Tested In-Depth: Sous Vide Cooking with Immersion Circulators

Impress your friends and family by doing some high-tech cooking for the holidays! We explain how sous vide cooking works, talk about water baths, test Anova's new $200 immersion circulator, and walk you through the steps to cook a perfect steak.

[richardshewmaker]

It's not true that you cannot put liquid in the bag with your food. The trick is to freeze it first. When I make chicken stock, I freeze it in muffin tins, then store it in the freezer in ziplock bags. The when you want to sous vide a piece of chicken, include a chicken ice disc in the bag when you vacuum seal it and it will melt and flavor the chicken as it cooks. This technique can be applied to other liquids and foods. I used this to seal brisket with frozen corning liquid for ten days, then drained and rinsed it and resealed it with frozen beef stock before cooking it sous vide--best corned beef dinner ever!

[JamesJones-qlkr]

I do alot of sous vide, at least 3 times a week, it's amazing.  Sous vide salmon is incredible, 125 degrees for 30 minutes in duck fat with a little sage.  And steak and pork are amazing.  Polyethylene bags are as close to non toxic as you can get.  A great number of high end restaurants use this, it ensures perfection every single time.  If you're a doubter look at Modernist Cuisine's site, they're food rock scientists. 
As for the comment that eggs take too long, just start sooner.  The thing is that every single time you sous vide an egg, it comes out perfect.  You simply cannot get a "fudgy" yolk any other way.  oh, i own a Nomiku, wonderful controller.

[johnkapri]

A tipp for the vacuum bag method: Ask your butcher to vacuum package it for you. Usualy their machines are much more professional and you'll end up with much less air in there than if you had done it yourself. Also you can keep it in the refrigerator longer wich comes in handy when hollidays are approaching. You can buy your meat a few days in advance and don't have to worry about it being sold out when you go to buy it because everyone else is gonna have steaks too. A trick that paid off many times for me.

[VexedFilms]

"I stuck my probe where the food ends up", what a way with words he has.

[nicholasaguirre]

The Maillard Reactions is not about burning the meat... it creates brown pigments in cooked meat by rearranging amino acids and certain simple sugars, which then arrange themselves in rings and collections of rings that reflect light in such a way as to give the meat a brown color. This results in a browning as well as flavors you wouldn't get without said reaction.

Charring (burning) meat is totally different and doesn't produce the same result. For one it causes the release of some carcinogens which aren't safe for consumption and instead of causing the reactions that produce that taste we love so much it just leaves a bitter burnt taste to the meat.

I know this video want about the Mallard Reaction but your comments could confuse people's understanding of said reaction and frankly could spoil the entire experience if they cook with the goal of burning the meat. Plus the blow torch is the best way to cause the Maillard Reaction with the least damage/overheating of the meat. Just a personal note on torching to finish... add the black pepper after. The salt and juices will cook fine with the torch but the pepper will burn giving you a nasty aftertaste.

[ryanmcanelly]

Food safety wise you both covered that very well. One note, be careful with temperature ranging from 4.4C to 60C (~40-140F). That range shows highest microbial growth and increasing time at that temperature could do more harm than good. You could however adjust the pH by using something similar to a marinade to safely cook in that range. Once again, fantastic job. 

[TiagoCardosoEu]

You can froze the marinate and add it to the vacuum content. After it gets hotter, it will marinate :)

[SethHesio]

I've never ever watched TESTED where they TEST something. Have to admit I always and only watch the Adam Savage episodes, but I REALLY enjoyed this. It was so interesting. Just watching two people talk about a neat product. I loved it when Norm said "it has no sense of how big the vessel is" found that sort of adorable but an important fact to be stated. I would very much like one of these circulators now! Hope they sell them in the UK.

[jarikcbol]

A good route to go if your on a budget is the  Dorkfood Sous-Vide Temperature Controller, (for the crock-pot temperature control route). costs about 100$. The main complaint it gets is that it uses a mechanical relay, so it has an audible 'click' when it operates, but it does a good job of controlling the temperature.

[frankelliott]

"It works like a PWM circuit on a dimmable LED."
For those who don't speak geek, that PWM means "pulse width modulation."  This means the heater switches on an off continually to adjust the temperature of the water.

[ElysiumCity]

Pro tip - Before you drop the food into the open end of the bag, fold the edge down to ensure that no food particles or juices touch the inside of the edge that may prevent a good seal. Then fold it back up to seal.

[CookingWithCows]

here in the uk there is a product, barbecue ribs that are cooked in a vacuum sealed plastic wrap, they come pre-cooked and you only have to take them out of the plastic and pop them in the oven for 30 minutes, and they are great

[oreubens]

6:00 The Maillard reaction and caramelization are completely different reactions.  Though granted they "sort of" happen under the same conditions.  If you fry/grill meat, you will typically have a bit of both.
Maillard is a reaction between amino acids and sugars, whereas caramelization is basically Sugar pyrolysis

[ikyiAlter]

This reminds me of the myth/experiment that Adam and Jamie did with the dishwasher. They cooked a lasagne in a dishwasher. It uses a similar idea, a low constant temperature over a long duration. And it uses water too!

[sashafortis]

You can actually use a small heat sealer to do large bags by cutting your edges at an angle.
99% of the time, a small vacuum bag machine with heat sealer works fine. the few times I have needed to do something way bigger, I have bought the big bags, then cut at 45degree angle, from both edges,  top and bottom, and with two or three heat seals, I end up getting a perfect seal.

[BSKustomz]

I love people bitching that it just heats water and is overpriced... It's about the same investment as a very nice stand mixer, and all that does is mix things... It comes down to the fact you pay for the added ease of using the tools

[NormMonkey]

Thank you Will and Norm for satisfying my curiosity about this new trend!

I wonder if in future videos would you address (maybe demonstrate) cooking food with a marinade in the bag?  Also a good opportunity to demo the technique of displacing air out of a Ziploc bag with water.

Have you tried doing hamburgers in here?  Or sausages?  I can imagine having a BBQ party where you have a bunch of safe-to-eat sous-vide cooked burgers that you sear on the grill for all of 5 seconds per side before serving them up.

[opieafe]

btw to the hosts, spacebags do work. there great for travel so you can save space. they use a small gasket like a respirator or gasmask would use. also i found my food saver for $3.50 at goodwill. for bags rival brand bags work great and are much cheaper than foodsaver brand. and i have found you can use liquid in these the trick is, stuff a tiny bit of paper towel down into the vac-chamber and try to remove as much free air as possible out of the bag. or could freeze your marinade, throw it into the bag then seal, then the frozen marinade will thaw and be useable. just some ideas for you guys.ive had a food saver since they came out and was without one for a few years. i missed it LOL. 

[Seafury]

So my only real experiences with Sous Vide have been catering companies or bad restaurants that use it because it's dead simple and/or works well with large quantities. In both cases the food was far from desirable and there was big difference from a traditionally prepared meal.  

Looking back on it, maybe it was just bad ingredients and frozen items being used. So a cooking machine like this would be fun to try at home with some proper prep time and ingredients. It's a luxury item at this price point, something that's hard to drop the cash for keeping in mind most people have little experience with Sous Vide.

Thanks for the great video here that really gives a nice incite on the whole process with this machine. Here's hoping more customers will do the same on youtube!   

[Wulable]

The clamp should be modular. If it was held on with two or three bolts and wing-nuts then you could choose what fastening method to use.