The practical advantages of it have a lot more to do with timing, prep dynamics, and consistency than they do with final quality.
There are some things that it makes possible or easy that are otherwise nearly inaccessible to home cooks and that is cool if you want to play around with it. Or if I'm cooking 6 steaks for guests or whatever but that's not a problem I've been having recently. But otherwise I don't find too much value in it personally.
My other secret trick is to sous-vide chicken wings, so I don't have to fear about contamination of my tools, people being like "is it cooked enough? It looks pink". After sous-viding, I leave them on a cold side of the barbecue until they turn golden brown: the meat is soft, moist and almost candied. It's fool proof as they'll never really have a chance to burn and they always come up perfect.
The one routine thing I make that the circulator is unimpeachably excellent for is sausage. Bring sausage up to 145-150 or so, and then toaster oven on the broiler setting for like 7 minutes.
Speaking of which it's annoying to reverse sear on a grill because covering it first for 10 or so minutes cools it down enough that the sear is not as nice as when it's done on the higher heat achieved without a cover.
I do like sous vide for very thick steaks with some marbling—so a strip is a pretty decent one for the dip. However, I've found ribeyes come out spongey when you sous vide them and are better off being reverse seared.
Edit: if you're shopping in the supermarket, filets will usually be more expensive. If you're buying prime dry aged from a butcher, it's a different story, mostly because filets aren't usually dry aged. Check Pat's steaks for reference: https://shop.lafrieda.com/collections/dry-aged-beef
But objectively speaking a strip steak is cheaper. Based on my observations of supermarket sale prices, the ranking goes:
fillet > ribeye > strip > others that I don't bother with (sirloin/round)
A filet is almost always more expensive than a strip, in the supermarket, at the butcher, or in the steakhouse.
Even as someone that has a dedicated dry aging unit, I don't know that I would recommend dry aging filet. I don't count the pellicle as waste, since I make use of all of it, but you do have to cut off a decent chunk - it's too tough to eat on the steak itself. The end result is that you just don't have a whole lot of steak left over.
You might see "dry aged" stuff for 2-3 weeks, and there's significantly less pellicle, but it's not nearly the same thing as something that goes for 60+ days.
I have a dedicated dry aging setup that I truss my subprimals up in, and then it recirculates air, including through a UVC light. I've never had any mold form, even on 120+ day dry ages. I haven't gone much higher than 120 days, though - I enjoy 240 day dry ages, but not in large quantities, and I also lack the patience, so you might see more going to that length. But in the 60 to 120 day range, however, I have never had mold form in any quantities large enough for me to notice.
Since it's so tender, I've always felt filet are OK to cook a little more well, and you solve for the flavor with sauce, seasoning, or marinade.
That's the convenience. I don't have to worry about the temperature. I drop it in the bath and I take it out at my convenience.
Nobody's gonna say that a circulator steak is bad. It's the second-best way to cook a steak. :)
I just keep a thermometer in for the entire duration of the bake time. Someone in this thread posted a screenshot of them doing the same thing with some sort of bluetooth thermometer.
I get what you're saying (I've got like 4 different circulators here, I'm not against them!) but the reverse sear is forgiving and flexible enough that I don't really even get a convenience win from it.
(For calibration: my modal steak is a Whole Foods ribeye or strip, unmodified except for being salted ahead of time).
We buy half a beef every six months or so (split with my parents, so I guess it's technically 5/7th's of a half? 5/14th's of a cow?). For a few hours on a weekend doing some prep/portioning, I can dramatically reduce the workload for several week's worth of meals.
Obviously there's other tradeoffs involved and different personal circumstances to consider, but for me the circulator wins out from a convenience perspective.
I own a small Breville oven, and since it’s PID controlled, I set it at a very low temperature like 160 F and then put a separate probe in the meat to pull it at just the right temperature (takes a few hours). I end up with edge to edge evenness and a nice crust as well. It beats the Joule every time I’ve tried it.
I will say that I haven’t found anything that beats sous vide for chicken and duck though.
how long are we talking here? 1 hour? 2 hours?