Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/14/make-flawless-sous-vide-meals.html
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This is ambiguous:
“With an additional beverage chiller function, you can create an ice bath then add the sous vide stick to keep drinks cool”
Does the mechanism actually have a cooling function or does it merely circulate already cold water?
I can’t find the answer in the product description.
Sous vide is a hot trendy yuppie way of cooking that involves exposing food to low temperatures for a long, long time. Big deal. That’s been around for centuries. It’s called barbeque.
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People in <YourCity> won’t believe this one simple trick that doctors don’t want you to know. Do this every day.
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I’m not even sure the word “resto” is available outside the “resto crowd”… 
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Doctors hate you.
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Water conducts temperature differently from air. And it’s hard to barbeque on your kitchen countertop. So while I do love barbeque, there is more differentiating the two cooking methods than mere trendiness.
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Home sous vide systems have been readily available for reasonable prices for years.
Good luck trying to keep your barbecue at exactly 135 degrees for two hours and losing virtually no juices.
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You forgot the other key element of sous vide (which literally means “in vacuum” or “under pressure”): putting the food in a vacuum-pouch or ziploc bag with the air sucked out. It’s the lack of air that lets your meat/egg/veg cook for hours at low temperature without losing any juices.
It might seem like a hipster method, but it’s actually very practical – you can cook your meat ahead of time to a precise doneness without paying any attention to it, then when it’s time to eat, you can just quickly sear it and dinner’s ready.
I have an anova sous vide cooker and have had mixed results. Beef works well, but poultry sucks. The texture comes out all wrong and somewhat unpalatable. Sort of spongy. I have also tried some recipes for vegetables, and they came out ok. All of the recipes claim superlative results – “carrots will taste amazing. More carroty than you have ever had before!!” – and I didn’t find that to be the case.
In the end, I think the sous vide method solves a problem that is common for the food industry, and not so much the home cook, and that is cooking large quantities of food, keeping it at ideal serving temperature for hours (days?) at a time, for ready service to unpredictable on-demand customers. The home cook doesn’t really need that level of prep, so it’s, at best, a novelty.
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I’ve had mixed success with my Anova as well. Red meat works very well. Poultry is best cooked as a confit so that it slow-cooks in its own fat – that solves the texture issue. Veggies are not a good use for it. Eggs, however, are wonderful in the sous vide.
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There’s a difference between being a cook and being a type A mechanistic control freak.
And what do you do when you want to lose the juices or let them combine with something else? Try making sous vide chili. Good luck.
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