flippant

I'm not sure I could justify this given its present cost, but as the article states, this technology is likely to be rolled into mobile phones in China, where dodgy produce and ingredients (powdered milk and baby formula especially) are rife.

~$34 for the Manresa cookbook ~$21 for Easy Asian Recipes Where are you getting these? Prime?

That's terrible. Sorry to hear.

Modernist Pantry have replacement screens and ship to Australia.

I am ridiculously excited to receive this.

I've had this machine since October last year. I'm in Australia, so it's on "native" voltage, so to speak. Haven't had a problem with it yet (made pea soup in it just now and am holding it at temperature until my partner gets home!). I haven't used the recipe programming at all, as the software for recipe creation is only available on Windows, and is quite abstruse. I am, however, a programmer by trade, and have reverse engineered the recipe format and written a parser. Now I just need to finish the UI.* Let me know if you're on a Mac and up for beta testing. *this may take a while!

Yep. It's fair to say this has taken the shine off Anova in a big way. People are furious across every social media channel. The glib "Hello Anova Community!" the slap across the face starts with on their official blog is infuriating. I know I won't be recommending the cooker to anyone, regardless of how good it may turn out to be.

Right. I had about 10lbs/4.5kgs of pork shoulder divided into 4 pieces, trussed up After 4 hours at ~225f (105-110c) in the smoker, I took them out and put them straight into the CSO at 230f/110c Steam Bake. After an hour I turned the pieces, letting it go for another 50 minutes, at which point the probed meat hit 203f/95c. I put the juices that had come out (around 3oz/1dl) in a cup. Since my total time at that point was 6 hours, I set it to 176f on the Keep Warm setting for two hours, checking now and then with a fork to see how tender it all was. After about an hour, the smaller of the pieces was noticeably tender and yielding, so I started taking them out and pulling them apart with salad forks. After that, I poured the reserved just back onto the pulled pork, salted it and mixed well. The largest piece had a bit of resistance in the center, so I put it back in on Keep Warm to gelatinise the collagen for a while. Will keep it in there for a full two hours extra to see what difference it makes in tenderness—if any. The bark seemed to have survived the steamy environment very well, and it powered right through the stall, going from 176f/80c to 230f/95c in 1:50. Granted, these pieces were just around 2lbs/1kg each, so they were quick to heat up. My thinking was that I could get away with smaller pieces now that I was finishing with steam. I was right. More bark equals more deliciousness! Will definitely do it again!

I'm doing bbq pork shoulder tomorrow, and thought I'd experiment with low-temp (225f) steam/grill as a way to finish it off after 4-6 hours on the grill. CuisiCrutch! Does this sound reasonable or advisable? Anyone have experience doing it?

We're at the tail end of winter here, and since I've had the CSO-300 it has become a preferred method of reheating frozen soups (sealed in a chamber vacuum, around 300g per bag, pushed out to an even, ~1cm thick slate). Steam at 100c for 20 minutes gets it from frozen solid to a hot serving temperature.

I have the CSO-300NXA, which is a 240v version made specifically for Australia (and exclusive to Myer). The temperature intervals are 10c, which is slightly wider spacing than the equivalent in fahrenheit. I put a thermometer in to see how the steam function was with regard to temperature stability. I set it to 50c. It went up to 80 celsius to heat with steam, then hit ~65 relatively quickly before slowly going down to 43, at which point the heating/steam element kicked in again and brought it up to ~65. One cycle like that took around 15 minutes. I'm sure the average temperature is around 50, but for temperature sensitive items like eggs, a circulator can't be beat. I reheated a spinach pie that came out well enough, using the steam bake option at 150c for 12 minutes. I think I'll go higher next time, as it wasn't as crispy as I expected. Are there any good guides on how to use it available yet? The instruction manual isn't particularly comprehensive.

Great thread! I did a 3-month course at SHIC (四川烹饪高等专科学校, now, it seems renamed to the more general 四川旅游学院) in Chengdu. The curriculum was comprised of three books: 川菜烹调技术 上 and 下, as well as a book on baking I can't for the life of me find right now. The Shang (上) volume is concerned with technique and history, while Xia (下) is a recipe book. The recipes are very well explained: the quantity of each ingredient in grams; what size and shape to cut things in; what heat to have the wok at; what order to cook the dish; variations, etc. The downside is that there are no photos, except for the cover and 8 or so very uninspired ones inside the cover. However, I find them excellent starting points.

What I like the most about the Anova Precision (bated breath and all that) is that the clip attachment slides off completely, so it can be slipped easily into a more-or-less sealed environment like a cooler. This Nomiku doesn't seem to offer anything new—except wi-fi—which adds deceptively little except tell you if your water is at temperature (which it bloody well should be!). Can't say I appreciate the aesthetics of it either. If they added a needle probe to it so you could see the temperature of your protein through the magic of wi-fi, we'd be talking. As it is? Meh.

I'd get the following if I were setting up a new kitchen: 1. Microplane graters (extra coarse, medium and fine). Sets you up for grating pretty much everything. 2. A good chef's knife, a good paring knife and a steel. You can do very well with only these two knives. If you feel you need a more specialised knife, you'll know what to get. If not, you don't need it. Wüsthof do good knives, but really, there are plenty of brands that will serve you well. 3. A vegetable/fruit peeler. 4. A cast iron skillet. Lodge are good over there, I've heard(?) 5. A sauté pan 6. A dutch oven 7. Good cutting boards. 8. A pressure cooker. This you can take or leave, but it opens up a lot of shortcuts in terms of stock making and braising. 9. A digital scale. Weight, not volume. Say it again! Weight! Not! Volume! *cheering* You sound like you like to go in for optimal solutions with a lot of forethought. That's an admirable trait, but for cooking you will find that you grow into new techniques (and equipment) over time. I think being "saddled" with a fully kitted-out kitchen can feel pretty daunting—and perhaps even alienating—especially if you are, as you say "useless" in the kitchen presently. Getting the Thermomix feels a little bit like getting ahead of yourself. On paper it's a neat gadget and a powerful blender/etc, but while reading around I found the recipes to be focused more on all-in-one dishes you could set and forget, and less about the Thermomix as a situational tool. The whole sales model is also a bit too cultish (and Tupperware-like) for my tastes. For the price, what you do get is undoubtedly built very well, but for a beginner, that $1700-2000 can be spend a lot better on the very basics.

Thanks for the help Anna, but the manual only states range(s), not increments—as far as I can see.

I have one of these on the way, and am curious as to what the temperature stability is like in the sub-100c range, as well as at what increments it can be set?