Lord_Pall

Regular oven is convection, but super suspicious of it's temperature stability. I definitely should've dropped the temp. Used a thermometer to measure the center though, that's what was so confusing about the whole thing. pulled it before 210, but by then it was too late. Still feels like there's something more clever I can do with this piece of hardware.

Okay so impressions and then some odd questions - Had the oven since December. It's a really odd duck but I quite like it. So far it's replaced the sous vide anova, an air fryer, and in a lot of cases, the oven itself. Cooked bread for a bit. Added a slide in cast iron griddle to crisp the bottom more. Made so much bread I was asked to stop making bread because we ate too much. Did a lot of sousvide and steaming. Dumplings (212/100%), wings (212 for steaming), sous vide wings (160 for a few hours then fry), steaks (ribeyes, 137f 2 hours). Effortless job. Air frying wings was great buuuut. It made a giant mess in the oven. Complaints - Oven is mega dirty. No idea how to keep this thing clean. Oven cleaner didn't help with cooked on stuff, but it also made the oven stinky for a while since it's so airtight. I'm not just wiping things out. I have stopped air frying things that can get fat all over for this reason. Included pan is awful. So awful. Likes to make a terrifying CLANG when I heats up. Ended up getting a few jelly roll pans and the slide in cast iron griddle. App isn't great. Wifi connection on the oven refuses to work with Ubiquiti Nanohd's. Multiple instances of folks running into this. Ended up running an oven specific wifi network on an old AirPort Extreme. Generally I'm using the controls directly. Overall it's a game changer on par with sous vide, but more useful. Kinda wish it didn't make the entire house's lights flicker, but that's more me than the oven. Now here's the question(s) - Baked a cake in it last night for my Son's birthday. 350, no steam, top and bottom. Cake cooked too fast. Rose super fast, and the edges were overcooked before the center finished. Still tasty though. I know you can adapt a cake recipe to a steam oven. But what about a cake in sous vide mode? 210 until cooked, then bump temp to get a bit of crust if you want that? lower temp with steam? Combination of heat and steam? Can you sous vide a cake? Can you sous vide a cake with no steam to avoid it being a steamed pudding? I feel like there's some oddball cooking processes I could try out here that might make a better cake.

After a quick exchange with support, they're sending a fedex label so I can get it exchanged. I think it was Breville support, and the exchange was very quick and positive. A great customer service experience, turning something I was genuinely concerned about into a non-issue. I have a followup email with them asking if the potential issue is resolved, or if there are best-practices to avoid this in the future.

I don't know enough about this to say whether high temperature silicon on top of smoldering insulation is a good idea. Top of my head, if it's a crimp connector, heat cycling probably expanded it or somesuch. You'd have to pull the whole thing, solder (Or some equivalent for high temperature application), and then seal it with something heat proof. Not an electrician, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Personally, I'm going to wait to see what Polyscience says.

Still waiting on a polyscience response. That said: http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/polyscience-sous-vide-professional-creative-series/?pkey=e%7Cpolyscience%7C2%7Cbest%7C4294967106%7C1%7C24%7C%7C2&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH||Category-_-Electrics-_-NoMerchRules#reviews Top review, same failed charred electronics. I don't think that's Foodman's review. Amazon has 1 failure complaint, but more about warranty service with no details. There was also a review claiming a fire was started by their unit. They did however still give it 2 stars. Not a clue what you have to do to get 1 star. http://www.amazon.com/Sous-Vide-Professional-Immersion-Circulator/product-reviews/B00CC2OLHC/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_2?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addTwoStar&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I like the look of the precision unit. Any thoughts to longevity or if it's repairable?

Sorry, yes it's the heater connection. No moisture or corrosion, like the other pics. The unit doesn't actually run power to the heater or pump if the water is low. You flip it on, it runs a system check, and if the water is low, it won't power up the pump or heater at all. Any drop in water level and it shuts off immediately. Still, that might be the case. It does emit smoke and melt the adjacent wired though when it starts to run, even in a correct environment. If it's just an overheated connecter, replacing the melted stuff with high temp silicon might work. Still doesn't seem like normal wear and tear to me.

Okay i emailed polyscience. Hopefully I hear from them next week. From what i can tell, that kind of burnt wiring is bad news. Like catch on fire bad news. That insulation looks like it overheats, melts/chars, and then shorts out. Not sure if that would start a fire in some cases. Anyone know if this is more prevalent than just these 2 units?

My polyscience creative appears to be unusable after ~ 15 months. Turning on emits a tiny puff of smoke which smells like burning. It turns on and runs, but common sense dictates that I don't use it. I paid the full 499 for this ~15-18 months ago. Very light use. Very unhappy, especially considering that there's no repair route for this unit. Addendum: Opened it up to see if it had the same problem. The connector to the pump is charred, just like the images posted earlier. I've attached. Hopefully it picked up enough detail, but that connector is charred (flaking), and the wire near it is a little scorched. That seems like a legitimate problem, and a little scary. It's almost as if the heater isn't using the correct connectors, or right gauge wire and it burns through the connector. It's hard to see, but the feathery looking thing next to the white streaks on that connector is melted wire also. Is that normal, or is this actually something dangerous? I'll reach out to polyscience to see what they suggest.

I also bought the creative. First rate device so far.

I'm interested in this unit, but I really want to know what they mean when they say 2-3 times a week. Is it just to keep this from cannibalizing the professional series? Or did they seriously skimp on something?

We've had some interesting results. Picked up a sidekic a few months ago, loving it so far. Paired with a foodsaver which use most of the time, or a i just do the water evac sealing thing with ziploc. Big wins - Modified Chicken tikka - http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/06/chicken-tikka-masala-for-the-grill-recipe.html We used cut up boneless skinless chicken breasts. Mixed them in the marinade, replaced any garlic with garlic powder/granulated garlic, cooked for ~2-3 hours at 143, then mixed them with the sauce. Bigger chunks work better since that marinade is very salty. Once cooked, I drained the chicken into a sieve, shook off any major excess marinade and dumped it into the sauce. The salt ended up balancing out, moreso if you let it sit in the sauce for a bit. When reheating it, we did it on the stovetop to make sure the chicken didn't get overcooked. 48 hour short ribs (korean style) - http://www.youfedababychili.com/2010/06/09/48-hour-short-rib/ Unbelievable. Pork Belly - http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/12/the-food-lab-deep-fried-sous-vide-36-hour-all-belly-porchetta.html We sorta wingled it on the spices, but this was an astonishing result. We were fortunate that it wasn't a very big roast, otherwise my wife and I would've given ourselves pork belly poisoning. Pork Shoulder (24 hours @175) - http://meandmytorch.com/recipes/sous-vide-pork-shoulder Woke up with the sidekic sorta smoking since the water level dropped a lot. I use plastic wrap to minimize condensation now. The bacon was good, but the anise was a really amazing addition. I think I might've used some lemon juice instead of the meyer lemons, but this was a big hit. Sorta Misses - Fried Chicken Tenders - Tried to adapt the ad-hoc chicken recipe. Cooked the chicken at 140 after brining, double breaded them (buttermilk, breading, 20 minute rest, buttermilk, breading), fry at 375. The breading was gummy (double breading wasn't necessary), and the textures just didn't work. I think a little bit of toughness on the chicken would work better. I could see it being useful for bone-in fried chicken, since that tends to be a crapshoot. All in all, I'm loving this as a tool. It feels like cheating, but some of these results are really amazing.