Shalmanese

Yes, exactly. I'm buying EVOO not because it's extra virgin or because it's unadulterated, but because it tastes good. There are plenty of bottles I would never buy, even if they are extra virgin, simply because they aren't what I'm looking for.

No, 650W is going into the water and 170W is being lost to the outside environment, making 820 overall.

Looks like you're losing ~170W from the container which means the nomiku is only putting out 820W. Heaters are 100% efficient so that means the nomiku is not putting out a consistent 1000W that it claims.

A little bit of rancidity contributes to the "aged" confit flavor. The main concern is preventing oxygen from getting to the meat to inhibit spoilage bacteria.

Precisely. What puzzles me is that I cannot tell a difference in taste between the two versions. Hence, the question: are we attached beyond reason to the tradition, or is my ability to tell a difference in taste compromised? I guess someone who has tried cooking the legs sous-vide both ways can chime in. Thanks! FWIW, Nathan Myhrvhold said that they (the Modernist Cuisine team) made blind tests and they could not detect any difference, in a message in this very forum. The Myhvhold experiment was poached in duck fat vs steamed and then coated with duck fat. That's a different experiment from salted immediately vs cured overnight and rinsed.

According to my calculations, that means it's pumping 425W into the water. Given that it apparently has a 1000W heater, that's less than 45% efficiency which is pretty disappointing. I'd try again with covering the bath and insulating it to see if you can get it done faster. I'll have to look through my emails, but I'm pretty sure that they increased the size of the heater a little bit. 1150 watts keeps popping in to my head but I'll need to verify. I'm sure evaporative cooling had a lot to do with the long heating time, when I have a moment this weekend I'll try a run with the cover on from the start and see what happens. It would be interesting to see how other circulators perform under the same testing parameters but it would be difficult to control the variables in the real world. According to their website, it's 1000W. Regardless, it doesn't really matter since you're still only pumping 425W into the water.

According to my calculations, that means it's pumping 425W into the water. Given that it apparently has a 1000W heater, that's less than 45% efficiency which is pretty disappointing. I'd try again with covering the bath and insulating it to see if you can get it done faster.

I'm concerned that the 8" blade may be a bit much for her. I know a 6" blade will work fine. Couldn't find a 6" model except for a utility knife. In that case, try the Wasabi Santoku

The Kai Wasabi Chef's knife is my go-to cheap knife. I keep a spare in the kitchen for guests and it's great at what it does.

Sometimes, when you stare into the meat counter, the meat counter stares back.

This is completely false. I think you need to educate yourself on pasteurization times and temperatures. Here is one of many sources stating that between 140 F and 40 F is trouble. I am just suggesting that the center of the roast may have been in the danger zone too long, and took on a smell from anaerobic microbe growth. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/8b705ede-f4dc-4b31-a745-836e66eeb0f4/Danger_Zone.pdf?MOD=AJPERES What do you say, FeChef? If the roast is still in one piece then the inside is sterile therfore not contaminated. As long as the surface was brought to pasteurization temps in a timely matter then theres nowhere for bacteria to grow. Again, educate yourself before posting false information. USDA information is far from false. If I accept your view, then the OP must have started with contaminated meat that did not pasteurize. My own thought, undeterred by sous vide, is that the 140 F temperature was not reached in time for pasteurization, and a higher temperature would suffice. As Shalmanese told you aswell, the USDA safety rules are overly simplified and do not apply to sous vide cooking. 140F is not needed to pasteurize. Given time, 132F is more then enough to pasteurize. I suggest again that you educate yourself, and as shalmanese suggested, you shoul look up douglas baldwin's guide to sous vide, and read up on his pasteurization charts. If USDA rules, which apply to cooking in general, do not apply to the sous vide anointed, and are false and uneducated, then I had better avoid sous vide in restaurants. At least then I won't encounter any experimental fishy meat, or worse. The science behind heat pasteurization of pathogens is well established and controversial. If you bother to do even the most cursory piece of research, it'll be quite trivial to understand why the USDA recommendations do not apply to sous vide. As a further note, many industrial food processes also do not follow the USDA guidelines listed. Everything from deli ham to pasteurized eggs and are perfectly safe.

Since pressure canning of low acid foods is to kill of botulism spores, an alternative way would be to pressure cook your stock, use only clean equipment to handle, then can using a standard water bath.

Standard food safety rules are overly simplified and not applicable to sous vide. Check Modernist Cuisine or Douglas Baldwin's writings on Food Safety to get a better understanding on the time-temp curves for pasteurization.

The bottom of the circulator is just a flat piece of metal so it's fine. The water is vented out of the side.

I have the same problem.

It depends almost entirely on insulative properties of the container. Getting water up to temp can take a whole lot of energy but once it's there, a well insulated container can keep it there for tiny amounts of energy. Hell, you can keep an entire hot-tub at temp for less than 300W. Given that heat loss is roughly proportional to delta t, heating a bath to 130F on a 70F day should take twice as much energy as heating it to 100F, aka, 600W. Given that the Anova has a 1000W heating element, it means that, if you so chose, you could sous vide in a hot tub with that tiny immersion circulator and have energy to spare. What that means is that there's practically not any container that's too big, just one that's too poorly insulated.

I woke up from a 12 hour cook to discover that the impeller had nicked a bag so the cover goes back on unfortunately . Does that bottom part serve a function? I thought it assisted in adjusting the direction the fan "pushes" the water flow.Yes, you're right. But I found even without it, the water was still sufficiently stirred by the impeller to keep the bath even.

Taking the bottom cap off the anova significantly reduces both the noise and circulating efficiency. I was initially worried that bags might get caught on the impeller but preliminary tests seem to indicate that this is not a problem. Temperature variance across the bath (tested with thermapen) never seemed to vary by more than 0.1C at 85C. With the reduced noise, it's now much easier to cook in an adjacent room without bothering me. Cooking in the same room still produces a microwave level hum which can get annoying very quickly.

I've been on a fresh pasta kick lately and I've been frustrated by how hard it is to find reliable information on how various factors affect the outcome. I can find tons of recipes out there but they're all dogmatic about their approach and generally appealing to tradition or prior art instead of really delving into the issue. It's easy to make a perfectly acceptable mound of pasta but it's been frustrating trying to approach greatness. It's not so much about finding "the best" recipe or "the right" recipe so much as understanding how different factors affect the final outcome. Commonalities between all recipes seem to be: Bring together eggs, other liquid ingredients & flour and allow them to incorporate into a homogenous mass (either via hand using a well, via a stand mixer paddle or via a food processor)Optionally, rest the dough at this stage to allow flour to hydrate (3 - 5 minutes seems common)Knead for some amount of time (anywhere from 3 - 20 minutes, either by hand or with a dough hook)Tightly wrap and allow dough to rest to let gluten relax (15 minutes - 1 hour recommended as lower limit, upper limit is usually a day)Split into pieces and run each piece through the widest setting of a machineOptionally, fold in half or in thirds and run through several more times, either with the same orientation or perpendicular (anywhere from 3 times to 10+ times)Decrease the width by either 1 or 2 notches and run though again. Repeat until desired thicknessOptionally, let dry slightly before cutting (until dough is "leathery", 5 - 20 minutes)Cut using the cutter attachment or knifeCook anywhere from 60 seconds to 3 minutesBased on this master recipe, what I'd like more insight into is: Gluten content: High or low? I've heard everything from cake flour to bread flour recommended. Recommending Tipo 00 doesn't help since 00 just means finely milled.Finely milled vs normal: Does using Tipo 00 have a measurable difference vs American milled flours?Wheat vs Semolina: I've seen recipes with anywhere from 0% to 100% semolina flour. How does the ratio of semolina change the texture?Hydration levels: What's the ideal ratio of dry to wet for the dough? I've played around with doughs on both ends of the spectrum and there's quite a lot of differences in the final texture.Liquid composition: I've seen whole eggs, egg yolks, water, EVOO and milk all recommended as wet ingredients. How does more fat (egg yolks, oil) vs more water (water, milk) affect texture. Why milk? What does it do to the flavor?Kneading level & technique: Is there a difference between incorporating via hand vs stand mixer vs food processor? Is there a difference between kneading by hand vs mixer? Can you over knead the dough? What's a good stopping point for kneading?Machine folding: Many recipes advise you to repeatedly put the dough through the machine at the widest setting. Some say 3 times, 5 times, 10 times etc. Does putting it through more times help the dough? hurt the dough? Is there a point of diminishing returns?Salt: Some doughs contain salt and others do not. How does salting the dough vs salting the cooking water affect seasoning?I've been making a small batches of pasta pretty much every day to try and nail down some of these variables. So far, the biggest lesson seems to be that no amount of pushing pasta through the rollers can make up for lack of kneading. Pasta kneaded just with rollers tends to come out short and with a crisp bite instead of a pleasing chew. Also, I used to be pretty dogmatic about keeping the dough fairly dry since it's easy to work with but I've been moving more and more wetter doughs as they seem to help with gluten development. Most pasta recipes on the web are from people who make a single batch of pasta every month or so. I'd love to hear from people who make large quantities of pasta every day and are more intimately involved with these issues.

The polyscience came out when $800 circulators were the norm so $500 was a bargain. The Anova came out when $400 circulators were the norm so a $200 one is a bargain.

It does what it does competently enough that I can't see the Sansaire being measurably better enough to be worth the wait. At the end of the day, you're just buying a device to heat water accurately so there's not too many points of differentiation.

I use a Chinese noodle strainer: for eggs. It's cheap from Chinatown and works great.

Yes, sorry, when I said fan, I meant the impeller fan, not a cooling fan. Thanks, after making adjustments, I tried calibrating against a Thermapen again and got these results: 100 (Anova) -> 100.5 (Therma) 130 (Anova) -> 130.1 (Therma) 160 (Anova) -> 159.7 (Therma) So it looks like there's not just skew in the results but also negative bias of about 1.3%. The system uses a resistive touch screen right now - Here is an over view on resistive screens Wikipedia and why we chose it. This type of screen isn't as UI friendly as an iPod or cellphone ( has capacitive screens that has multi-touch / drag functions) but it is fantastically durable. There are a lot of UI constraints on what I can do with a 2.7' resistive unit - If we ever switch to a capacitive screen I'll make the UI fly. No the cooling fan off cannot be turned off. Also make sure what you are hearing is not the pump sucking air because of low water level. I'm a UX designer by trade so I know about the capabilities of resistive touch screens and the like. I don't want fancy drag or multitouch, just a simple 10 digit keypad would greatly increase the ease of use of the device. A few other feature requests after using it for a bit: * The ability for the unit to make a sound once it comes up to temp. That way, I don't have to check on it once every 5 minutes to see whether temp has been reached. * The ability to see the current temperature of the bath on the home screen (ie: when the unit isn't running). Since I have to turn the unit off to make any adjustments, it'd be nice to still be able to see what the state of the bath is, especially if I'm dropping temp. * I don't get why when it's active, there's two types of displays and it seems to switch between them randomly. If it showed the display with more data until it got up to temp (or if a timer were running) and then showed just the temp once it reached temp, that would be great because then I could tell at a glance what state it were in. * An ETA calculator for the bath coming up to temp would also be a nice-to-have. That way, I can know roughly when I should go check on the device again. * I meant the ability to turn the impeller fan off, not the cooling fan. Also, I'm sure it's the impeller making the noise, not the unit sucking up air. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I investigated the issue today at production and found out that one dude (a new guy) was reading meter values wrong - I told him he was making me look bad. Anyways production control caught this last week and already self corrected. Solutions: 1) bump up your set temp (0.9C) 2) use the self calibration function that I posted 3) I can do it for you if you really want to send your unit back to me Thanks, I'm glad you caught the defect!

After cooking a test egg in it, the built in thermostat is most definitely off. What came out was a 142F egg, not a 145F egg.

I just got the circulator today and I've been trying it out. Pros is that it's a beautiful piece of hardware and it's very easy to set up. However, accuracy is questionable. Setting the bath to 145F, my Thermapen measured somewhere between 141.7 and 142F and my Taylor probe measures 143F. I don't know which is the most accurate right now but a 3F discrepancy is a pretty big deal. Also, the UI could use a lot of work and does not take advantage of the touch screen at all. The way to set the temperature/time is that it increments up by 1 every time you press it. That means if the current temperature is 145F and you want to set it to 144, it requires 9 button presses. Either up/down arrows or a keypad entry would be far superior. Also, I wish there were a way to turn the fan off, there are times I'd be willing to put up with a little bit of temperature inaccuracy in exchange for running completely silent. The fan is not overly loud but I can hear it in the other room with the door closed and it's still a distraction when cooking in the same room. It doesn't look like there's any obvious way to update the firmware which is a shame because it has the potential to be a really great device if they fix some of the software issues. Hopefully, there'll be a V2 out soon that addresses the issues.