There’s not much out there in way of cookbooks yet. Lots of web resources, though. This is the best reference I’ve seen for basic times/temperatures.
The SousVide Supreme comes with a booklet that has a chart for basic timings as well, and a few recipes.
I also have Keller’s Under Pressure, but it’s mainly aimed at professional kitchens, and most of the recipes are more than I want to bite off for a home dinner. But it’s great for reference and ideas.
Excellent. I’ve already downloaded the Baldwin guide, I used that in my cooler experiment so as soon as I get over coughing up that much cash on a kitchen appliance (again) we’re good to go.
Also, you have square plates
Yes I do! Though technically, they aren’t required for sous-vide. 
Athena, obviously you’re a skilled cook - but can a regular novice use this setup reasonably well? It certainly sounds simple enough, albeit expensive - but is this one of those things where you really need the judgment/knowledge you get from real cooking skills to make it work?
My own skills are pretty much limited to crockpots and Foreman grills - could I use this gadget?
Also, is there any way to cook several steaks at once to different levels of done-ness? Say I’ve got friends over - one wants medium, one wants medium-rare, and one phillistine wants medium-well. Do I just need to cook each steak one at a time, or what?
It’s SUPER easy. That’s the thing that’s so great about it - you really can’t screw up, unless you do something like put a filet in, forget about it, and take it out two days later. Barring that, as long as you’re accurate with time enough to pull something out within a few hours of it being done, you’re fine. It’s extremely forgiving, to the point where sometime I don’t even feel like I’m really cooking.
That’s where it really falls down. In that case, I’d probably cook everything medium rare, then use the grill/broiler to get them to the desired doneness, but it sorta negates the whole reason of using the sous-vider. Maybe just have 'em over for chicken or ribs that day - something that you can sous-vide to one temperature that everyone likes.
Though I would point out that it isn’t actually [in many cases] a cooking implement that works on a daily basis, with the 24 and 36 and 58 hour cook times.
Definitely. But there are plenty of things - steaks, chicken, vegetables, fish - that have cooking times as short as 30-60 minutes.
For multiple levels of doneness it would take longer and be annoying but you could do the medium well steak then reduce the temperature to medium for the cooking time of the second, then leaving all the steaks in there, the medium rare temperature until it’s time to sear.
From what I understand, once it’s done to the desired degree of doneness you can reduce the temperature as long as it doesn’t drop low enough to allow bacterial growth.
Yes, this thread is four years old. It’s got a ton of great tips and there’s no reason to create a new thread that just repeats this stuff. “Zombie-thread” haters, beware! 
So, I just picked up a sous vide immersion circulator.
A couple of comments on the unit itself:
1)I got it before I found out that they were coming out with a wifi one in October. I don’t think wifi is even remotely critical for sous vide (the whole point is that it doesn’t matter–with reason–how long you cook your stuff for) but there’s the “cool” factor to consider ;). I might have waited.
The manual for the thing is terrible. There’s no sample recipes, most of the directions are pictograms, and not very clearly explained pictograms–it’s a set-up guide and safety (physical safety, not really food safety) manual and did I mention that there’s no recipes at all? Even just like 5 or 6 recipes to get you going would have been useful.
That said, I love the thing. I’ve made a few dishes–it’s whisper quiet and the food came out wonderfully.
So far, I’ve made two things with it. A) A terrible cut of strip steak (students at a culinary school were learning to butcher) that came out wonderful and B) a turkey thigh which may have been the best turkey thigh I’ve ever had.
So, anyone else discovered sous vide since this thread started? Anyone who previously joined in learned any new techniques/recipes?
I actually rigged my own up out of an industrial PID temp controller, a 25 amp solid state relay and a crock-pot; while it makes great food, it’s enough of a PITA to set up to not get used often.
Luckily, the PID temp controller is easily repurposed as an electric smoker temp controller, and works well for making yogurt in the crock-pot as well.
High five! I did the same, though I use a hotplate and ordinary pot for the chamber. I just made pork ribs yesterday–24 hrs at 68 C. Put on the grill to get a nice crispy surface at the end.
I agree that it’s a bit of a PITA, so I save it for special occasions, but one thing that it excels at is in getting the prep work out of the way. I can do all the work the day before and when I want to eat it’s only 10 min of work and minimal dish dirtying.
BTW, the Ziploc vacuum bags work just fine for me. They create a good seal and don’t leak.
I also reuse the PID controller… for my toaster oven soldering station.
< Admiringly > You and Bump are total nerds. I am in awe. 
Anyone have tips? Suggestions?
I haven’t been using mine much lately but the entire process appeals to my project manager nature.
Essentially meal planning is an exercise in declining temperatures and scheduling and I love it.
I have found that I don’t need special Sous Vide recipes, but I keep a few temperature charts on the side of the fridge and I use those to plan meals.
I have printouts without URLS, but a quick search returns a couple good ones.
This cooking guide is very good, it was an article by Douglas Baldwin that pushed me over the buy edge.
Lessons I have learned - although I tend to buy meat in bulk and vacuum seal it for freezing that is not an appropriate preparation for Sous vide. Something about the thawing process makes it a very unappetizing looking preparation, so now I thaw, spice and rebag before cooking. It still tasted fine and was perfectly safe to eat but it looked awful.
Although I rarely go through the trouble of setting everything up for eggs for just the two of us, when we have overnight guests, sous vide eggs are amazing. Set everything up the night before and breakfast is easily served when you wake up.
It was pretty straightforward to build. The parts list:
Digital PID temperature controller ($30)
K-type thermocouple (~$5)
25A Solid State Relay (~$5)
Cheap hair dryer–salvaged for the GFCI cord+plug ($9, and cheaper than any standalone GFCI plug I could find)
15A outlet ($1)
You then need something to plug into the unit. As I mentioned, I used a cheap hotplate and pot (that I already had). Crock pots also work. In both cases you should turn the thermostat to the maximum so that it does not interfere. Make sure to get something low-tech (not digital), since an integrated controller could also interfere with things.
At one point I tried using an immersion heater, like this. However, I do not recommend it. It does not dip very far into the liquid, and you end up only heating the top surface. The hotplate worked well since it heats from below, and you end up with convection (important since you want the water to mix). I found I didn’t need a circulation pump if I did it this way. It’s important not to put too much stuff in the pot, though–there needs to be room for the water to flow.
I mounted everything to a piece of laser-cut acrylic (used the laser cutters at TechShop), but you can use whatever works. Just try to make it somewhat resistant to water spills (though the GFCI will help somewhat here).
I actually used an RTD sensor instead of a thermocouple; I figured for sous-vide the greater accuracy and consistency might be useful.
One thing to remember is that the auto-tune feature on the PID controller may take a good long while to run… mine takes like 4 hours to get to a good fine-tune.
Mine seems to lock in pretty quickly. When I first heat the water, it tends to overshoot by 8-10 C, but 30-45 min later it stabilizes. I put in the food and of course the temp drops a bit, but it gets to the right temperature within 15 min and doesn’t overshoot.
I actually did try the device with a really crappy crock pot at first, and was unhappy. The problem seemed to be a combination of the thermal mass of the ceramic and the overall low power. PID controllers don’t work as well when there’s a lot of latency in the system and when they operate close to the margins.
I want one…
Putting one together sounds fun, but I’m not working with a lot of space. Not sure I want to drop $200 on yet another kitchen toy though.
One of my sons just made us some steaks sous vide style in simple Zip locks in a water bath on the stove checking the water temp every so often while he was doing other projects and work and then blow torching for char. It was good. Personally I kinda like the variation of doneness and the medium rare through and through is not such a huge appeal but dang it was good.
Lobster tail meat, removed from the shell while still raw and vacuum sealed with butter then cooked for 30-60 minutes in 136 degree water was heavenly. I’ve seen other numbers used for temperature (126, 130, 140) but honestly didn’t taste much of a difference between 136 and 140.