I got my Anova today!

[Xellos2099]

I got a question. What would be a cheap alternative container for this? I been using my kitchen pot but when I want to cook more stuff, the bags get overlap.

 

[Kaido]

I got a question. What would be a cheap alternative container for this? I been using my kitchen pot but when I want to cook more stuff, the bags get overlap.

A lot of people use Cambro, Rubbermaid, or cheap (sometimes foam) coolers. The Rubbermaids are nice because they are reasonably priced but durable:

https://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-Commercial-Storage-Container-FG631800/dp/B000VARW8C

Cellar Made sells lids with cutouts for the Anova if you want to minimize evaporation:

https://www.amazon.com/Cellar-Made-Precision-Rubbermaid-Containers/dp/B01M3VH3UK

If you feel like spending some coin, Lipavi makes a really neat sous video container system that includes a clamp rack to prevent bags from floating up:

https://www.amazon.com/LIPAVI-Sous-Vide-Rack-Collapsible/dp/B00PKGBMBA

Although someone on the Facebook group just posted an awesome video where they put a huge magnet under their container & then used smaller magnets to hold the food down, pretty easy setup to prevent the food from floating up without having to use something heavy like a plate or bowl.

 

[slag]

I use a stock pot, but yeah, the cooker gets in the way. I need to find another stock pot lid and cut it out for the anova.

 

[DCal430]

So basically its just a smaller, less powerful "regular" anova.

Not really actually. It has features the current Anova lacks such as multistep cooking. They will be releasing another full size Anova with these features at the end of the year.

 

[Xellos2099]

Anyone got recipes for chinese style white cut chicken? I tried this method for soy sauce chicken and it come out really well.

https://ginskitchen.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/sous-vide-soy-sauce-chicken/

 

[Kaido]

Anyone got recipes for chinese style white cut chicken? I tried this method for soy sauce chicken and it come out really well.

https://ginskitchen.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/sous-vide-soy-sauce-chicken/

Are you talking about whole sliced, or the white meat sliced, like they serve with clear garlic or ginger sauce?

 

[slayer202]

I'm not sure what features this has compared to the rest https://www.nomiku.com/products/wifi-nomiku but I've got a brand new one that I'd sell for $130 shipped

 

[Xellos2099]

Are you talking about whole sliced, or the white meat sliced, like they serve with clear garlic or ginger sauce?

Whole chicken, sliced. I am thinking of instead of using soy sauce, use chicken broth and put it under water for 6 hours

 

[boomhower]

After wanting one of these for around a year I finally pulled the trigger. Bought a Joule, KitchenBoss vacuum sealer, some bags, 12qt Rubbermaid container with a precut Joule lid. Plan to use it mostly for basic chicken and pork for the time being.

 

[Kaido]

After wanting one of these for around a year I finally pulled the trigger. Bought a Joule, KitchenBoss vacuum sealer, some bags, 12qt Rubbermaid container with a precut Joule lid. Plan to use it mostly for basic chicken and pork for the time being.

Bruh! Welcome to the club

You a steak guy? I use mine primarily for steak. Makes a HUGE difference. I just did a blue cheese steak, grill-only, and I was sad that I did not sous vide it (it was a spur-of-the-moment dinner get-together). Reverse-sear is also good, but as it takes 45 minutes + searing, it's not much longer to sous vide, so if you have the time, it's always worth doing steak sous video in my book!

 

[boomhower]

Bruh! Welcome to the club

You a steak guy? I use mine primarily for steak. Makes a HUGE difference. I just did a blue cheese steak, grill-only, and I was sad that I did not sous vide it (it was a spur-of-the-moment dinner get-together). Reverse-sear is also good, but as it takes 45 minutes + searing, it's not much longer to sous vide, so if you have the time, it's always worth doing steak sous video in my book!

Absolutely love steak and will have some from the to time. Working hard to drop 15 so red meat will be special treats. Weight loss so limiting red mead. Use MPF and Apple Watch. Leaning to mainly chicken with some pork as well.

My main question, searing Olive oil is massive fat for small amount. will searing in non stick pant no out work .

 

[Kaido]

Absolutely love steak and will have some from the to time. Working hard to drop 15 so red meat will be special treats. Weight loss so limiting red mead. Use MPF and Apple Watch. Leaning to mainly chicken with some pork as well.

My main question, searing Olive oil is massive fat for small amount. will searing in non stick pant no out work .

You ever hear of IIFYM? If not, spend some time on google & read up, it's life-changing! Tracking macros is annoying, but is the best way I've found to get results.

So, my current kitchen has awful ventilation. I have a hotplate & use it outside with a cast-iron pan so I don't smoke out the house. My basic procedure is:

1. Dry off the steak after sous-viding (not from the water, but from the liquid from the meat) - just pat down with a paper towel
2. Rub a teaspoon or so of canola oil over the entire steak by hand
3. At minimum, coat with Kosher salt & black pepper, then sear each side for no more than a minute or so (you don't want to keep cooking the inside, just make the outside crispy). I recommend using metal tongs (the BBQ kind, with teeth on them for gripping the meat) so you can sear the sides of the steak too.

 

[kstu]

My basic procedure is:

1. Dry off the steak after sous-viding (not from the water, but from the liquid from the meat) - just pat down with a paper towel
2. Rub a teaspoon or so of canola oil over the entire steak by hand
3. At minimum, coat with Kosher salt & black pepper, then sear each side for no more than a minute or so (you don't want to keep cooking the inside, just make the outside crispy). I recommend using metal tongs (the BBQ kind, with teeth on them for gripping the meat) so you can sear the sides of the steak too.

What temp are you sous-viding at? I have only done a few attempts, tried 130° for an hour or so but I think I prefer 120° with a little bit longer of a sear on the grill.

 

[Trudyblammer]

Well done! Congrats! It literally looks like main dish from good quality restaurant!

 

[Kaido]

What temp are you sous-viding at? I have only done a few attempts, tried 130° for an hour or so but I think I prefer 120° with a little bit longer of a sear on the grill.

I've averaged out at 90 minutes at 135F for pretty much any cut of steak (at about 1" thick...I don't usually do really thick steaks, I like them easy to cut & easy to eat), then either a cast-iron skillet sear or a Searzall if I'm just doing like one steak.

 

[slag]

We cooked a whole chicken last night. 6 hours at 151 degrees. I've done this before, but last nights just wasn't that good imho. I need to get a searzall because the broiler doesn't get all the chicken skin equally and doesn't get a lot of the curves. I very much dislike wet, clammy chicken skin.

 

[Fritzo]

I've averaged out at 90 minutes at 135F for pretty much any cut of steak (at about 1" thick...I don't usually do really thick steaks, I like them easy to cut & easy to eat), then either a cast-iron skillet sear or a Searzall if I'm just doing like one steak.

More and more chain restaurants are cooking this way as well. It gives consistency to the food.

 

[Kaido]

More and more chain restaurants are cooking this way as well. It gives consistency to the food.

Like I said, we did the bluecheese steaks 100% on the grill and they were just...disappointing. Sous vide makes steak so much better haha.

 

[Kaido]

https://anovaculinary.com/anova-precision-cooker-nano/?anovanerd=yesplease

Anova Nano for $70. 700 watts, slimmer/smaller profile.. Looks interesting. May get one so I have a second cooker for veggies when I do steaks/etc.

came to post this. Just bought 2! One for a 2nd bath, and the other for X-Mas gifting.

I am thinking about picking up a second sous vide machine. I do the bulk of my weekday cooking in my Instant Pots (typically have meals ready in half the time required for the Anova), but lately I've been spending more time cooking at home on the weekends, which means I can do things that run longer in the sous vide without having to eat late. I've also been experimenting more with using the Anova to reheat food, as well as to pre-cook, chill, and then freeze sous vide'd food for faster meals during the week.

I am still thinking about investing in a LIPAVI system. Their rack system looks really nice; honestly, my only real complaint about doing sous video is figuring out how to keep the bags from floating up, and also doing so without sticking my fingers in the hot water & burning my hands. Their removable rack looks pretty awesome...

The Mellow sous vide unit is still on early-bird pricing for another 9 days & is due out in October. Cost is $399 shipped, ouch...but the unique thing about it is that it includes a chiller, so it acts as a mini-fridge for your food until you decide to kick off the cook time. That is a pretty dang cool feature because you can drop your food in before work, light it off remotely, and have your food ready to eat or sear by the time you walk in the door. Or put breakfast in before you go to bed so it's ready to go in the morning. The price is kind of a deterrent though, especially since Home Depot sells brand-new full-sized fridge/freezers for like $478 lol, but the convenience might be worth it.

I like the idea of the Anova Mini, although the Bluetooth one is back on sale for $99 & the pre-order price for the Mini is $89 (final price being $99), so not much of a cost difference. I don't think that the wattage (700F, 800F, 900F depending on the Anova model) really makes much of a difference unless you're doing large cooks, either...I mean, my kitchen faucet can produce 122F, so I usually just start out by filling my tub with hot water & then letting the Anova bring it up the rest of the way (usually 129F to 190F, depending on what I'm cooking).

Going back to the Mellow though, I really do like the idea of the chiller inside. For me, the lazier a system is, the more I'm apt to actually use it & be succesful with it. I've been stocking up my deep freezer with food in various stages of completion (vac-sealed raw food, pre-sous-vide'd food awaiting searing, and completely cooked food that can simply be reheated), so being able to drop in what I want and remotely press a button to cook it sounds pretty amazing.

brb off to sell kidney for fancy new sous vide gadget

 

[Kaido]

So if you haven't tried sous vide burgers, it's absolutely worth doing, and it's also stupid easy. I do mine at 129F for 40 minutes. Pretty much just make an 8oz patty, salt & pepper it, ziploc, cook sous vide, take it out, pat dry, let it sit for 10 minutes, then give it a crust. I like to use my Searzall for even browning, as well as to melt the cheese (just hold the flame higher up to give the cheese a chance to soften & then melt before burning). Be warned that these stay extremely pink, so if you can't handle pink (albeit cooked) meat, this is not for you. Most of my family can't handle the idea of it, haha. It also drips like a cup of "blood" as you eat it, VERY juicy, so be sure to have napkins & eat over a plate because it will make a mess! One other note, sous vide burgers are very soft, so be prepared for an extremely tender, melt-in-your-mouth burger.

Today's project was 73/27 ground beef with butter lettuce & a couple tomato slices, ketchup (because just a tomato is not enough) & mustard, and Munster & Colby Jack cheese on a toasted bun. Freaking glorious:

I currently pretty much only do 3 burgers:

1. Sous vide
2. Smashburgers for slim takeout-style burgers (12" cast iron skillet & hi-temp burner outdoors because it smokes out)
3. Hardwood lump charcoal (mostly for when I do Chump burgers, which need the smoky taste & chewier texture)

The sous vide burger is nice for doing indoors, at least if you have a Searzall, because it doesn't produce as much smoke as cooking them normally does.

 

[ponyo]

^^That looks great! But I'm wondering if it's safe to eat ground beef at that temperature regardless of the cooking method. I wouldn't do that unless I grounded the beef myself and I'm too lazy to do that.

I'm happy with my homemade smashburgers. I use 80/20 store bought ground beef. I make my patty 1/4 to 1/3 oz each and use two patties per burger. My smashburgers are big burgers and not the wimpy kind. I use Lodge cast iron pan on my Weber Genesis S-330 side burner and Lodge cast iron round grill press to smash the burgers.

 

[Kaido]

^^That looks great! But I'm wondering if it's safe to eat ground beef at that temperature regardless of the cooking method. I wouldn't do that unless I grounded the beef myself and I'm too lazy to do that.

I'm happy with my homemade smashburgers. I use 80/20 store bought ground beef. I make my patty 1/4 to 1/3 oz each and use two patties per burger. My smashburgers are big burgers and not the wimpy kind. I use Lodge cast iron pan on my Weber Genesis S-330 side burner and Lodge cast iron round grill press to smash the burgers.

Yeah, smash burgers are awesome! Regarding meat safety:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/08/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-burger.html

For starters, you have a large window in which to cook the burgers:

Meanwhile, with sous-vide cooking, you set the temperature of your water bath to the desired final temperature of your meat, making it nearly impossible to over- or undercook your burgers. Not only that, but the window of time you have in which to achieve perfectly cooked meat is quite large—on the order of hours. A burger cooked for 45 minutes at 130°F will be nearly indistinguishable from one cooked for three hours.

Searing adds 10 degrees to the finished product:

The color and juiciness of a burger are directly related to the temperature to which they're cooked. The temperatures represented below may seem a little low to you. That's because as a burger sears, it gains a good 10° over the temperature to which you set your device, so a burger cooked to 120°F will actually be at around 130°F by the time it hits the bun.

Regarding the weight of the burger:

All of the timings below are given for burgers of six to eight ounces. I do not recommend cooking burgers in sizes outside this range. Burger meat, as a rule, gets far more exposure to oxygen before and during cooking than a solid piece of meat, which can have an effect on color. A burger cooked to a given temperature will be more pink than a solid steak cooked to the same temperature. Don't be alarmed when you bite into that medium-well burger and it's still pink inside!

And specifically regarding safety:

Is cooking burgers sous-vide safe?

All meat should be handled and cooked carefully to avoid the risk of foodborne illness but ground beef in particular requires extra vigilance. With a large piece of beef, the surfaces of the meat may be contaminated with harmful bacteria, but the center is safe. Searing whole cuts of beef is a very effective way of eliminating those dangerous bugs. Ground beef, on the other hand, can potentially have harmful bacteria mixed throughout its volume so a simple external sear is not an effective method of destroying them.

With a burger cooked via traditional (non sous-vide) methods, I strongly suggest buying whole cuts of meat and grinding them yourself or having the butcher grind them fresh on a clean machine if you plan on serving them below medium-well.

With sous-vide methods, you have a bit more leeway as beef can be safely pasteurized at temperatures as low as 130°F if held for long enough. At 130°F, it takes 2 hours to safely pasteurize beef, while at 140°F, it takes only 12 minutes. Remember—these timeframes begin once the center of the burger reaches pasteurization temperature, so it's a good idea to add an extra half hour to those times for any burger you plan on pasteurizing.

Pasteurization cannot safely take place lower than 130°F, so for this reason, I strongly recommend freshly grinding beef for sous-vide burgers you plan on serving rare to medium-rare.

So if you want to err on the safe side:

1. Grind your own beef at home
2. To fully pasteurize, cook at 130F for at least 2.5 hours (extra 30 minutes due to core temp)
3. Searing will add an extra 10F

So basically just cook it for a few hours if you want a fully safe result. And that's compare to ordering a medium-cooked burger at local restaurant that has been handled left & right and touches who knows what equipment.

 

[ponyo]

I was wondering if pasteurization worked on ground beef. So at 130 F it works. So you're looking at medium burger after searing. Not bad. I might give it a go just to try it.

 

[Kaido]

The Chefman is on sale for $62 shipped (Lightning deal) if you want a cheap second unit, or want to dive into SV without spending a lot of money:

https://www.amazon.com/Chefman-Precision-Circulator-Immersion-Temperature/dp/B072C6QJ4B

 

[Kaido]

Here's a really interesting concept:

http://www.suvie.com/

1. The Suvie appliance is an 8-zone residential sous vide machine with heating, cooling, and draining abilities. It can be purchased or rented (no long-term commitment required).

2. The Suvie service is a meal-delivery service for 2-4 people, offers over 10k combinations, and offers 4 pieces for a meal: raw protein, fresh veggies, dry starches, and chef-designed gourmet sauces (my memory of permutation theory from high school is pretty fuzzy, but iirc that would equal out to a couple dozen options per type of piece). The Suvie appliance can cook two different meals (4 parts, 8 zones) so if someone in your family wants to eat something different, they can easily do so (ex. picky kids). Meal options are for 2 adults or 4 adults (or for 2 adults plus 3 kids, for the 4-adult size).

Sounds cool...although there's a couple items of weirdness. First is that there is zero news anywhere on them. I had to do some digging to even find their Twitter account: (joined March 2016, out of Boston)

https://twitter.com/suviefood?lang=en

Second is that their blog, which has 16 pages of posts, is food-related, but is completely unrelated to their product & service or even sous vide:

http://blog.suvie.com/page/16

So I'm not quite sure what to make of that. A lot of small startups neglect their social media presence while they are ramping up; really curious to hear more about it, if it's real. This looks like a combination of 3 existing technologies & services:

1. Nomiku's food program (sous vide meal delivery)
2. Anova's multi-cook Nano appliances (one app to control multiple sous vide cookers)
3. Mellow's integrated water chiller (acts as a fridge for your food until it's time to cook)

Meal-in-a-box delivery services have been around for at least half a decade now & are pretty mature...Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, etc., plus the specialty ones like Sun Basket for non-GMO food, Keto Fridge for keto dieters, Purple Carrot for vegans, etc. Meal kits are currently a $2.2 billion dollar industry with a projected 30% annual growth rate over the next five years. While the meal kits are typically on the expensive side (which apparently doesn't stop people form buying them...1 out of 4 American adults have bought a meal kit in the last 12 months & 70% of them are still buying them after the trial expires), everyone I know who has tried them really likes them because it lets you do just the fun part of cooking without having to plan out a menu, make a shopping list, go shopping, wonder if the recipe is going to be good, etc. You just got a box in the mail with exactly what you need...it's not so much of a physical time-saver as it is a mental-saver because it has a high level of approachability from a convenience standpoint.

However, two of the things those meal kit systems are missing is an even easier way to cook everything and a huge variety of menu items. Suvie claims to have a multi-zone sous vide machine to cook your food, complete with a water chiller (which I would assume acts like Mellow, where you can toss your food into it in the morning & either schedule it to cook at a certain time, because sous video can take hours to cook, or send it a signal from your smartphone in case you're stuck late at work) & also a drainage system, so pasta can be cooked & drained as well, which opens up a lot of doors into increasing the meal combinations & varieties. So protein + veggies + pasta + sauce (good sauce is typically the key to good restaurant food!) is their game, which is easy enough to create a pretty reasonable varied diet if you were to use it on a regular basis.

If this were to actually come out (and not be priced at insane levels), I think it could potentially push sous vide into the public eye. Order a bunch of food using 10k+ combinations, then before your leave for work, put in your meat, veggie, pasta, and sauce in the different zones to be kept chilled, then have it cook so it's ready for you to come home & assemble. Short of either hiring a personal chef or having a local healthy-food restaurant available, this is probably the closest you can get to automating the dinner experience at home. Very very neat concept! This is really not only taking sous vide to the next level, but meal kits as well with the number of combinations & appliance system for it. I'll be keeping an eye on this one...