Sous-vide startup wants to take the tech-industry’s kitchen darling mainstream

I've been listening to Dave Arnold's Cooking Issues podcast a lot recently. He's just announced the Spinzall centrifuge. It is a bargain for what it is, but still too much for the use I'd get out of it. And once you've got a centrifuge, you of course have to get a rotovap, a Vitaprep, and a chamber sealer. Not that you need all this stuff to get good use out of the centrifuge, but just because.

And as I noted in another comment, the "until recently" bit is partly because this article is from 2014.

Ah, shit. I didn't see that. That almost completely moots my complaint.

I use my sous vide machine around 3 times a week (I bought it about a year ago). For most preparations, sous vide is not more convenient than conventional cookery–the long cook times are almost never worth it.

But convenience is not the benefit; with sous vide I can prepare expensive steaks without risk of ruining them (in fact without risk of falling short of perfection). Were I Daniel Boulud, I would not have much need for it, but as a mere mortal, I imagine I will continue to love sous vide.

I bought an ANOVA 18 months ago and two more people have bought one after eating food from mine.

We all use ours several times a week. It turns out so good and so consistent, I basically use it for all beef, chicken, pork, and lamb.

I use my Sansaire once or twice a week. There is no other way to make pork chops.

The nice thing about the Sansaire is that it supports temperature setpoints lower than most other (all other?) units. I use it for long proofs of no knead bread at 21C for around 18h. The dough sits in a one gallon bucket covered with plastic that I set into the water bath in a cool room in my basement. Perfectly proofed dough. Every. Single. Time.

I use mine at least once a week. In fact I won't cook any decent meat cuts any other way if I can help it.

Does the best eggs I've ever had and pretty great lobster too.

Sous Vide bacon is stunning as well: so creamy.

I use mine multiple times a week. YMMV.

I see a lot of people posting about "instant pots" in my facebook feed, and no one talking about sous-vide.

I imagine the industrial grade units are collecting dust due to size/weight. We have a few Julabo immersion circulators at work, and they're not exactly what you'd call conveniently sized.

i bought one too couple of yrs ago. Used it around 2 times, not even sure where it is atm.

Sorry “someday” is not today.

> I wonder if the next step in the progression is pre-packaged or even pre-cooked sous vide meats.

Coles supermarkets in Australia have been selling pre-cooked, pre-sauced sous vide meats for a couple of years now, though they don't say "sous vide" on the packaging but rather "slow cooked for N hours". But the actual product is clearly cooked sous vide – the interior packaging is a vacuum sealed bag and the results are exactly what you'd expect.

> Isn't that how the restaurants do it?

In my experience it's more common in the restaurant world but still not pervasive.

> I also wonder if a low power microwave oven would be an alternative to a hot water bath.

Poorly. An immersion circulator is probably the simplest and ultimately cheapest form of the idea; engineering-wise they're not much more complicated than an electric kettle. It just needs economies of scale to really kick in.

A microwave would also be highly impractical for all but the shortest cooks. Sous vide often takes multiple hours or even multiple days – I do 10 hour pork belly and 72 hour lamb shanks. For the latter I usually set it up in the laundry and switch from a stockpot to an esky (cooler box). Very easy to do with an immersion circulator.

It's called the Thermomix, and it even chills. It's awfully expensive though.

Why would that product be better than the current generation of "sous vide" products, which can clip onto any pot or cambro?

a) You aren't boiling the water, not even close most of the time. Most meats are cooked around 135F - 150F. You might take veggies up to maybe 185F, but I don't think most people SV vegetables anyway.

b) Dave Arnold on his Cooking Issues podcast got the SC Johnson folks to confirm that their ZipLoc bags are safe for this application. In fact, I checked one box of mine and it says "BPA free".

c) FoodSaver bags are safe as well, but I don't have a reference handy.

Sous vide is usually at a lower temperature than boiling. I did some research and felt pretty safe about using ziploc bags with mine for meats up to 160 F. People have done testing on this stuff.

You can be sure that there's some transfer of chemicals between the bag and what's inside of it. It's just a question of how dangerous that stuff is.

It's possible to buy reusable silicone bags instead.