I’ve only ever used ziplok bags but suggest spending a little more to get the better ones. I always recommend carrots for a first SV cook.
Easiest thing to do is put whatever you want in the bag, then immerse it. The water will do all the work for you, and just seal it when you get to the top.
I have a vacuum sealer but this method is best when there’s a lot of liquid in the mix, some gets sucked into the sealer and makes a mess and it doesn’t seal properly.
I would not use Ziploc® or other polyethylene bags as plasticizers and other constituents will exude out of them when heated. You can find silicone-based plastic bags that will be stable at sous vide temperatures; some have a one-way ‘valve’ (basically an adhesive flap that won’t let water enter, although these only tend to last a few uses) allowing them to be evacuated with a hand pump (similar to a pump used with ‘wine savers), others are open topped, with the tops held out of the water via a lanyard, or you can just use silicone storage bags like Stasher-bags as long as you are pretty diligent about getting air out. Regardless of what you do, a lot of foods generate some amount of gas while cooking so it is recommended to get sealed weights intended for sous vide and/or magnets which can be used to force the bag to remain submerged.
I agree with @jnglmassiv that carrots or some other kind of tuber (potatoes, turnips, sweep potatoes) is a good first cook because they are cheap and not really harmed if a little water leaks in. Asparagus is also an easy thing to cook, and it only takes about 5-10 minutes. I do brussels sprouts pretty frequently but it is easy to overcook and end up with an unappealing mushy product. In general with most foods (and especially meats) I will cook to time as recommended or a little less, and then finish in a pan, either searing or just sauteeing for a few minutes as I find the ‘unfinished’ look of foods directly out of sous vide somewhat unappealing. You can cook with sous vide and then store for later but you should really submerged the cooked food (in bag) in an ice bath to quickly lower temperature and inhibit bacterial growth that can occur during the transition from cooking to refrigerator temperature. Meats should last 2-3 days, vegetables for 3-5 days, depending.
I highly recommend getting a book on sous vide cooking to check temperatures and provide guidance. This method is not at all difficult but it is important to get the temperatures and times correct for each food type for both safety and proper texture.
Stranger
I’m going to follow the thread for updates and tips. While I’m something of a foodie, I’ve never gone the SV route, because it would be another investment (if smaller than most!) in equipment and learning curve. But I would love to learn from other newcomers to the field.
So far, I’ve had similar but by no means identical results for some of the meat options (tender and rare meats from normally tougher chunks of critter) with a sear plus long and low in a slow cooker, but I’m much more tempted by the perfect cooking of the more expensive cuts that have a narrow range of perfection. It’s one thing to take chances with chuck roast at 5.99/lb (which still seems insultingly high, but 
) but while I can do a decent reverse sear of a $12.99 plus ribeye in the pan, each time I get it less than perfect I feel like I wasted a ton of money.
They sometimes call the chuck roasts done like this King Charles, thiugh not usually with the slow cook at the end. I’ve done it twice with smaller, 2 pound chucks. It’s pretty good, beefy for sure, but not really all that tender. I sliced and pan fried from chilled with some veggies for some nice cheesesteak/melt sandwiches but a lot gets munched sizzling straight from the pan. The extra sear on the sliced sides uncovers some hidden beefiness.
I took your advise and made some sous vide carrots the other day (and I got some silicone bags with the one way valve like you recommended). Specifically I made this recipe:
Maybe because the juices are sealed in the bag while they cook, the carrots came out tasting, well, the best way to put is is they tasted extra carroty. Which is to say they were amazing. At 183F for one hour they were softened a bit, but still had a little crunch to them. Now I’m excited to try cooking a bunch of other foods this way.
It seems like the folks at Serious Eats have guidance on how to sous vide just about everything, so that might suffice for now.
They also recommend using a plastic Cambro container instead of an ordinary pot, but I’m not sure I want to buy more equipment. What do you guys think?
Some day I’d like to try a sous vide brisket. I have a smoker (A Webber Smokey Mountain), and would like to try brisket in it except I don’t like the idea of having to wake up early on my day off to light the coals. But I saw a recipe where you sous vide the brisket overnight and then smoke it for two hours or so. That I could do! And it sounds more foolproof than smoking it the traditional way.
A dedicated container makes it more convenient and can be easier to seal to your it doesn’t humidify your own house but isn’t required. It sounds like your setup is working out for you so keep working with it until you find a real need to expand.
Stranger
The weekend before last I tried a ribeye steak. The result was an absolutely perfectly evenly cooked, medium-rare steak. In the past, using traditional cooking methods sometimes I’d either overcook them slightly, or cook them unevenly. But cooking them sous vide at 133F, then searing in hot cast iron is an pretty much fool proof way to get a perfectly cooked steak.
Last night I tried chicken breasts, prepared relatively simply with salt, pepper, a few sprigs of thyme, and some lemon slices. They were the most tender, juicy chicken breasts I’ve ever had – because sous vide cooking effectively pasteurizes your food it’s safe to cook it to a lower temperature than the 165 the FDA recommends.
And that brings us to my question: Can I modify some of the chicken recipes I make to use souse vide cooking? For example, my usual way of making chicken marsala is:
- Pound a chicken breast flat.
- Season the chicken.
- Brown the chicken in olive oil and butter, remove from pan before it’s cooked completely
- Add mushrooms to the pan, sautee for a bit.
- Geglaze the pan with the wine, let it reduce a bit
- Return chicken to pan, cover, and simmer until it’s fully cooked.
Could I modify it to something like:
- Season chicken (I probably don’t need to flatten it if I’m cooking it sous vide, but it probably doesn’t hurt)
- Sous vide the chicken.
- Brown the chicken
- Prepare the sauce as above (but don’t return the chicken to the pan)
I suppose the disadvantage would be that you wouldn’t get the bits of chicken stuck to the pan to flavor the sauce.
Yes, sous vide is great for any dish that requires simmering because the seasoning will get deeply infused into the meat. You can always trim off a bit of the fat (which is going to give the deglaze most of the flavor, and just end up in a greasy layer in the bottom of the sous vide bag) and toss it in while sautéing the mushrooms. Just don’t overcook the chicken; it just needs to be in long enough to get heated through.
Sous vide takes a lot of the guesswork and long experimentation out of many of the complicated grilling, roasting, and braising techniques, and plus you can do the cooking the day before, chill in the refrigerator (first putting the bag in a bowl of ice water for 20-30 minutes to quickly bring the temperature down), and then finish quickly right before serving.
Stranger
I love sous vide cooking but I wouldn’t cook a flattened chicken breast cutlet like that. You want the browned bits for flavor, and if you throw an already-cooked bit of chicken in a hot pan, it’ll be overcooked by the time you get the crusty accents.
Other chicken applications, sure, lots of room for adaptation. Just not that specific one, in my experience.
Keep an eye out for old coolers. They’re often priced next to nothing at garage sales and thrift stores. Most have decent handles and a drain.
An old cooler might seem like an ideal container for sous vide if you have the counter space for it but they tend to be pathogenic nightmares even if you sanitize them with bleach, and while in theory there shouldn’t be any contact between the food and the bath, the reality is that you will almost certainly get cross-contamination when you pull the food out of the bag even if you are diligent about rinsing it off. Well-insulated containers can also be problematic because most sous vide heaters rely upon a certain amount of heat loss and will end up heating the water past the target temperature, which can’t easily be convected out of an insulated cooler.
A large stock pot, or for smaller portions just a normal stewpot works fine and is easy to sterilize; you can drape a towel over to limit evaporation if you don’t want the humidity or buy an old cover at a thrift store and cut out a notch for the heater. The plastic containers are kind of nice because they are often oval or rectangular (making better use of counter space), come with a fitted cover, and allow you easily see the food that is cooking but they really aren’t necessary unless you are doing sous vide a lot and want a dedicated container.
Stranger
exactly, I have never been very good at cooking chicken, since I got the sous vide, I love chicken. I like the chicken at about 155. I feel it is the best kitchen investment I have ever made. I but the cheap roasts either chuck or sirloin and set it at about 132, I slice it into 1/2" thick steaks and just brown it in a pan.
I confess I haven’t yet found and purchased a dedicated SV vessel* and still use pots. In shopping around, though, unlike bulky size you point out and lid-cuttability, I hadn’t considered the cleaning.
I guess I figure I’ll be sanitizing the cooler the same way the food itself safely cooks: long exposure to medium heat. I don’t do different with my grill. Or coffee pot. Or oven.
*I did try a styrofoam cooler ONCE (surplus from a cold shipment) with disastrous results. They’re porous, it leaked, I got yelled at, it was a big mistake.
Thank you for that warning. I’ve got a couple of surplus styrofoam coolers sitting in my garage, and when you mentioned coolers earlier the idea did cross my mind.
At first, it was a great container idea, about a 16 inch cube, rounded edges, fairly sturdy for disposable foam styrene. Turns out, they leak over time but they leak really fast and really a lot when the water’s hot. A garbage bag liner would probably do the trick but I won’t be trying it.
Just out of curiosity, what would be the least expensive but still worthwhile sous vide wand and other minimal requirements? I have 3 stock pots of various sizes and thickness, so I’m not worried there. I ask for cheapness because I have a lot of kitchen gadgets (most of them used even!) and I’m leery of the investment in more. So I don’t want to spend too much (especially in light of current USA circumstances) on another cooking option beyond what I already have:
pressure cooker, slow cookers, air fryers, my FiL’s smoker, cast iron dutchies, skillets, etc.
I wouldn’t get the absolute cheapest heater because it will probably start failing in the first few uses (as I’ve discovered to my lament) but you can find Anova submersion coolers for around US$100 on sale. I’d recommend at least 1000 watt power to get consistent bath temperature for meat.
Stranger
Thanks Stranger, I’ll eyeball it. And yeah, I wouldn’t want the cheapest, that’s why I menionted least expensive but still worthwhile. 
For sure don’t buy any containers for now. I still use freezer bags but have borrowed a vac sealer, nice, but I don’t have one myself.
I’ve got an Anova in (checks) 2016, still doing fine. Looks like those were 800 watts, ok at the time, but I wouldn’t complain about some more power. I’ve lent it to about half a dozen people and I think they’ve all gone on to purchase SV circs, not necessarily the Anova.