Polyscience Sous Vide Toolbox (formerly known as SousVide Dash)

[ElsieD]

Does anyone know anything about this? It looks like an interesting app but the Apple store does not seem to have any info on who created it. Neither are there any reviews. I'm a new sous vide user who needs all the help she can get and am wondering if this app would be helpful.

Thank you!

Edited April 15, 2016 by Smithy
Adjusted title to reflect new app name (log)

[rotuts]

go to the SV thread

start at the beginning

you will love it.

[nickrey]

The author is a forum regular called Vengroff. He is most obliging and always seeks input from eGullet members on how to improve this app.

[vengroff]

Does anyone know anything about this? It looks like an interesting app but the Apple store does not seem to have any info on who created it. Neither are there any reviews. I'm a new sous vide user who needs all the help she can get and am wondering if this app would be helpful.

Thank you!

I created it for my own use, and recently released it in the app store. Needless to say I'm a little biased, but the app works well for me.

It looks like there are not enough Canadian ratings for Apple to publish them yet, but you can see the US ratings and reviews at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sousvide-dash/id476999798?mt=8. As of this writing, the current version (2.0) has three five star reviews and five five star ratings and nothing at all giving it four stars or less. I'm quite proud of that feedback, but still working on adding features and improvements for upcoming releases.

You can get more details and see a video quick start guide at www.sousvidedash.com.

[Paul Bacino]

Android app soon? Vengroff

[ElsieD]

Vengroff, I just purchased the app. It looks like it will be really useful. I have also watched the videos. I do have one question - can I change it from Celsius to farhenite and mm to inches? I'm in Canada which does use the metric system but being a person " of a certain age" I am more comfortable with farhenite and inches. No big deal, as I can use metric, but I'm just wondering................

[vengroff]

Vengroff, I just purchased the app. It looks like it will be really useful. I have also watched the videos. I do have one question - can I change it from Celsius to farhenite and mm to inches? I'm in Canada which does use the metric system but being a person " of a certain age" I am more comfortable with farhenite and inches. No big deal, as I can use metric, but I'm just wondering................

Thanks, Elsie.

Yes, you can change the units. Quit the app entirely, then go to settings on the home screen (the gear icon). There is a section for app settings. Scroll down to SousVide Dash and you will find options for C/F and mm/in. Choose the units you want, then restart SousVide Dash. If SousVide Dash is in the background when you change settings, instead of completely closed, then you may not see the change take effect immediately. Change the food settings to force it and you should be good.

[vengroff]

Android app soon? Vengroff

Specing it out for 2012. No firm commitment on dates yet, but definitely in the exploratory phase.

[jmolinari]

weird...i reviewed the app...i like it. Specially with teh latest additions.

now, if only Vengroff could figure out how to use the iphone speaker and microphone to measure the thickness of my sous vide packet and populate the fields automatically...

[gfweb]

Must have android app.

[mgaretz]

weird...i reviewed the app...i like it. Specially with teh latest additions.

now, if only Vengroff could figure out how to use the iphone speaker and microphone to measure the thickness of my sous vide packet and populate the fields automatically...

Or maybe the camera?

[vengroff]

weird...i reviewed the app...i like it. Specially with teh latest additions.

now, if only Vengroff could figure out how to use the iphone speaker and microphone to measure the thickness of my sous vide packet and populate the fields automatically...

Or maybe the camera?

I'm decidedly old-school low-tech when it comes to measurement: http://www.sousvidedash.com/2011/12/measuring-sous-vide-food-thickness-with-plastic-calipers/

[vengroff]

A new version of the app just hit the US app store. It should be available around the world within 24 hours. From the release notes:

This version (2.1) of SousVide Dash is the first that runs on iOS 5 only. Transitioning to iOS 5 enables us to take advantage of some unique new features in upcoming versions of the app. It also increases the reliability of our testing processes.

Most of the users we surveyed told us they are now on iOS 5. We decided to do this transitional release to give the rest of you some time to upgrade.

New features include:

- More equipment supported.

- Twitter integration. Tweet what you are cooking to your followers.

There will be some big additions in the next release, such as support for computing ice bath cooling times, so please take this opportunity to upgrade to iOS 5 so you are ready for the next release.

[ElsieD]

It's already available in Canada and I just downloaded it. Thank you.

[vengroff]

I'm really excited about the new version 3.0 look that we are testing now.

As shown below, there are three big changes:

1. An option to add additional cooking time for tenderness. This is tacked on after the food reaches temperature.

2. An option to cool the food in an ice bath after cooking. This is enabled, and you can see the effect in the graph where the temperature drops when it hits the ice bath.

3. A new display with a summary of key events followed by a detailed time line of every potentially interesting event in the cooking process. This is scrollable so you can see everything that is going to happen. Pathogen details are at the bottom below it (not shown here).

It's going to be a few more weeks before this hits the app store, but I wanted to see if there is any early feedback. I really like this new layout, and am eager to hear if you do as well.

[mgaretz]

It's looking great! Now all it needs is the ability to save/print/email the "recipe" so you can remember what you did!

[Genkinaonna]

My son is quite excited about version 3.0! I am too...lol...

[vengroff]

It's looking great! Now all it needs is the ability to save/print/email the "recipe" so you can remember what you did!

Can you say 3.1?

[vengroff]

My son is quite excited about version 3.0! I am too...lol...

Love it. Never too young to get started.

[ElsieD]

This looks fabulous. I agree that the print feature would be nice. Great work.

[mgaretz]

Vengroff,

It would be nice to have the option to start the food temperature at freezer temps in addition to refrigerator temps.

[ElsieD]

As a newcomer to sous vide cooking, I am still on a steep learning curve. However, this app has really helped me. I don't know if this is feasible but in addition to starting food from frozen, it would be nice to know how long to re-heat food. For example, I have beef braising ribs which have been cooked sous vide in the freezer and I have no clue as to how to go about re-heating them. I had cooked sous vide pork chops back when I first got my immersion circulator and then had to guess at how long to put them back into a water bath from a fridge temp to re-heat. The chops were not as good as when I seared them immediately after removing from the hot water bath. Like I said, this might not be feasible and maybe there already are instructions for this somewhere and I haven't found them yet.

[mgaretz]

As a newcomer to sous vide cooking, I am still on a steep learning curve. However, this app has really helped me. I don't know if this is feasible but in addition to starting food from frozen, it would be nice to know how long to re-heat food. For example, I have beef braising ribs which have been cooked sous vide in the freezer and I have no clue as to how to go about re-heating them. I had cooked sous vide pork chops back when I first got my immersion circulator and then had to guess at how long to put them back into a water bath from a fridge temp to re-heat. The chops were not as good as when I seared them immediately after removing from the hot water bath. Like I said, this might not be feasible and maybe there already are instructions for this somewhere and I haven't found them yet.

In general, it just needs to be in the bath long enough to come to core (serving) temperature, that is assuming it was first cooked sous vide to the desired degreee of doneness and for whatever pasteurization you wanted, then quick chilled without opening. If you had opened the pouch then resealed, you may want to re-pasteurize as well.

[vengroff]

It would be nice to have the option to start the food temperature at freezer temps in addition to refrigerator temps.

We are exploring this. The simulation gets a little challenging, so it's going to take some work. I have spoken with Douglas Baldwin and other experts and I now understand the problems, but don't have an accurate solution yet.

The basic problem is that while the food is defrosting in the circulator there are three distinct zones each of which has its own unique physics. The outer zone is fully defrosted and starting to cook like food out of the refrigerator. The middle zone contains a slushy mixture of water and small ice crystals. The innermost zone is still fully frozen. Over time the inner and middle zones shrink and eventually disappear. But keeping track of how the boundaries between these zones move over time adds complexity to the model. In time I'm sure we will figure it all out, but it's going to take a while and we'll need some very extensive testing to validate the models.

As a newcomer to sous vide cooking, I am still on a steep learning curve. However, this app has really helped me. I don't know if this is feasible but in addition to starting food from frozen, it would be nice to know how long to re-heat food.

Thank you. You should be able to calculate reheating times using the time-to-temperature mode. This will compute how long it will take the reheat from refrigerator temperature to your desired serving temperature. Just make sure you cooked to pasteurize to the core the first time and cooled in an ice bath before you put the sealed bag into the refrigerator.

[ElsieD]

So in the case of my braising ribs, they were cooked sous vide for 48 hours at 133F, quickly chilled in an ice bath and then frozen in their vacuum packs. I guess then I would thaw the meat in the fridge, set the water bath to 133F and, using the sous vide app calculate the time to reheat? In this instance, the meat is 11/2 inches thick and the stuff that comes out of my fridge is 34F so that would take 2 hours, 47 minutes and 48 seconds. Reheating the meat this way will not alter the texture but simply bring it back to just-out-of-the-water bath consistency that it was at when I initially cooked it? Am I understanding this correctly? If I am, that sure fills quite a big gap in my knowledge of things sous vide.