joesan

Thanks Robert - I'm aware of the difference between resolution and accuracy. For me the bottom line has to be accuracy after all what's the point of your nice display showing 54.3C if your actual temperature is 58C. If you notice the specs for most controllers tend to have a larger percentage accuracy for F than C, basically because F is more granular. I think that for SV the most critical range that has to be accurate is between 48C to 55C or 60C with 0.1C accuracy. Or obviously the equivalent in F. Outside of that I don't think the temperature has to be to so precise. Seems like this is obtainable with the SVM 1500B from your experiments. As regards the Polyscience circulators I think they're nice to have but not strictly necessary if you can get to 0.1C with a much cheaper option. The extra $1500 you have left over buys a hell of a lot of Pata Negra and fine cuts of beef...

Robert (Jueneman) - thanks for the interesting observations around the SVM controllers. I'm thinking about adding to my SV detritus by adding a SVM controller. I really want accuracy to the 0.1C level with this next one. I can see on the SVM site that the 1500B model you mention has resolution of 0.1C but accuracy is only 1%. This is obviously a big difference. 1% doesn't seem much but it could have a non-negligible effect over prolonged periods of time I guess. In your testing have you been able to confirm that this model is more accurate long term than 1%?

I think the list is a nice bit of fun. A chance to cheerlead your favourites, and berate the centralised kitchen tendencies of those who dare to empire build. It can never be truly scientific but at least its indicative of sentiment amongst those in the know. I was pleased to see Noma moving up and glad that the panel took my advice and didn't punish Mr Blumenthal Seems that FA was very gracious in his acceptance speech too.

I must say I don't really see any reason for the "incident" at the Fat Duck to have any bearing on these type of arbitrary lists. Wasn't the conclusion firmly on the side of it not being food related? Surely what's being assessed is the quality of the restaurant not the risk factors of the business. But back to the point - my money is on there being some new entrants from the Scandinavian MG boys...

I would suggest a minute as well. Also drain them quickly and throw them into an ice water bath to quickly arrest the cooking and keep the colour. Ramp pesto is a nice idea...

Thanks for the tip - that was one place I looked at but unfortunately they now only have the 4 tiny quails in a 600g pack that just about everyone seems to carry. Is there something about the magic number of 150g that means that is all a quail can grow to? Somewhere out there are monster quail just waiting to be found...

That sounds exactly what I'm looking for. Trouble is it seems very difficult to obtain these kind of beauties in the London area!

Nobody got anything? This is proving quite a challenge. One would imagine that it would be a bit easier to find a larger version of something as (relatively) popular as quail but they all seem to be about 150g. The search goes on...

Well noticed Douglas. In his writing Heston notes that tenderization is done by enzymes at these low temperatures - particularly calpains and cathespins. Calpains stop working at 40c and cathespins at 50c but below these cutoff points the higher the temperature the faster they work. I'm paraphrasing him here. So at 48 or 49C you are giving the enzyme a long time to denature the protein. I'll add that I've tried this process in my fan oven and the results are well worthwhile...

David - that sounds exactly like what I am looking for. I'd even settle for slightly larger than the normal supermarket size but Poussin size would be Nirvana! I'm researching on my own as well so I'll be sure to report back if I find something.

Ha - that's funny Matthew , I can see why you might think that but I'm serious! I think Quails are excellent but for some reason in this country they are treated like generic meat. They're sold in packs of four, no weight given and no indication of their welfare standards or if they're wild or farmed. Like David says some people have access to the larger ones, that are more akin to what you'd get in France or Italy rather than the scrawny pre-packaged ones we generally get here.

Anybody know where I can get largish Quail - freerange or organic preferred - in London or by mail/internet. I'd prefer a recommendation other than Borough Market as I feel most things are overpriced there.

I guess a difference in the HB oven method and what many of us are doing is that the meat is open to the air and many of the processes here are sealing the foodstuff in a bag (in order to make it impervious to the liquid cooking medium). So there is a significantly lessened risk of anaerobic bacteria multiplying when the item is not sealed in a bag. I can't remember enough of my high school physics to work out if there would be any benefit to putting the food into a bag, into a vessel of water and then putting the whole system into the incubator...

The process is called the "tostatura" i.e the toasting.

Martin - I'd like an Immersion Circulator but the market in 2nd hand ones is not as developed in the UK/Europe and I've never seen one for less than £300 here. If I imported one you pay a small fortune on shipping and Customs duties. They also don't turn up that often. But for less than £200 I can make something that does 98% the same thing using brand new equipment. That's why many people go the PID route.

Hi Dougal - Yes I'm using the N2006P. They're not bad units for the price. At the moment I'm not using the bolt through probes but I will do once I've finalised my setup and built it all into my kitchen (see below). I've also tried Watlow PIDs but found the button controls to be a bit fiddly. I can recommend the N2006Ps I like them. As regards the insulation your observations seem reasonable. I was advised to have some insulation but not too much as it would then take the system too long to stabilise to the correct temperature after an overshoot. This makes sense to me but I'll offer it up for debate. Good points on the deep fat fryer - I tried it with my Gaggenau one and found I could use the mesh basket to protect the packets from the element but if you think about it the element must be not too far from the target temperature anyway, I guess. I've tried just about everything - Pots on a domestic hotplate, pots on a laboratory hotplate, deep fryers, rice cookers etc. I must say the rice cooker works pretty well but it's hard to find a large manual one in the UK and they look a little ugly. My final solution though will be to build a large stainless steel bain marie into my kitchen worktop, PID it with the N2006P and integrate some kind of circulation into it. Multi-litre, accurate water bath for <£200. I'm going for the bain marie unit because I have enough room in the kitchen and it will look more aesthetically pleasing (higher GAF!) than containers with wires sticking out of them or huge immersion circulator on top of a pan. I'm using SV often enough now that it merits a permanent setup. What do you use?

Why "not too much insulation"? Rice cookers certainly have good heat retention properties. I find if I fill mine with water a few degrees (Centigrade, a few more for Fahrenheit) above the temperature and then add chilled food, it levels off pretty much at the required temperature and the PID controller keeps it rock solid at that temperature for however long I want to cook. The temperature is calibrated using my Thermopen so I know it's spot on. Were you to have less insulation, the heater and thermostat are going to be doing a lot more work and adding a strong source of potential thermal variance into the cooking process. ← Nick - I'd spoken to some heat process control engineers and they recommended that there be a balance to the degree of insulation. This may seem counter-intuitive at first because you'd think you'd want to just preserve all the heat that you'd put in the system but the reason they gave is that when there is some over-shoot of the target temperature, which is pretty common I think as the PID is coming up to temperature, it takes too long for the system to fall to the target temperature. I think one of Sous Vide Magic sites also mention this at one point but I can't find the reference. e_monster interesting that you found squash unpalatable also. I'd really like to see some more experimentation with vegetables. Most of this thread is about meats and poultry now - understandable because I guess a lot of people are still coming to it new. There's not so much about vegetable cooking. I've found that most things I've tried have been okay with great texture and colour but I didn't really think they were better tasting. One thing that did work well was Asparagus. Maybe because we are conditioned to find crisper Asparagus more acceptable, as opposed to say crisp squash. I'm going to try the Under Pressure onions and your recommendations for potatoes. How long do you cook them for?

Tom - 83c seems to be the magic number for vegetables. I tried some squash using the method outlined in Alinea. I was hoping to find a better way to cook squash than my time consuming grilling method. It looked great but I must confess I was a little disappointed with the texture and taste. It was more or less the way you describe, cooked but crunchy. I can't honestly say the method produced a better result but it was definitely worth trying.

The answers in the post - "That's exactly it, I have rather a large number of old aquarium heaters, most of them without thermostats of their own".

That's more or less the points I was making - other options would be better but if she already has the heaters they could be made to work, not brilliantly, but work. So we agree... Pretty good PIDs can be found on eBay UK for about £30. I'm using 4 of them they're great...

e_monster - I'm presuming that the thermostat would be overriden, or not applicable, and that a PID would be used. After that you're just left with a relatively low power heating element. Heat is heat so there's no reason why it shouldn't work - eventually... Personally I don't think it would be ideal but if Christina wants to use what she already has I think it could be made to work. I've made a number of contraptions that all more or less worked as expected. A good easy one is a PID plus Deep Fryer (Cost about £60 in total via eBay) or PID plus Rice Maker (about the same).

Christina - I don't know what your budget is but if you are in the UK you can buy a PID contoller for about £30 from eBay, with some basic electrical knowledge you can interface just about any heat source to it. I normally use about 6-10 litres of water but have used as little as 3 litres. In general a larger amount of water will remain more stable but will, of course, take longer to come up to temperature. You can get over this to an extent by heating the water somewhere else, kettle or pot, and mixing with cold water to the appropriate approximate temperature.

In response to the question about using a deep fryer - yes it can be done and works very well. I've used a Gaggenau Deep fat fryer with a manual switch set to full power. Control with a PID controller and you've got a stable dual purpose machine., with the added benefit of being able to deep fry at very precise temperatures. You can add a circulator but equally you can do without one. I don't know if anyone here has done sufficient testing on circulator/no-circulator setups to determine the degree of variation empirically. I can tell you that I have SVd things (steaks, pork, chicken, game, vegetables etc.) perfectly well without the use of a circulator. You will not get 0.1C accuracy with this setup but consider how nicely most things turn out without even a 10C knowledge of the true temperature when cooked conventionally. The Fish tank aquarium idea should work but there would be problems raising that mass of water to the correct temperature in a reasonable time with such a small powered heater. Insulating the tank with polystyrene sounds good but will bring about it's own problems such as will it allow the water temperature to come down enough in a reasonable time when the PID goes over the target temperature. For anyone wanting to DIY this I think the main guidelines are you can use just about anything as a heat source and as a vessel. If you add a PID you'll get there eventually. Circulation adds accuracy but may not be essential if you're trying to keep costs down. If you sous vide something to within +-2C you will still get a very good result for most proteins. Bearing in mind that there are certain minimums below which it may be unsafe. I think in general you want a largish container, not too much insulation, some agitation of the water, and reasonably powerful heater.

You could go Provencal and add some thin slivers of Orange peel (avoid adding the white pith). This definitely adds a bright mediterranean note...

Does anyone know of a source of good, authentic recipes for the type of food they serve at New Tayyabs? Recipes I've tried previously lack any ooomph or true savour. I always feel that the recipes in places like NT have considerably more spice, garlic and...well...scrummyness.