Montizano

@weedy - that aligns with my experience, the pc will go from 127-137 with 10l of water in about 6 minutes. @haresfur - I measured several intermediate points, well below the pid rolloff (pc was actually set for 160 to avoid this). Ill have to run through the calculations when I have a chance. -Monti

Thanks for the feedback. I do tend to use preheated water for all the reasons mentioned above. I was just concerned because of the serious eats article which said 4 gallons in 20 minutes for the Anova one. I haven't calculated the theoretical heating rate, but I'm guessing there was a typo in the article (4qts perhaps, instead of 4 gallons?). -Monti

Jo, Are you using a cambro 12l container? I got much better results using a stock pot but it much smaller (I'll check the size this morning). If I have to preheat I will, just want to make sure there is nothing wrong with the unit. -Monti

I just got a precision cooker and a cambro 12l container. Tested it out yesterday with 10l of water. It took about 40 minutes to go from 75f to 140f (a bit more than 1.5f/min). I've heard that the pc is only a bit slower than the Anova one, but serious eats* has the Anova one heating 4 gallons (~15l) from 80f to 140f in 20 minutes (3f/min). That's over twice as fast to heat 50% more water! A 25% increase in power should not give such a drastic increase in speed. What results are others seeing? -monti *http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/12/sous-vide-circulator-review-sansaire-nomiku-anova.html

Looking for suggestions for a French rolling pin (one piece tapered). I'd like it to be of nice quality wood probably 1 3/4" center diameter, fairly wide sweet spot (none tapered section). Looking for suggestions on wood type, length and place to buy. It's a gift so I don't mind paying for for something that is higher quality and looks nice. I really appreciate any help! -Monti

Paul, I think you hit the nail on the head. Thanks to the link to your post, that's pretty close to the method I was planning to use. I was just surprised the seemingly expert sous vide websites don't explain this in regards to cooking time for tender meat. Looking at the seriouseats recipe for strip steak (http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/06/food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-steak.html), if I have a 1.5" steak (the minimum suggested) and use 131f and 1 hour cooking time (based on their chart) the final core temperature of the meat is at about 116f according to sous vide dash! this is a full 15 degrees f below the desired finished temp! So the steak would actually come out BELOW rare even though you would be expecting a medium rare steak. -Monti

I got an immersion circulator (anova PC) for my birthday and have been playing around with it. After looking into cooking times for steak and chicken breasts (and other meat that is not being tenderized) I'm quite confused. Most recipes for steak say cook a 1.5" steak at 129f for 1 hour for medium rare. While it is often stated that the time can go beyond 1 hour, 1 hour is the preference using serious eats page for reference). However, based on the sous vide dash app it looks like the steak will have a core temperature below 129. For the 1.5" steak, it takes 3:20 to get up to temp and at 1 hour it looks like it is around 120f, almost a full ten degrees under the target temperature. Therefore the steak will come out rare, rather than medium rare. The case is similar for large chicken breasts (a .75" breast will be at temp in 1 hour) with a 1.5" breast taking 3:15 to get to 150 and typical times for cooking breasts listed at 1 hour. I will mention that in both cases the surface pasteurization is complete within the hour. Am I missing something, or are people cooking these items so the core temp is below the bath temp (which would lead to a temperature and doneness gradient within the meat)? Monti