Is Sous Vide "Real Cooking"?

[Silly Disciple]

SO.....I would like one of these would be Mcgyvers to prove to me that I am a dumbass and i could have spent much less money.

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You don't need McGyver; I bought my two circulators (one is a Lauda, the other is some German brand) on eBay at about 150 each + shipping. They both work magnificently.

You can get a Tillia for about that price as well, so these days you can have a somewhat decent home cook setup for less than 400 bucks, or about the price of a mid-quality home oven.

[jsolomon]

Mty offer still stands.

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So does my question. If I come in under $80 (your suggestion), what do I get?

[slkinsey]

Vadouvan, here's the reason I think your requirements are too high: The part of this discussion that led to your proposal was talking about whether it might be possible to mass produce a sous vide bath so that this kind of cooking could be affordable in the typical home kitchen. A mass-produced, low-priced setup for the home cook simply would not require accuracy to one-tenth of a degree C. It's not reasonable to expect a restaurant-quality sous vide setup for a consumer bargain price (much the same way that a restaurant stove costs around 20 times more than a low end residential stove).

[pounce]

2. Temperature must be measured in increments of tenths of 1 degree.

Like everyone else, if this item is dropped with item 4 being the most important I'll take the challenge. I don't think 2 is that important.

[jsolomon]

4 is completely bogus.

If I drop something that is 4 kg at 35F into 8 kg of water at 122 F, I'm going to get a significant temperature drop. That's just thermodynamics.

Now, recovery is based on several things, not the least of which is the sheer wattage of your device. But, then you get into response studies, specifying your sampling intervals, and all of that.

2 is really not a problem.

However, requesting a reasonable recovery time is not out of the realm of possibility. Asking for a 2 minute recovery time WITH a 2 degree temperature range is adding several hundred dollars of cooling capacity to a $80 challenge, which is either an overzealousness (cheap, fast, reliable-> pick 2) or an oversight.

But, I'm not going to crank out something for a challenge that is just based on someone's bluster on a board. If there is a challenge, we need an award.

[pounce]

hmm. I took 4 as just being able to hold the temp. In general I don't think it's hard to set a temp like 55.8 and hold it within 2 degrees for 3 hours. Of course you will need to be off by more than 2 degrees when ramping up the temp.

I believe the poster set the award at $500.

Tell you what. I will personally hand over $500 to anyone who can produce such a device.

I also do not see where he limited it to one award Looks like he's accepting all submissions. LOL.

Edited January 17, 2006 by pounce (log)

[philadining]

I think slkinsey hit it on the head. We're talking about two different things: whether it's possible to make something viable for a low cost, and whether that thing would be good enough. And I'm afraid we won't ever answer that, "good enough" is such a subjective, judgment call. The analogy has already been offered, that restaurant stoves cost well more than typical consumer units. That doesn't mean you can't sautée on them both, but it doesn't make them equivalent either.

I run into this in the audio world, where people think I'm an idiot for spending thousands of dollars on a microphone, when you can get a perfectly decent one at the Radio Shack for $25. Sure, they both get sound down the wire, and maybe some folks can't tell the difference, but I can... And I NEED that control. maybe not all the time, but sometimes.

I suspect that both things are true, that it's possible to build a pretty decent sous vide set-up for not too much money that would probably be "good enough" for most circumstances. And at the same time, that device would likely not satisfy Vadouvan, and for good reason.

[jsolomon]

I believe the poster set the award at $500.

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Wow, I totally missed seeing that.

Hmm... I must need to get my eyes checked. Now, if I could only see the phone...

Edited January 17, 2006 by jsolomon (log)

[Vadouvan]

Cant modify the rules.....

Wanna go to the superbowl ?

gotta make the playoffs.

Thats the deal.

All that is achievable by just about any circulating bath you buy as long as the product isnt frozen when you put it in.

The kind of microprocessor and heating pump that would make it possible isnt in that price range.

I am assuming the answer is we cant do it ?

[slkinsey]

Vadouvan, may we assume that your #4 above means after the water bath has rebounded back to the set temperature following the addition of the food? Because, unless you assume a very large amount of water and a very small amount of food, there is no way the water bath won't dip more than two degrees when a substantial food item is added. This is simple thermodynamics, and is borne out in my own experiences with an expensive laboratory circulating water bath heater.

[pounce]

The kind of microprocessor and heating pump that would make it possible isnt in that price range.

I am assuming the answer is we cant do it ?

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It can be done. You can get a 'controller', heater, insulated vessel and method of circulation under $80. This follow up statement about UL approval cannot be done.

I think we should split this challenge off the thread. I think it's a great idea to build something cheap that can be open sourced to the users. For 99% of sous vide cooking you don't need lab quality equipment.

Edited January 17, 2006 by pounce (log)

[MarketStEl]

Correct SLkinsey...

Not to get off topic...

I'm sorry but smoked meat from applewood, alder, cherry or mesquite tastes nothing like liquid smoke. We should be resistant to diminishing food to completely artificial ingredients.

Most people after tasting the real thing can taste the difference. This is why good fod cost money.

It always interesting to see the faces of people who have eaten in lame japanese restaurants all the time and had things as simple as miso soups made with, Hondashi,Dashi no moto or shiro dashi.

Its quite a revelation when actual Kombu and Bonito is used to make the dashi.

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I hope that when it came to barbecue, you weren't implying that I couldn't tell the difference between the genuine article and the quick-and-dirty imitation.

But I would note that the price of admission for producing decent barbecue is a charcoal grill with a lid, nothing more. As long as you can arrange it so that the meat is not directly over the coals, you can produce very good barbecue with a Weber kettle or something similar. You can do more, and better, with one of those fancy New Braunfels smokers, but it's not absolutely necessary to have one in order to do barbecue.

Similarly, there may not be as good a food processor as those $250-plus Cuisinarts, but you can get a serviceable one for under $100.

I may have chosen the wrong appliances as my analogy for sous vide, but I refuse to believe that you must shell out hundreds of dollars just to be able to cook in this fashion. (How much do those Japanese vacuum cookers cost in US dollars?)

[cdh]

Isn't the real important thing about sous vide cooking the property that the cooking medium never gets above a certain temperature? Keeping an exact temperature is much less important than maintaining a hard maximum, right. Given the intent of many to keep the dish in the cooking medium for a length of time, rather than quickly cook it to temperature, a device that keeps a hard maximum and allows cycling in the temp space below that should produce identical results to a device that keeps the temp exact within a tenth of a degree, no?

[BryanZ]

a device that keeps a hard maximum and allows cycling in the temp space below that should produce identical results to a device that keeps the temp exact within a tenth of a degree, no?

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I'm not sure this is the case. For super long cooks, perhaps, since a couple hours at 52C isn't likely to make that much of a difference in the context of 28 more hours at around 55C. For fish and other shorter cooking items, however, certain reactions may not take place if the protein only reaches the target temperature for say a few minutes out of a 20 minute cooking process.

In my experience, only a couple degrees makes a huge difference in fish, on both the + and - sides. To mess with that wouldn't product very accurate results.

[Shalmanese]

This thread keeps getting Hilarious....

A circulating bath for $20 to $40 ????

Tell you what. I will personally hand over $500 to anyone who can produce such a device.

Requirements.

1. Water must circulate.

2. Temperature must be measured in increments of tenths of 1 degree.

3.Bath must be insulated

4. After insertion of product, must be able to maintain the exact temperature of  55.8 degrees for

    3 hrs wthout variation of more than 2 degrees at any time.

5. Itemized and verifiable source material cost.

6. For purposes of fairness, I will double your cost lattitude to $80.

let me know when you are done.

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1. Why does the water have to circulate? It seems like your making the solution to a problem into a problem of it's own right. As long as constant temp can be maintained throughout the entire medium, it doesn't matter how this is achieved. In any case, we could create a simple circulator by using a cheap wire mesh screen (10c), some sort of stepper motor ($5) and a fan made of scrap metal (0c) and some silicone glue to waterproof it (10c). However, it seems to me that a circulator is going to introduce more problems that it solves.

2. I admit this is going to eat up the bulk of our cost. 0.1C probes are not widespread and are very expensive. The cheapest probe from Thermoworks is $66 which eats up the bulk of our cost. However, if you relax the requirement to a 0.2C Probe, then the costs drops significantly to only $12. You'll need to waterproof it though so thats another 50c.

3. Sure, we get a broken electric deep fryer from the dump ($0). It's well insulated, has a lid with a convenient slot for wires.

4. Get 1 100W Light bulb (20c), 1 spare light socket (0c) and an ungodly amount of silicone glue (50c), attach a 240/110V voltage regulator on the end ($1) and hook it up to a spare PC ($0). 2 degrees temp latitude is trivial and it really defeats the purpose of having a 0.1C thermocouple. The thermodynamic response of water is predictable so you can make predictive rather than just reactive changes. Just FYI, here is how I would do it for maximum reliability. You insert the food in and set the temp at 55.8 and it goes into it's heating phase. During this, it sets the target temp to 52C and is mainly concerned with bringing the food from room temp to 52C. Once it has detected that this occurs, it moves to the maintaining phase where it treats the food an water and water as one homogenous thermodynamic mass and uses a simple physics model with feedback to keep it at temp. Because it's a predictive rather than reactive model (like presumably every other circulating water bath), it should be able to keep within 0.2C with even a relatively crude heating device.

5. Costs:

1 broken deep fryer - $0

1 0.2C thermocouple - $12

1 10cm heatshrink cover for waterproofing - 10c

1 100W lightbulb - 20c

1 spare light socket - 0c

1 voltage regulator - $1

1 spare 486 computer - $0

lots and lots of silicone glue - $1

Total costs: $14.30

With Circulator:

1 stepper motor - $5

1 wire mesh screen - 10c

1 fan made of scavenged metal - 0c

Total cost: $19.40

With 0.1C Accuracy:

1 0.1C thermocouple - $66

-1 0.2C thermocouple - -$12

-1 10cm heatshrink cover for waterproofing - -10c

Total Cost: $73.30

[Shalmanese]

a device that keeps a hard maximum and allows cycling in the temp space below that should produce identical results to a device that keeps the temp exact within a tenth of a degree, no?

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I'm not sure this is the case. For super long cooks, perhaps, since a couple hours at 52C isn't likely to make that much of a difference in the context of 28 more hours at around 55C. For fish and other shorter cooking items, however, certain reactions may not take place if the protein only reaches the target temperature for say a few minutes out of a 20 minute cooking process.

In my experience, only a couple degrees makes a huge difference in fish, on both the + and - sides. To mess with that wouldn't product very accurate results.

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Yes, but theres nothing wrong with leaving a 20 minute fish dish in sous vide for 3 hours is there? With your more inaccurate devices, your just going to have to cook it slightly longer, thats all.

[Shalmanese]

No way on relaxing the requirements.

See the theory is ...I just dropped a little over a grand on a Techne water bath a few moons ago and it works brilliantly.

Temp can be adjusted in increments of 0.1 degrees.

I can leave it on for 4 days without any evaporation because they were brilliant enough to make sure the lid condenses the rising steam back into the bath.

SO.....I would like one of these would be Mcgyvers to prove to me that I am a dumbass and i could have spent much less money.

Here is an additional restriction.

7. keep a record of all the time involved in this production much like an attorney's billable hours and multiply by minimum wage and add it to the cost.

Thanks.

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Your Techne is a scientific waterbath. What that means is:

1. If it somehow screws up in a scientific setting, you could have lost $100,000 worth of experimental equipment

2. If it gives you the WRONG result in a medical setting, you might be facing several million dollars worth of lawsuits

3. The purchasers are generally buying it with someone elses money

4. Lots of that money is going to schmoozing potential large clients who might want to buy hundreds at a time

5. The RRP, per unit cost is likely to be significantly higher than if you were to buy 1000

6. It needs to withstand abuse in a lab setting.

All of these cost money and are not neccesary within a home sous vide set up. If you want an analogy, look at the computer water-cooling community. About 7 years ago, they were largely in the position that sous vide is in now and a decent setup might cost $1500 and not work very well. Today, you can buy COTS systems for aroun $300 that are backed by warranties and work very well and prices are still falling. Apple apparently built a prototype system that would cost less than $100 mass produced but never released it.

[docsconz]

a device that keeps a hard maximum and allows cycling in the temp space below that should produce identical results to a device that keeps the temp exact within a tenth of a degree, no?

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I'm not sure this is the case. For super long cooks, perhaps, since a couple hours at 52C isn't likely to make that much of a difference in the context of 28 more hours at around 55C. For fish and other shorter cooking items, however, certain reactions may not take place if the protein only reaches the target temperature for say a few minutes out of a 20 minute cooking process.

In my experience, only a couple degrees makes a huge difference in fish, on both the + and - sides. To mess with that wouldn't product very accurate results.

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Yes, but theres nothing wrong with leaving a 20 minute fish dish in sous vide for 3 hours is there? With your more inaccurate devices, your just going to have to cook it slightly longer, thats all.

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Actually, there may be. At the temperatures used for fish, if left for an extended time, contaminant bacteria are likely to have a field day and the potential for food poisoning is likely to increase significantly.

[BryanZ]

And Docsconz beats me to the punch yet again. This is becoming a trend.

But yes, what he says seems to be accurate according to my research. Since 113F/45C is a rather low temperature, over long periods of time--a few hours--there is a greater chance for the growth of harmful bacteria. With that said, if you cooked a piece of fish at that temp for 3 hours would you get sick, probably not, but that long of a cook time isn't necessary. An hour should certainly suffice for a decent-sized piece of fish without completely changing the texture (in a bad way).

[docsconz]

And Docsconz beats me to the punch yet again.  This is becoming a trend.

But yes, what he says seems to be accurate according to my research.  Since 113F/45C is a rather low temperature, over long periods of time--a few hours--there is a greater chance for the growth of harmful bacteria.  With that said, if you cooked a piece of fish at that temp for 3 hours would you get sick, probably not, but that long of a cook time isn't necessary.  An hour should certainly suffice for a decent-sized piece of fish without completely changing the texture (in a bad way).

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But Bryan, you've beaten me to the punch by actually cooking sous vide

[coquus]

What about on demand hot water heaters? I think that principle would work very smartly for recovery. Talking about making that 1000 dollar cooker really work like it's supposed to.

Man, screw that, I'm still against it, but I do like gadgets, oh me. I maybe a bit hypocritical in this because I haven't had the perfected product, but it still doesn't require any real cooking skills. Maybe this is good for the Head Chef's conscience when he knocks off early for the weekend, but I don't think the guy who has to vacuum pack all those single servings of fish thinks sous vide is worth all the trouble. Cut, cut, seal, pack, seal, repeat ad infinitum, all for a the god damned chance to work as a Sous Sous-Vide Chef. And this, I presume, is the future you see so clearly, I'm sorry, it isn't so very fantastic.

[jsolomon]

There is a reason that laboratory water baths are made with 25 pounds (or more!) of slate as the actual basin material. There is a lot of mass there, which translates to a lower temperature deviation when you stick in your what-have-you to come to the bath temperature.

This being so, when I put 1 L of agar in our 45C water bath straight from the autoclave, I can still see a 6 C deviation.

Edited January 19, 2006 by jsolomon (log)

[ChefCrash]

I made a device like this 16 years ago for brewing beer. This is a smaller, simpler version suitable for sous vide cooking.

110V, 1500watt heating element, 7" long.

The pieces of the manifold are attached by soldering pieces of 1" pipe between them.

The heater manifold as well as electronics and pump, should fit in a project box the size of a shoe box. Water leaves the cooler through the spigot to a small pump and to the heater manifold and back in to the cooler through a hole in the cover.

With little modification this circuit will control the heating element. I will modify and post if anyone is interested. I also have schematics for a PID which I used in my original project. However, it calls for a chip that is no longer carried by digi key (CA3059).

Three steps to making the thermistor.

Anyone have any ideas for a small pump? Say a garden pump or something used in fishtanks?

[pounce]

Cool. I was thinking much the same lines. Same element for heat. Though I thought I would just have the element in the tank instead of inline. I was going to use a fish tank pump for the recirculation, but I was going to have one that just hung over the side without plumbing. I guess you could have some plumbing. To help regulate the temperature to a tighter degree I thought to have a closed loop cold water line coiled through the tank. This way the heater is working against something lowering the temp slightly. For control I was going to hack a digital kitchen thermometer. You can get ones that have an alarm when they reach a certain temp. I small hack to the little speaker would allow me to shut off the heat. This gave me a digital display as well.

I think the larger the tank the better for temp regulation. I was looking at ice chests at walmart. Pretty cheap.

Edited January 22, 2006 by pounce (log)

[slbunge]

With little modification this circuit will control the heating element. I will modify  and post if anyone is interested. I also have schematics for a PID which I used in my original project. However, it calls for a chip that is no longer carried by digi key (CA3059).

Three steps to making the thermistor.

Anyone have any ideas for a small pump? Say a garden pump or something used in fishtanks?

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As a control engineer and sometimes beer-maker, you have become my hero.

A PID controller should be able to be had for a reasonable amount of money through industrial salvage sorts of places. I can dig if anyone is interested.

One interesting thing I have been thinking about is that becaue there is no contract between water and the circulating medium, pretty much any old pump will do. No need to look for stainless wetted parts. As an example, a pump for an outdoor fountain would probably work very well, as long as the parts can take the heat you are trying to achieve.

Good show.