Medellitin

Polyscience is one of the most trusted sous vide brands in the professional kitchen, but they generally price themselves out of the range of the home market.   When they released the Sous Vide Professional they managed to bring the price point down to 799.95$, which was still several hundred dollars away from the consumer appliance range. Today, Polyscience is consolidating the brand names of their circulators by renaming the 7306 aka the Sous Vide Thermal Circulator to the Sous Vide Professional - Classic Series.   It also got some minor cosmetic changes to reflect the rebrand. The Sous Vide Professional will henceforth be known as the Sous Vide Professional - Chef Series. But this probably isn't interesting to anyone except for myself.  Cause, as someone who covers the sous vide appliance market, I can tell you this: no one cares about this stuff except for me and like ten other people. The exciting news (to you) is that Polyscience also announced the Sous ...

Is This The Future? I was reading about Shola's post about the possible impending  obsolescence of immersion circulators, when I read: One thing I will confidently say is that the domestic immersion circulator market will be NON-EXISTENT in 48 months or less and IF sous vide cooking makes it into mainstream domestic cooking, it will be in the form of steam/vapor ovens similar to combi technology. Products like sous-vide supreme or sous vide magic are silly novelties at best and the only thing keeping them from zero sales is the lack of an affordable home combi oven. I am not sure if he has the timing right, but I think that when low temperature cooking hits critical mass, there will be a shift away from immersion circulators/water baths and into something more like a combi oven or CVAP.  Here is what I find compelling: Elimination of plastic bags.  They are annoying and not green.  Not being green doesn't really bother me.  But, the consumer market is buyi...

Jean-François, over at sousvidecooking.org,  posted about KitchenAid's first foray into a sous vide solution: Chef's Touch .  As a casual observer of the consumer sous vide market, I am excited to see the one of the largest home appliance manufacturers dip a toe into the space.  So excited, that I scoured their website trying to absorb as much as possible. QUICK RUNDOWN OF THE  KITCHENAID CHEF TOUCH Image of the KitchenAid Chef Touch Their website indicates that the Chef's Touch Solution is comprised of three parts:

In Part I of my guide to replicating the PolyScience Smoking Gun, we discussed the basics of the gun as well as previous DIY attempts.  In this segment, I will walk you through my process for making your own smoke gun with some very simple parts. Even though this guide will produce a working smoke gun, in the end, you will not have a PolyScience Smoking Gun.  You will have something that looks similar to one, but most likely will not be as durable.  Even with some of the improvements I plan to make in the future, it is unlikely that this is as good as a PSG. PolyScience specifically mentions details that makes me believe this device is different under the hood.  I am willing to bet that theirs will survive longer and get better results.  For example, they  mention  a "Heavy-duty metal blower fan".  Cursory examination did not reveal anything resembling sturdy construction.  That being said, you can't beat the price, and if you find ...

Smoke guns are culinary gadgets used to apply smoke to food.  Under the hood, these devices are basically handheld electric vacuums with a pipe attached to the input nozzle.  You turn on the vacuum, apply fire to the pipe, the vacuum pulls the fire into the pipe, setting the woodchips or herbs in the pipe on fire.  The smoke travels through the vacuum and out through the exhaust, and onto your dish.  They are far less cumbersome than stovetop smokers and are great if you just want to give smokiness to any dish.  While  PolyScience sells one of these units for approximately $80, a lot of people made their own version.  Oh lookie, here comes one now: Chadzilla's MINI-VAC Smoker.  Cite: www.chadzilla.com These DIY  models  were based on the  Mini-Vac  vacuum, which you can buy off of  Amazon  for about $17.   This approach is pretty functional, and all said and done probably costs $25-30 to construct, not inclu...

I've been cooking sous vide at home for awhile now. I currently use a Sous Vide Magic 1500  connected to a Black and Decker RC880 Rice cooker. This is the classic PID controller DIY setup and continues to be the cheapest way to cook sous vide. For approximately 150$, you get a device that allows you to regulate the temperature of water in a rice cooker. One of the biggest perceived issues when cooking with a PID controller is heat distribution. Rice cookers heat from the bottom (and potentially unevenly) leaving the water closer to the heating element warmer than water further away. PolyScience recently studied this in their stir or not to stir experiment, which I have already written about. Good news! Almost on cue, the FreshMealsMagic (FMM) is FreshMealsSolutions' answer to those challenges. It is ...  a submersible bubbler/heater. A submersi-bub-bluh-huh-wha-wha?  Chill out! The FMM is a green disc that can be placed inside of any heat-safe container....

I had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to tinker with the SousVide Supreme.  I made a lot of great meals with it, and overall have few complaints.  Before I get to those, lets talk about the good. The Good Stuff Simplicity.   It works.  Out of the box.  You fill it with water, set the temperature and it goes.  No need to do any calibration.  You don't even really need the manual to operate the thing to get great results. Aesthetics.   The SVS looks like a kitchen appliance.  The meth cooker-y stylings of the PID controller do not work for everyone's kitchen.  This can get further complicated if you are trying to control a large rice cooker.  Rack.  The rack is useful for keeping higher temperature, longer cooking time items submerged under water.   The Neutrals Lid.  The lid feels kind of cheap and water collects underneath creating a weird seal.  The plus side of the lid is that wh...

So, there are a lot of distinctions between different approaches to sous vide cooking appliances.  One difference between the immersion circulators and water baths (including classic PID controllers) is the ability to move the water around.  This helps keep the temperature of the water regulated more precisely.  Think of it like a bath.  You fill your bathtub up with hot water, then you get into the tub.  After some time, the water gets cold and you turn on the hot water tap.  The whole bath tub doesn't immediately get warmer, just the water near the heat source.  Usually, I start moving my hand around to equalize the temperature. The fine folks at PolyScience did some testing to see what the actual impact of this was on food being prepared.  Their tests show that as water baths adjust to the introduction of cold product (e.g. refrigerated chicken breasts), they actually will raise the temperature of the water above the target setting.  M...