This is a question for the chefs in the audience that is hopefully close enough to this forum's primary subject matter (I'll describe the connection in a moment) to not get deleted.

I recently came across a link from the SeriousEats blog to a Sous-Vide cooking guide from the French Culinary Institute here. This got me thinking that a DIY low-temperature cooker would be a great (and not too difficult, if I'm reading it correctly) way to make perfect meat/eggs.

Then I remembered that there are some PID experts and culinary experts on this board who might have some ideas. Are there any preferred low (and stable) temperature designs people are using (60C-80C is the range, I think)? The idea is to avoid spending hundreds on a machine one might see in the kitchen on Top Chef or at WD~50. Preliminary ideas included (based on a google search) PIDing a very basic (logic free) rice cooker or (based on a friend's idea) sinking an immersion coil or two in a pot. Both would require adding some method of agitating the water (to have some circulation to reduce temperature gradient).

The convenient part about this project that the friend (mentioned above) and I are both electrical engineers, opening up the possibilities for a fair amount of fearless modding.

Thanks!

Plug a slow cooker into this, have a vacuum sealer, and read this.

Personally, I've given up on this full panoply; but I use something similar as my main cooking method for meat and fish. I put a water filled hotel tray in a warming oven set at 125 to 150F, i.e. the desired finishing temperature, but never over the protein curdling mark of 155F). I dry rub the meat or fish, add oils, but never much liquid, wrap it in a baggie (ghetto vacuum packing = putting the bag underwater to drive out the air from the non-submerged opening), and cook it so it hits the desired temperature all through. Then heat pan or start your grill and sear for 30 seconds on each side. Voila, perfectly cooked no matter how thick or thin or non-uniform.

The difference is that with commercial grade vacuum packers, the cut will not ooze much liquid; whereas with this simplified method, you will get about a half ounce of juices from a 6 ounce portion. I'm fine with this, since I like deglaze sauces.

I don't think sous vide is much use for anything except meat/fish or the occasional Hamine egg in the same low temperature bath; but I haven't tried it extensively except for these.

Been there. I built a little sous vide setup for myself, and also made one for a customer in the UK. I'd managed to accumulate an impressive array of surplus enclosures at one point, and this was a good way to put them to use.

I used a single electric burner for the heat source, and a common stainless steel pot for the water bath. I found that the lack of agitation was not a serious drawback, and my cobbled-together setup worked just fine. I found it necessary to manually tune the PID because the times involved in bringing such a large mass of water to temperature far exceeded the timeout values in any autotune routine. But once tuned, the PID maintains the temperature very well (I'm pretty sure I used a Cal 3200).

Eggs were an utter disaster, despite the ability to precisely control the temperature. I will not be trying that again

OTOH, round steak cooked sous vide was a real treat, as were tuna fillets.

Jim

You should ask Roeland about his La Peppina Kettle Sous Vide experiences.

I PID'd my La Peppina but still cannot see stuffing food (even vacuum sealed) in the kettle. Guess the upside is you wouldn't have to re-tune your PID.

-Chris

I think sous vide is brilliant for things you're going to mess with like Uliassi's stunning recipe for cuttlefish tagliatelle, where cooking the cuttlefish sous vide keeps its texture and flexibility intact for subsequent freezing and then slicing into tagliatelle... but otherwise I'm not mad about the fuss and I'm suspicious about the plastic....

But then I'm English. Give me a frying pan and I'm happy

PopSci has an article on Pid'ing a rice cooker.
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-...ve-diy-way

The 72 hour ribs sound very interesting, but I'm content with my wife's 8 hour short ribs in the slow cooker.

Mark

I just need a really good recipe to push me over the edge... I build my Peppina PID with a 120 V socket so it's plug and play for me, and the PID will even do ramps, etc. Thanks for the Pop Sci article... hadn't thought of using my travel immersion heater... that might be handy if I need a smaller water bath for soaking something... hmm you could even use it in a large press pot to keep the temp up during the extraction.

So, anyone have a really good recipe that's not something you'd just do in a smoker anyway?

I personally believe that this cooking method is just starting to hit the price curve to bring it from a commercial prep station/walk in set up to where home use will be popular. But we are at the edge of that knee, vacuum sealers are under powered and do not like liquids unless you get a top end one. Not to mention that a used immersion heater/PID/Pump setup is at least $500. That is hard cash to spend to test out a idea that is designed to save money and time for a restaurant.

Of the cheap DIY home versions I did not see anyone mention the CrockPot/PID/Bubbler Stone combo. Good heat retention, slow drift, and the bubbler would give you the circulation that other methods use pumps for. If you have a PID with a spare channel and a probe I guess you could get this off the ground for under $50.00. with a 1degF temp hold. That would be close enough to even do soft boiled eggs. Which I believe should be the default test for temp stability for Sous Vide cooking.

-C

another_jim wrote:I put a water filled hotel tray in a warming oven set at 125 to 150F, i.e. the desired finishing temperature,

Ehm, that sound doable, and quite nice. How long do you cook things in this manner? How do you decide how long you things cook?