I’m not an elitist, I just enjoy the prep :D. Some people enjoy folding laundry, some people enjoy trimming trees, I enjoy food prep (probably more than the food itself). For me it’s just damn relaxing.
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Yeah they don’t cook any faster in the nuker, I know people who have actually checked. And I seem to remember at least one food magazine actually testing it. It came up nards. And microwaving is a piss poor way to “bake” a potato. If I’m short on time I either cook something else or par cook in the microwave (say 5ish minutes) and finish in the oven.
Sous vide is just french for “under vacuum” or basically vacuum sealed. So if you vacuum seal the bastards and then steam them its entirely accurate. We use sous vide refer to cooking in an accurately temperature controlled water bath, but that isn’t strictly speaking what it means or the only use of the phrase in French.
OOOO OOOO. Can it be me!? The peels are where all of the lovely Solanine lives. But just like the cyanide in almonds its totally natural, and nothing natural can ever harm you.
I see similar criticisms of OXO’s products. That their cushy handles are for lame lamers who need padded handles for their delicate sensibilities. That company was explicitly started to provide functional kitchen tools for people with arthritis, Parkinsons, and other grip problems. Anyone else buying them is doing so because they work. I just don’t see how you can shit on the company for providing a usable handle for people who literally can’t use anything else.
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(puts on Pedant hat)
Unless your water bath is under pressure you won’t be steam-sous-videing anything, if you want to use a reasonable amount of energy.
(Takes off Pedant hat)
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i know why cant they just use those barcode guns to slap a barcode on a individual soft banana
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Yeah, I know what ‘sous-vide’ means. I AM French-Canadian. I’m also aware that sous-vide cooking is, as you’ve pointed out, almost always done in a water bath at temperatures well below the usual cooking temperatures. So steam-cooked sous-vide should be an oxymoron, non?
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Except armed bears and things you’re allergic to. (Hopefully keeping in the spirit of the thing. 
)
Can I re-pendant your pendant? The package in question is French, in French sous vide just means vacuum sealed. When temperature controlled chambers with air/steam are used for that sort of cooking there’s no vacuum sealing involved, so its not called sous vide.
My point is largely that in French the phrase “sous vide” is used for more than just referring to the cooking method. In the case of these potatoes it seems to be referring to the fact that they’re vacuum sealed, which they are, rather than cooking in a water bath. Its to the point where you have a number of chefs and food authorities (especially french ones) arguing that the phrase “sous vide” should be discarded since it doesn’t actually refer to the cooking method. The ones I keep seeing suggested in English are “temperature controlled water bath” (tcwb) and “water oven”. Both of which suck. And sous vide has come into English as a legit lone word that does explicitly and exclusively refer to the cooking method. Because language. But its apparently becoming more of an issue because there are now other ways of using the same method that don’t use vacuum packing or water baths. There are incredibly accurate ovens, that use some amount of steam injection to do the same thing. A cook friend of mine refers to them as “CVAP” ovens, but he may be cribbing the name of another device. I’ve got no experience with the things. But no vacuum and no water bath so what the fuck do you call the cooking method? And I’ve seen a few people use their circulators in bins of fat or stock to poach un-bagged items.
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The peels are perfectly safe to eat if the tuber hasn’t been exposed to light long enough to make its skin turn green. My old man was a physician, he was fine with us eating the peels, as long as they weren’t green. From the NIH:
Potato plant poisoning occurs when someone eats the green tubers or new sprouts.
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That’s what the potato wants you to think.
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Like Betty White? Because sliced bread is in truth the greatest thing since Betty White.
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To re-re-pedant, while you can use steam with sous vide, no one is stupid enough to do so 
(i could go off on the pros and cons of steam ovens, but i probably shouldn’t)
Also:
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The thing I’m referring to isn’t a typical steam oven and I’ve never actually seen one. Apparently there is a new form of oven out there, mostly in industrial applications. As it was described to me its a convection oven that can do similarly accurate low, long duration cooking to a water bath. And it can use water vapor/steam as a bonus (ETA: or maybe the steam/vapor was to more rapidly/accurately change temperature). Can’t quite remember but the whole chamber might be under a slight vacuum to lower the temperature of the steam. Supposedly the whole idea is to one up sous vide. Less moisture loss down to a gentler transfer of energy, and the ability to automagically sear/brown the exterior at the end of the cook cycle via a RAPID increase in heat and drop in moisture. The ability to do larger items and braises by eliminating the limitations of the water bath.
This may however be a crazy chef myth. I hear a lot of wacky shit out of kitchen friends. Usually about what “some guy” is doing in France or Japan. Though I’ve heard less specific things about food packers using large ovens of this sort, and other applications that remove vacuum packing from the equation.
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Sounds like Convection Humid Mode, which can be programmed from 85º - 445º F in my oven. It’s very real, not a crazy chef myth!
So for steam sous vide at 84 degrees (some random sous-vide temp guide) you would want about 54 kPa for the pressure to end up with steam rather than liquid…
Presumably except for the ability to set temperatures at fractions of a degree. And accurately hold that temperature for up to several days with less than .1F variation in any direction over the entire duration of the cook. That’s sort of the key thing to sous vide, very accurately and consistently holding a very low temperature. There are plenty of things like what I describe, but I’ve yet to hear for certain if the “exactly like sous vide but without the water” part actually exists out there.
Wow, that sort of precision doesn’t even happen in all science labs! (Some, obviously, but not all.)
Your early sous vide set ups were lab grade circulators, often purchased used, from Poly-Science and Anova (mostly Poly Science, Anova has taken over the consumer market but they’re 2nd banana in labs). If you think about: if your temperature wanders up too high over the course of the cook you end up with over cooked food. With something like eggs even 1 degree Fahrenheit too high can totally change the texture. And if you wander too low you can run into serious food safety issues (aside from under cooking). This is how an oven usually works. They have an on off cycle that lets the internal temperature rise above the set temperature then turns off the element until it drops below the set temperature. Always with at least a few degrees of wander up or down from the center point you’ve set it at. A 5 degree shift can take your steak from rare to mid rare (or in the other direction).
The cheaper set ups now proliferating seem to be coming out because of two major things. 1st reductions in the costs of the electronics and parts needed. And seconds compromises in terms of precision and power. The home units have less powerful heating elements (and thus a smaller water capacity), and slightly less precision. They can still hold the temp within a couple of tenths of a degree over the cook. But in Fahrenheit they typically only set to one degree F (.1 degree for Celsius). Sort of a realization about what level of precision is practically needed, especially in the home. But from what I understand the standard industrially and in high end pro kitchens is still set by .1 maintain by at least .1. For as long as its on.
IIRC a major internets nerd complaint about the Anova (specifically) and other consumer circulators (more generally) was the inability to set Fahrenheit temperatures fractionally, and their unwillingness to guarantee temperature accuracy down to .01F maximum. Because that’s what people heard a $5000+ PolyScience could do. Turns out that level isn’t really necessary if your not doing high volumes of things repeatedly in a commercial setting. I think the new Anovas set to a fraction of a degree, not sure about their claims on how accurately they can hold. But the old ones maxed out at like +/- .2 in the worst of cases. Never checked mine, apparently they’re usually much more consistent than that. What every variance there is has never caused me an issue.
