Medellitin

I had been quietly stalking  following Q and Abe from the first time I heard they were working with haxlr8r  to prototype a new sous vide cooker.  Yesterday, to much fanfare , they  kickstarted Nomiku , an immersion circulator targeting home/amateur cooks. They are off to a fantastic start, having already raised 16% of their $200,000 goal.  But less about their successes and more about the product and what I think it means.  As we know, I am of the mindset that the more products out there, the better it is for everyone right now.  At some point there will be consolidation in the sous vide appliance market, but only after it's been proven.  And by proven, I mean, when Salton starts shipping one. But, if you are reading this, you are probably just a sous vide nerd.  So, nerd, eat some hot spec: Heater output: 750 Watts. Circulation rate: 10 L/min. Temperature accuracy: 0.2° C. Display: 1.3" full color OLED. Minimum water heig...

Welcome to the third part of my ongoing review of the SideKIC.  The first piece covered SideKIC esthetics , the second part covered SideKIC usage and now we are going to talk about the initial heat up times, the temperature accuracy and temperature stabilization (what happens when we introduce cold product to the water bath). Initial Heatup  The first thing I wanted to understand was how long it would take for the SideKIC to bring a water bath up to temperature.  I am less interested in being mathematically precise and more interested in what this would be like for someone who was new to sous vide cooking.  I added 6.25 quarts of hot tap water to a stockpot.  This amount happened to be what it took to get the water levels to the correct place on the SideKIC (between the first and second windows). I turned on the device, and set the the temperature to 155ºF.  The SideKIC read the initial water temperature as 129ºF.  To be honest, I don't act...

SideKIC Immersion Circulator Earlier this week, I received a SideKIC  sous vide controller.  This 170$ entry into the sous vide consumer market looks like it is going to offer a lot of value.  The SideKIC is an immersion circulator.  This means that there is a heating element that can be put into a bowl or pot and it will simultaneously heat and then circulate (pump) the water.  Many people consider water circulation critical to maintaining temperature stability. The (sorta) Unbox Unlike most immersion circulators, the SideKIC separates out the heating unit from the controller.   All of the controls of the device are done through a color UI, somewhat resembling an iPod.  There is a scroll wheel (ok, its a dial) used to navigate through the menus.  The dial also acts as a button, and pressing it allows you to make a selection.  As I said, it's like a Sous Vide iPod. Controller/iPhone Comparison Size The SideKIC is also ...

SVS Zip Pouch My posts on SousVide Supreme Chamber Vacuum and on the Combi Oven nicely lead up to the subject of the value of the vacuum, and its role in low temperature cooking.  For most home cooks exploring low temperature cooking, there are two primary reasons why you use vacuum sealed bags: heat transfer and eliminating buoyancy.  Even though sous vide literally means under vacuum, you don't need to vacuum seal to achieve most of the desired affects of low temperature cooking.  The truth is, you can use a ziplock bag, manually remove the air out of the bag, and pretty much achieve both of these goals. FoodSaver Clamp Vacuum 2240 That being said, using a vacuum sealer is considerably more convenient.  Especially if you are cooking products that tend to float or you are going to be using like 50 bags.  Most consumers are familiar with the food saver style vacuum sealer.  The foodsaver is an example of an external clamp vacuum sealer.  T...

The folks at SousVide Supreme just introduced a chamber vacuum to their product lineup.  Given the name of the chamber vac is the  SousVide Supreme VacMaster® VP112 chamber vacuum sealer  , it appears to be a SousVide Supreme branded version of the VacMaster VP112 (possibly the dumbest sentence I have written this month). The price point is $799 (Which is list price for the VP112), but a quick Google Search reveals prices as low as $650 , for the non branded VP112. ps: Will have more to say later. pps: Buyer beware at that 650$ link.  They have good ratings from Google, but I have never heard of them.

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...

Here is the roundup of all the stuff I read that I wish I could write more about but can't cause my life is too busy. Cantu-ing Homaro Cantu (of Moto and Future Food fame) announced his latest project iNG Restaurant .  iNG (Imagining New Gastronomy) will be helmed by Thomas Bowman , who was already cooking for Cantu over at Moto.  iNG will be taking over the existing Otom space, featuring creative, confortable, delicious food and featuring a kitchen table for a Miracle Berry experience where every dish is to be tasted with your taste buds tricked out. For more information, check out Digging In . Gelato, Jellato Linda, over at playing with fire and water came up with an ingenious two ingredient recipe for ice cream. I call it Jellato because it is made from heavy cream and Grape Jelly.   And what do you do with Grape Jelly Ice Cream you ask?  Why you use it to make ice cream sandwiches with peanut butter-miso cookies .  Too.  Clever.  Brain....

When I first started cooking sous-vide, the holy grail was temperature accuracy and stability.  I think this is very important for certain applications such as eggs, and for professionals and sous vide geeks.  However, if you are a general home user, I don't think accuracy and stability to within 1º is of the utmost importance.   That being said, I know this is important for most of the regular readers of this blog.  Unfortunately, I have a job and I don't own a high quality data logger (*), so I am not able to give you a super accurate reading on the temperature of the water bath.  I will tell you that I recently ran a 136ºF short rib from one to three days inside of the SousVide Supreme Demi.  I checked in to see what the readings of the SVS Demi's PID controller, and would see it vary from 135F - 137F.  I confirmed some of these readings with digital thermometer that was rated with +/- 1ºF accuracy. That being said, I want to rerun some tests to ...

Free stuff alert!  Santa or whatever gift bearing icon you don't believe in must have low temperature cookery on the mind this year.  Here are three opportunities to get some free stuff: Thermoworks is  giving away one Thermapen a week.  The Thermapen is an accurate and fast digital thermometer, which is great for verifying the temperature of your water bath and your food.  This sweepstakes does require liking/following them on Facebook and then officially entering via their Facebook page. EAT LLC is also giving away a SousVide Supreme Demi package including an SVS Demi, an SVS Vacuum Sealer (with vacuum bags) and Douglas Baldwin's Sous Vide For The Home Cook .   Jason Logsdon is also offering up a bunch of chapters of his new book for the someone just starting to get into Sous Vide here .   Good luck on the sweepstakes!

Front Panel of the SousVide Supreme Demi Just got this in the mail today.  Will do a full review of the SousVide Supreme Demi . Speaking of things that I got in the mail, I also received an answer to a previously asked question about the Sous Vide Supreme Demi : Also – per the question your posted on your blog, I wanted to get back to you about the size/volume of the Demi. Space-wise it is 80% the volume of the regular SousVide Supreme, but depending on what you’re cooking, actual cooking volume could be as low as 60% capacity. It would be accurate to say that depending upon on the size of food portions being cooked, the SousVide Supreme Demi has a cooking capacity of between 60% and 80% of the SousVide Supreme. The SousVide Supreme holds 20 four- to six-ounce portions of food. While  the SousVide Supreme Demi holds up to 12 four-ounce portions of food; 12/20 = 60%. Check back soon for the part one of the review! Update: Part one of the review is here.

Reading  this  thread on eGullet reminded me about another thread on the Fresh Meals Solutions  support  site.  It isn't surprising, because both threads had awesome posts from one PedroG .  His awesomeness is proven by these two datapoints: 1. SVM Powered Immersion Circulator PedroG wrote: My suggestion for the not so skillful: Buy a SousVide Magic 1500D (160$) plus a mantled  1000W immersion heater  (36$) ... plus an  aquarium air pump  (10$), fix the silicon tubing of the aquarium bubbler and the sensor of the SousVideMagic to the stainless steel guard of the immersion heater, and use it with any pot you have at hand. And here you are for 206$ without any tinkering Basically, turn your SVM into an Immersion Circulator.  The air pump circulates and the immersion heater gets hooked up to the SVM. 2. SVM/FMM In The Hottub Pedro strikes twice  in the same thread.  This time he demonstrates how to use the SVM/FMM to...

Looks like Jean Francois scoops everyone (again) by digging up the pricing on the apparently batshit-crazy high end Kitchenaid Chef Touch System .  His sources state: Vacuum chamber : 2,950  € incl. VAT / ($4099 USD) Shock Freezer : 5,000 € incl. VAT / ($6947.50 USD) Oven : steam ( 1,550 € / $2153.72 USD) combi (1,850 € / $2570.57 USD) incl. VAT Kitchen high cabinet : 2,700 € incl. VAT / ($3751.65 USD) Total = 12,500 € (combi oven) incl. VAT (approx. 17,500 USD) This sounds like madness, but the truth is, most of this pricing isn't too far off the mark... if you are buying restaurant quality equipment.  Combine that with the fact that you get a clean, home kitchen quality aesthetic, and the pricing isn't insane, assuming the quality is there.  I wonder if this will find success in new construction of luxury homes/apartments, because I have a hard time imagining the person who buys this for an existing home.    Previously , I joked before about...

UPDATE: Received a demo unit for review purposes. The review starts here . The folks that brought us the SousVide Supreme released a new smaller, model called the SousVide Supreme Demi .  The Demi appears to be their iPod Mini version of the Sous Vide Supreme.  It's less expensive, comes in a number of colors, and has a smaller footprint. SousVide Supreme Demi So, let's collect some data from the SousVide Supreme website and do some maths:

If you read the Sous Vide article at wikipedia, you will notice an uncited reference to Count Rumford discovering sous vide. Now, there are two banes to my existence, wikipedia and uncited references. Since wikipedia content is religiously stolen, aggregated and republished, Google becomes useless when trying to hunt down the minutia that keeps me going. Fortunately, I managed to hunt down the essay written by Count Rumford. I should I say eſſay. Or ſhould I ſay eſſay? Because, apparently, as late as 1802 we were still using the long s . Which makes reading Count Rumford's ſeminal eſſay, "Of the imperfections of the Kitchen Fire-places now in common uſe" a real delight. You people owe me. This essay, which could be found in 1802's timeless classic Essays, political, economical, and philosophical, Volume 3 not only gives us valuable insight into the culinary happenings of the 1800's, but also gives us one of the earliest documented efforts of low temp...

If you had told someone you were going to cook sous-vide, they would have probably looked at you like you had two faces.  And if they did, by some chance, know what sous vide cooking was, they would have thought you had over a thousand dollars worth of equipment.  Now-a-days, with home appliances like the Sous Vide Magic and the Sous Vide Supreme, people would think that you were cooking with several hundreds of dollars of equipment. The truth is, all you really need to cook utilizing the sous-vide method is the ability to put some plastic-wrapped product into a temperature controlled container of water.  While not the first to do it, Martin Lersch made a sous vide rib-eye just by using a big pot of water, a thermometer and a plastic bag. This is not your only option.  If you don't like the idea of having a constant heat source going (e.g. the burner or you can also take the pot and try and put it in the oven), you can also use J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's beer cooler s...

I think that most fish cooked sous-vide is a little over rated.  There is something about the texture that just doesn't work for me.  There are a couple of notable exceptions:  Swordfish, Monkfish and Skate.  With both Swordfish and Monkfish, you can get thick cuts of dense fish that remain incredibly moist, and you can achieve some amazing textures. Alas, I didn't take any other pictures.  Swordfish (thicker the cut the better), lemon zest, salt and pepper.  This was tossed into a 127F bath.  Lemon zest is an amazing ingredient when used in sous vide cooking.  It results in a very powerful and clear lemony flavor.  After the bath, I seared it in a cast iron pan.  The only warning I have with fish in sous vide, besides the texture/consistency issues, is that it will turn to mush if you let it cook too long.    The great thing about this was I used a minimal amount of fat (just the oil in the pan for searing). ...

As we already know, I cannot get enough of octopus.  I feel bad, because they are very intelligent creatures.  But, if they were so intelligent, wouldn't they find a way to be less delicious?  Or evolve, industrialize and hunt us for food?  I had a whole octopus vacuum sealed in the freezer.  So I defrosted it, splashed in some olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt.  Cranked up the FMM to 176F and tossed it into my water bath. I've talked about cooking octopus sous-vide .  This is one of those sous vide applications that just. makes. sense.  Octopus can be a finicky beast.  Cook it right and it is fucking amazing.  Cook it wrong and you are chewing on cephalopod chewing gum.   The great thing about using the Fresh Meals Magic here is just the shear amount of space available compared to other water baths that I've used.  I also took the liberty to cook some sweet potato in the same bath.   ...

4# Octopus cooking at 176F in an FMM controlled water bath or alien life-form in hibernation chamber? Either way, it's what's for dinner.

As part of a newer, healthier Pablo, I am on the hunt for making a delicious turkey burger.  The biggest challenge with turkey burgers are flavor and lack of moisture.  Or, said another way: the lack of fat that makes a turkey burger healthy, also makes it suck.  As far as flavor goes, I mixed the ground turkey meat, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ramp and garlic powders.  I also figured this would be a good application for sous vide.  You are probably asking why there is a ring mold in the bag.  This was done to maintain the shape of the burger during the vacuum sealing process.  Even on a weak sealer, a burger will end up tapering on both sides. As we can see in the picture above, tapering makes your burger look like a flying saucer.  This is less visually appealing, but there is a very utilitarian concern here as well.  If it is not flat on each side, then less surface area touches a grill or griddle.  While a ri...