Vide immersion heater!
Why You Don’t Want the Full Kit
There are two reasons why I do not recommend buying the cooking kit at Costco:
- Price
- Storage
Price Considerations
The retail price for the immersion heater by itself is $129 and you can often find it on sale for $99. This means that, at the full retail price at Costco of $199 you will be paying about $90 for a plastic tub. That is a pretty expensive piece of plastic!
The thing is, all you really need to buy is the immersion heater. You can use any pot you already have to hold the water bath. I do all of my sous vide cooking in a 12 quart stock pot and it works just fine.
I would suggest buying an immersion heater for $99 and taking the cash you save to buy the FoodSaver vacuum seal system that you are going to need to seal up your steaks prior to cooking.
Storage Considerations
Even if you completely ignore the question of price, the other big consideration is storage.
The heater, which again is the most important part of the system, is about as big as a rolling pin and is easy to store. I store my Anova immersion heater in the same drawer that holds my FoodSaver and vacuum bags.
But where in the heck are you going to store that oversized awkward plastic tub?
My kitchen is already overflowing with all of the pots, pans, Instant Pots, slow cookers, rice cookers, air fryers, tabletop roasters and just about every other kitchen gadget ever made. The absolute last thing that I would want or need is an oversized plastic tub.
Wrapping it Up
I love my Anova Sous Vide Immersion Heater and strongly recommend it to anyone who loves steaks. That being said, paying for the heater and plastic tub at Costco is overkill and will create an awkward storage situation.
