SousVide Supreme low temp water oven

[cmac2012]

Anybody have experience with this?

https://www.sousvidesupreme.com/en-us/learn/why-sousvide-supreme.htm

Sounds intriguing, the one thing that gives me pause is the need to first put everything in a sealed pouch. Other products I should check out. Maybe advanced crock pots are about as good but more affordable.

[elchivito]

I have been interested in sous vide for a long time but the entry cost is just too high. You'd also need a FoodSaver or some other efficient way to seal the food.

[OM617YOTA]

Sous vide is awesome. PERFECTLY tender medium rare steak all the way across the meat, every single time. Incredibly moist and flavorful chicken with almost no effort. Salmon? Game on.

Have a crockpot? One of the simple non-programmable no timer ones? This temperature controller will turn it into a sous vide cooker for under $20:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F05UI8O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Add an inexpensive extension cord so you have a plug and an outlet to plug the crock pot into. I found that the heavy ceramic crock was too much thermal mass, so I pull it out and use a plastic oven bag to hold the water instead, almost no thermal mass. With the ceramic crock, by the time the temperature probe reached the proper temperature and shut off the heat, the outside of the ceramic crock was much warmer, and that heat would carry over into the water even after the heat was off, making the temp over-shoot by a degree or two. Yes, that little difference matters, the difference between rare and medium rare steak is only a few degrees. A simple non-programmable crockpot is important, as the temperature controller will turn off power when at temp, so a programmable crockpot would lose it's setting and not turn back on when needed. By using a separate cord and plug on the controller vs. wiring the controller into the crockpot plug, the crockpot will be completely unchanged and can still be plugged into the wall for normal use.

You can use ziplock bags instead of vacuum seal. Make sure and get all the air out.

The meat will look funky when you pull it out of the bag. You'll seriously be wondering "wtf did I just do to $20 worth of steak?" Dry it off and give it a quick sear using a propane torch(not kidding), super hot charcoal fire, or rocket hot cast iron pan. You really want to get that sear on without heating the inside at all. When using garlic, I've found that sous vide simply doesn't get hot enough to mellow out the garlic like normal saute'ing or frying does. When sealing garlic in the bag, use way less than you normally would and expect it to smell and taste like powerful raw garlic, not mellower cooked garlic. Or saute the garlic first and game on. Yum.

It's good.

[iwrock]

I've got their demi water oven and swear by it!

Perfectly cooked meat everytime with no fear of it being overcooked! I use normal zip loc bags and just immerse in the bath to get the air out of the bag. Been doing it this way for a year with no issues.

Edit: I'll loan you mine if you want to try before buying.

[cmac2012]

Interesting. Maybe I'm an old pooper but somehow the thought of cooking dinner inside of a zip-log bag is hard to get my head around. I know the temp is only 145, for med-rare anyway, it's just that with all of the justified angst over the use of which type of plastic for water I somehow think we should know what the average zip-log bag does at those temps for, what, it's a lengthy spell, right?

Maybe the thermal seal bags are different, who knows.

[TwitchKitty]

This way of cooking just recently caught my attention. Avoiding harmful byproducts of cooking seems to be a strength but at the same time byproducts of plastic would be a concern. Your body has no means of dealing with plastics.

I'm not a big consumer of frozen food but a line of frozen veg caught my attention. Birdseye sells a mix that makes a complete protein. They have variations on the mix.

https://www.birdseye.com/vegetable-products/birdseye-steamfresh/birds-eye-steamfresh-protein-blends

Instructions say microwave in the bag, plastic bag. I guess you could drop the bag in your water oven.

[cmac2012]

Maybe I'm dreaming, but would warm air ovens work? Perhaps they'd need enough water vapor to prevent any drying. That way you could place the meat, etc on a stainless cooking vessel of some kind.

Another issue of some concern is that I gather food should either be kept below, what, 34 or 36 degrees or above some temp. Ah, found this:

http://www.idph.state.il.us/about/fdd/fdd_fs_foodservice.htm

Remember the danger zone: 41º F - 135º F. Potentially hazardous foods exposed to this temperature range for a cumulative total of more than 4 hours are not safe to eat.

I'm wondering if the low temps could ever be a problem.

[link]

If the food is not heated above a specific point (about 165 Fahrenheit) bacteria will not be killed.

[P.C.]

Originally Posted by TwitchKitty

This way of cooking just recently caught my attention. Avoiding harmful byproducts of cooking seems to be a strength but at the same time byproducts of plastic would be a concern. Your body has no means of dealing with plastics.

I'm not a big consumer of frozen food but a line of frozen veg caught my attention. Birdseye sells a mix that makes a complete protein. They have variations on the mix.

https://www.birdseye.com/vegetable-products/birdseye-steamfresh/birds-eye-steamfresh-protein-blends

Instructions say microwave in the bag, plastic bag. I guess you could drop the bag in your water oven.

I've tried those Birdseye mixes. I like them very much!

[elchivito]

Seems like the slightest bit of air left in a ziploc would tend to make the package float. You don't want floating, correct?
When I drop a package of steaks sealed in FoodSaver bags into a sinkful of cold water to defrost, they sink right to the bottom.

[cmac2012]

This site claims that regular baggies are suspect when dunked in semi-hot water for hours. They go on to say that a vacuum sealed variety was rated safe, though not sure what sort of verifiable testing has been done:

I did some serious digging, y'all. And luckily, I learned that there are some bags on the market that are indeed safe for sous vide purposes, and pose no problems from a BPA or EA perspective. The key is to stick with vacuum bags that are free of BPA, phthalates, and other plasticizers. It’s the plasticizers – chemical additives like phthalates that increase the pliability and fluidity of the plastic – that contain EA.

Cooking Sous Vide: Plastic Safety | Award-Winning Paleo Recipes | Nom Nom Paleo®

The cynic in my hopes this isn't someone plugging their own product.

[cmac2012]

Originally Posted by link

If the food is not heated above a specific point (about 165 Fahrenheit) bacteria will not be killed.

This is where I need to know more. Perhaps if this is done with frozen meat, the fact of being frozen will have killed some of the bacteria but my reading has it that not all bacteria are killed by freezing.

Yet apparently a lot of people have been keeping their steak at temps no higher than 140 F approx for several hours and eating them with no reports of poisoning that I've seen and such a thing would show up on a search.

[TwitchKitty]

Obsession with germs is a recent thing.

Don't get me wrong, food safety is important, but ...

If you count all of the human cells in your body and all of the microbes in your body you have more microbes than human cells. There are beneficial bacteria as well as harmful bacteria and the good outweigh the bad.

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by TwitchKitty

Obsession with germs is a recent thing.

So is long life expectancy.
Having said that, my training tells me that most harmful stuff that's killed at 140 degrees is also killed at 130, it just takes longer. Add to that, with sous vide, lack of oxygen beneficial to microbial growth and much better thermal transfer due to the water bath. A 130 degree oven won't burn you but a 130 degree hot tub will. Then there's the searing at the end of most meats that can't hurt at least for surface destruction of bacteria. Some of the worst food born illness isn't caused by the bacteria themselves however, it's caused by the toxins they leave behind. C. Perfringens comes to mind. Lots of conversation online about this but little research. Bacterial death curves all seem to be modeled on tradional cooking techniques. I think I'd be obsessively careful with pre-cook handling and prep of any foods I cooked sous vide.

[TwitchKitty]

When you think of your broccoli grown away somewhere and shipped to you don't forget to picture the porta potties used by the food handlers. This is the picture of our food supply that I can not escape.

People used to be killed by horses and syphilis and such and comparisons are kinda bogus. To say that we live longer because of modern food is a fallacy.