lordratner

The higher the heat, the better if your only goal is searing. Blow torches work well because they are stupid-hot. Cast skillets are good because they can hold a ton of heat (to counter the cooling effect of adding the meat to it). A broiler is decent, but not ideal. I use it for large cuts like brisket and ribs because I am too lazy and impatient to blow torch an entire rack of ribs. You need to move the meat as close to the broiler elements as possible to maximize heat transfer. In a cast skillet, the oil is primarily acting as a thermal conductor between the meat and pan. Unless you put in a lot of oil, it's the pan doing the work; a couple tablespoons of oil won't hold enough heat to sear a steak properly (you can test this by heating the oil and pouring in onto the steak. Not much happens) The best method (IMO) is deep frying. The liquid oil provides for a (virtually perfect) even sear, and the large volume holds enough heat to keep above the desired surface temps. Heat the pot of oil to smoke point (I use 425F peanut oil), and drop the meat in for 15-45 seconds depending on the cut/type. You can take it out early, and if you want more, dump it back in. The more oil you use, the more meat you can finish without reheating the oil. I don't do it often, since there's something a bit too decadent about deep frying my food for a simple Tuesday dinner, but it is far and beyond the easiest and most visually stunning method I know of. Steak, chicken, duck, turkey, hamburger patties, meatloaf, meatballs, bacon-wrapped dates, proccuitto... All have come out amazing, and the crust is generally better than the other methods.

I love my MAC chefs knife. Takes a great edge and holds it for a couple months of household use with regular honing.

Just depends what you're using it there for. If your goal is to stabilize the oven temp, then it can help. But if you're planning to use the oven quickly and temperature variation doesn't matter as much for the dish, the steel will increase the pre-heat time, thus increasing the cost. If you're keeping it in there for storage purposes, it may be a waste. If you are doing it for other reasons, never mind.

My guess is that the custard is not getting to temp. Liquid custard in a bag can be difficult to time, since the bag can settle differently. I would bump the temp up to 81 or 82 degrees, and make sure the bag is flat and thin as can be to allow for the best heat transfer. You can use a thermometer to make sure the custard has reached 80C. I use a sous vide bath for creme brulee a la MCaH, and it works amazingly, but I have to increase the time to account for somewhat larger custard cups. As long as it reaches 80C though, it's good.

I made the refried bean foam. The taste and texture of the beans is great, and once again the pressure cooker proves its worth. But the foaming step in the whipping siphon is a bit unruly. In a 1-liter siphon there is a huge amount of waste (probably 50-75% wasted) from the puree sticking to the sides of the siphon. I doubled the recipe and you can get a good bit more out, but there is still a ton of waste. I've found that adding the cream in the blender and running it on high for a few minutes does a good job of lightening the beans, though not as well as the siphon. But there is no waste. I like it for a simple and great refried bean recipe. The whipping step doesn't add enough to the dish to justify the amount wasted in the siphon IMO.

Correct! Little known fact: The stained-glass used in churches all over the world is mined from a single quarry in Italy that has been in service for almost 500 years. Only green, blue, and red are extracted from the rock, all other colors are created by melting colored wax (like Crayola Crayons) in thin layers over plexiglass, which is not real glass, so it can be stained. I'm kidding, of course... OP was concerned about performance degradation. I haven't noticed any as a result of the staining.

I have the Fagor 4 and 8 quart 2-1 Splendid model. I wanted the KR, but I couldn't justify the cost, especially since I didnt know if I'd be using a PC much. That said, I've been very happy with the Fagor set. One day I may get a KR, but it will be after my Fagor breaks, and if I find one on sale. I just can't justify the huge cost with minimal performance differences. EDIT: I just checked, and the price on Amazon for my set is up 50% ($99 to $149) from when I bought it in 2012. Guess everything is more expensive these days

Haha, I've been playing around with this stuff for a while. Mostly a combination of fear, laziness, and the military lifestyle has kept me from ever trying to market something. It's been a great year for someone like me who just wants to see Sous Vide in the homes of the masses. Anova, Sansaire, Polyscience, Nomiku, Sous Vide Supreme, ARY... and now Mellow. Now if you guys would hurry up and develop some home centrifuges and hand-held homogenizers, that would be greeeeeeaaaattttt....

Temp sensor and heater can be wired with simple plugs in the base unit. Think of it like the batteries on power tools, only not a battery, but a tank. I can think of quite a few ways to plumb the air bubbler. Some sort of rubber valve similar to how a heart valve works. When plugged into the base, the pressure from the air pump opens the valve to let the air out, and the air keeps the water from leaking down the tube. Remove the tank, and thus the air pressure, and the valve seals. Those are fairly simple engineering challenges to overcome. The ability of the cooler is more of a concern. In computer systems, peltiers are often water-cooled, because they put off a ton of heat in order to generate their frosty side. Another thought regarding open bags: I would engineer the lid to serve as a clamp for bags, especially open ones (or at least build clamps into the top of the tank). There is too much room for user error with just dropping open bags into the tank, and one messy tank is going to be enough to turn off some skeptical customers. Another cool idea would be to integrate the bag clamps into the lid, so the bags can be lowered in and taken out with the lid. This would be nice for anything over 60C, which is about where my hands start hurting trying to fish bags out of the bath. It would also minimize the risk of open or poorly sealed bags leaking into the bath

The open end is not submerged. He's saying the narrow width of the chamber will keep the open end of the bag, which is kept above the water line, from drooping into the bath. At least that's how I interpret it. I drape the open ends of bags over the edge of my water bath and use the lid to keep them in place. It's the same idea, but sometimes the bag slips in and it is a mess. The water container detaches from the base, as far as I can tell.

Lol, what a bunch of haters. Have we all been so enamored by the Anova that we can't see an awesome idea when it arrives? Here are my thoughts, as a sous-vide-at-home addict of 4-5 years: Price: Always the biggest factor when getting people to buy something completely foreign to them. What I like about this is that you don't have the usual caveat of "You'll also need to buy a vacuum sealer." More on that next, but whatever people pay needs to get them everything they need to cook sous vide. Ease: No vacuum bags is great. Not having to learn the displacement trick for ziplocs is even better. I'd be interested is seeing exactly how open bags are used in Mellow. It needs to be fool-proof; one spilled bag of food and a new sous vide-r will be turned off the method. Size: Too small - Not enough room for large roasts, lamb legs, etc. Too big - No place to put it. The integrated bath takes up a lot of room when not in use. I like that you're taking an aesthetic approach, that should help. Maybe advertising that Mellow doesn't need to be on the counter could help. Kinda in the same way people (who are lucky enough to have them) keep their centrifuges in the basement, rather than the kitchen. This and price will probably be the biggest challenges. I love the cold to hot idea. I've played around with filling the water bath with ice and water and plugging the unit into a timer (the type people use to turn the lamps on and off when on vacation), since the biggest downside to sous vide is long cooking times. I think you may have the best solution to this problem so far, but the interface will have to be very intuitive. Of course there are real concerns about food safety (as everyone here has jumped at), but your concept won't have that problem. If of course the 10 minutes from cold to cooking temp claim needs changing, the dynamic can change, however, I've noticed many home cooks here exhibit restaurant-level concern about food safety. Fine if you have food sensitivities, but overkill (in my opinion) for the average home considerations. That said, I have a hard time with the 10 minute claim. It seems a bit optimistic. Of course, my (home built) bath uses a 1500 watt heater on 5-8 gallon bath (depending how full it is). The bath is extremely well insulated, and it still takes 30+ minutes to go from ~10C to 70C. I also cant remember how big the bath on Mellow is, so maybe my math converts to the 10 minute claim. Controlling it from a smart phone... YES! Even if there was no cold-to-hot capability on Mellow, the ability to turn the bath on from work and have it ready to drop food in when I got home would be great. Its the more elegant solution to filling the bath with ice and using an old outlet timer. Do me a favor though, don't ruin this with a subscription service. Connecting directly to devices on a home network is far from straight forward. Many companies end up using a centralized server the user sends commands to and to which the device connects in order to receive the commands. Of course there are costs with this, but charging customers a monthly fee is a huge turn-off. I'm stoked. Please keep us up to date on your progress in this thread. There are lots of sous vide pros here who can give great feedback, but more importantly, many have spouses who can serve as test subjects for the new-to-sous-vide crowd.

You can always go with insulation. I didn't use a cooler, but you can see how I insulated it here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.690227346953.2114079.25200349&type=1&l=9c405694dd I wanted to be able to remove it if I decided to make modifications. My first sous vide bath was very... haphazard, and when things broke, it pretty much ruined the whole thing. It not matter at all for you though, since the Anova contains all the parts and the cooler is just a simple tub. I use the same pump. I think it was originally meant for solar energy setups. It's a champ, and very quiet which I like. It doesn't move as much water as the Anova (and other retail circulators) seems to, but I've tested the water movement in the tub and heat distribution and I couldn't find any dead spots.

I just did their souffle recipe, and it was fantastic. The green eggs and ham was tasty too.

I suppose it depends on the cooler. I was doing this back in 2010 and didn't know eGullet existed, so I didnt have many people to get info from. The few I knew said they had problems with the plastic softening. You also couldn't buy an immersion circulator for less than $700 (if I remember correctly), so I was building my own unit with everything integrated. Plastic was harder to work with for me than metal. Take pics of the build!!

I do a fair bit of high temp sous vide cooking, so a cooler was not a viable option, and I ended up using a stainless steel tub. I have a facebook album for anyone interested in seeing the build. I used fiberglass insulation instead of expanding foam. I liked having the ability to remove or replace it if I wanted to change something. The foam wouldn't allow for that. You may find the insulation to be overkill. My build retains heat so well the PID controller actually has a hard time with overshooting on the initial warm up. I suppose it saves money in the long term, but a 3-day set of ribs only uses about 3-4 KWh, including warm up. I'd consider how you want the lid to open and close, and how that will effect the circulator. The lid will have a ton of condensation on it (the bottom side), so every time you open it, expect that to run somewhere. Not normally a big deal, but it has led to a few painful spills.

I have a couple thoughts... To answer your question, I just use a neutral oil (peanut mostly) when the goal is conduction. I don't use it for much, things like hamburger patties that have a very coarse surface. I've found that most whole proteins put out enough juice fairly quickly to surround themselves and push the air bubbles to the top of the bag. Couple that with the "fact" that small bubbles don't have a huge effect on <12 hour cooking times, I only add liquid to the bag (for conduction purposes) with chicken, because I find that chicken breasts get a weird "chicken-y" smell and taste if they don't have anything at all in the bag.

I think the real issue is this: The paper is comparing sous vide to sous vide. Almost any increase in time will result in a decrease in retained liquid when temp is held constant. So if retaining moisture is the only concern, than less time is better. The question isn't whether one can attain maximum tenderness and maximum juiciness at the same time (the answer is no, as one requires less time, and one required more time), but does sous vide allow for retaining more moisture at a given tenderness than other cooking methods. I don't know of anyone familiar with the technique who would argue this claim. Reading the article, I got this impression: Sous vide cook: "Sous vide is amazing because it lets to cook fork tender meat while retaining all the juices you would normally lose at higher temps!" Scientist: "That's not accurate. Maximum moisture and maximum tenderness are mutually exclusive" --> Data follows What the cook meant was that sous vide allows for much more retained moisture when compared to traditional high-heat methods. Max moisture = Raw Max tenderness = Cremated We live in the middle somewhere.

Do the polyscience units condone circulating liquids other than water, or do people simply do it? I'd imagine it would open up the company to a lot of returns for people scorching butter on to the heater coils.

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/green-eggs-and-ham I made the recipe from the above link. I omitted the fried ham strands, mostly because I had done it before with beef and it is very time consuming. I used a chicken egg instead of a duck egg (didn't have any in the fridge at the time), and took the additional step to poach the egg after sous vide per serious eats, I like the somewhat firmer white while retaining the perfectly gooey yolk. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/10/sous-vide-soft-poached-eggs.html The dish is obviously made for visual stimulation, and it delivers. What surprised me most was the taste of pea puree with eggs. Delicious! I used the leftover puree a few days later. Scrambled eggs a la Gordon Ramsey on toast with hot sauce, then a coating of pea puree over the eggs. I thought the puree would make the whole dish taste like peas, but it actually loses its potency with other foods, or at least with eggs and ham in this case. I liked it so much, I'm going to have to play around with the puree and see what other foods it goes well with. Having the rather unique turtle-ninja-ooze appearance is just a bonus.

How fragile is the Anova? I don't think it's a bad idea at all, however I don't know that I'd spend 25% of the Avona cost on a case. But then, in most scenarios I can imagine taking it somewhere, I'd just throw it on the passenger seat.

I made the hamburger patty today after getting my meat grinder delivered. Just the patty, and I didn't follow the recipe closely, but some observations, from most to least noticeable. - Using meats like short rib and chuck (the two I used today) produce a burger with so much more taste than what you normally get in store bought ground beef, it's almost a different food entirely. In fact, eating the test run without bread, cheese, veggies, ketchup or mustard was easier than I thought, The patty had enough flavor to be a course on its own, but had enough flavor to avoid getting lost when I dumped jalepenos, cheese, and A-1 sauce on it. - Deep frying meat for the maillard effect is amazing. I already knew this from trying it with steaks, but the much rougher surface of a ground patty provides for a more stunning visual effect. Cutting into the burger and seeing the deep red medium rare contrast with the crusty brown of the outside is unexpected for a quick homemade first attempt. - Getting the myosin out with salt is a very cool trick, and it allows for a much "looser" burger without having the patty fall apart. - A-1 sauce is a damn good burger topping. I'm excited to try different combinations of meat. I'm guessing the meat loaf is going to be pretty tasty too. Definitely alleviated any doubts I had about getting the grinder in the first place.

Seconded. I've been evangelizing for sous vide for years, but now that there is a cheap and simple option (even 5 years ago when I built my first circulating bath, the choices were between spending over a grand or having an engineering degree), people I know are actually willing to try. A few years ago I was telling people this could be the future of cooking. Don't know if I was right, but the Anova, Nomiku (sp?), and Sansaire represent the first big transition, and price is a huge part of that.

I used to get very bent out of shape over air pockets in the bags for sous vide. It was my primary motivation for getting a chamber sealer, though I found many good uses for it after the purchase. It turns out little air pockets just don't have a huge effect on sous vide. Sure, you don't want half of the protein in a giant air pocket within the bag, but some bubbles here and there aren't going to make much of a difference, especially for the really long cooking times. Remember, even though it does so poorly, air still conducts heat. I use ziploc bags more now than I did before I had a chamber sealer. It's easier, and I don't have to worry about compression for things like chicken or fish. I usually try to keep the zipper portion of the bag out of the water (in case it fails), so any left over bubbles from the displacement method float up to the zipper portion, leaving the food completely submerged. YMMV Seth

All the vibration? Trash gauges? What unit are you referencing? My Ary unit does not vibrate to the degree that there is any bounce in the needle. The vacuum observed is also consistent with the vacuum required to compress fruit and "boil" like crazy warm food or liquids. VP112. Like I said, this was a couple years back, so they may have switched to a better gauge. This was from the service tech, who was helping me troubleshoot a broken unit.

FYI. The bar is vacuum operated. I spoke with a tech about it a couple years back. Also, the gauges are trash, and get even worse with all the vibration. That was back in 2012, so maybe they use better gauges now.