I’ve heard about sous-vide cooking and I’d like to hear more about it, especially from people who use one or have tasted food from one.
How does it differ from ordinary cooking in its effects?
How involved is it?
What features should I look for in a sous-vide cooker?
I have a unit I bought from Costco a few years back. I certainly don’t use it to the full extent possible, but I do turn out some fine ribeye steaks.
I season and seal in the vacuum bag. Then cook at 132° for a few hours. It will come out medium rare all the way through, but not browned. I pat it dry and brown with a propane torch on both sides. You could also brown on a really hot grill or cast iron skillet. The torch keeps my stove cleaner and it works for me.
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Unlike with most cooking methods, there’s no “better” or “worse” with sous vide. It’s a very binary, either the cooker can keep the water at temp or it can’t. And since every cooker on the market these days can, there’s very differentiation. There’s minor things like noise, size, whether it comes with an app and build quality but in general, the cheapest SV device you can find will be the best one. Since we’re heading into holiday season, I’d keep an eye peeled for sales and snag whichever one drops the lowest.
Despite the name, you don’t need any sort of vacuum to successfully sous vide. I’d start with Ziploc brand freezer bags and only graduate to some kind of machine if you really feel the need. I own a food saver style vacuum machine and still do 90% of my sous vide in ziploc bags.
Serious Eats is a great resource to get started with Sous Vide. They have all sorts of guides around the basics and a bunch of recipes that show how you can make the same dish conventionally and with sous vide.
With prices in the $100 range right now, it seems like a no-brainer to just pick one up and start experimenting. After just a dozen steaks or salmon filets, it’s basically paid for itself.
Oh yeah, I do salmon fillets too.
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basically what it does is let you hold a food at near-done temperature for a while, then you finish it off however you want (grill, sear, etc.) Since you’re holding it at done temperature, you’re not going to over-cook it.
I got one of the Anova Culinary immersion circulators off of Amazon when they were on sale for a hair over $100. I typically only use it for meat. it’s nice to be able to drop a steak in the bath at 125°F a few hrs. ahead of time, then later fire up the grill and sear it without worrying about overcooking it. I especially like not having to worry I’ll cook pork chops for 0.02 seconds too long, drying them out.
Don’t bother using it to hard-cook eggs, though. something about the way they set makes them un-peelable. The white just pulls apart in layers.
A warning-The older the article, the better. The guy who’s running the site has turned into a shill for a (very good, low priced) brand of Sous Vide and is now doing the “I’ve got a hammer and everything looks like a nail” bit.
He just did one on sous-vide bacon that was outright mediocre. All the mess of pan-frying, but slightly quicker. You can put bacon in the oven at 325 for 20/30 minutes and get perfect bacon with no mess at all. Or you can sous-vide it overnight, then pull out the pieces you need, then pan-fry it for about 6 minutes to crisp it up. And it’s not even close to as good as oven baked bacon.
Seriously–his old articles are great, his new ones stink of desperation (“They’re paying me…I’ve GOT to come up with SOMEthing!!!”)
I highly recommend getting one and the brand he advertises “Ana Nova” is excellent and has great customer service. (I do not work for them! 
)
Sous-vide is great for certain things, but if you’re looking to be experimental and want something both versatile and on the cheap, take a look at the halogen/convection ovens, or “air fryers” as they’re sometimes called. Can’t find a link online, but Walmart has a pretty good cheapie for $30.
I believe Ana Nova might be a porn star… you mean “Anova”. (I have one!)
I have one- it’s great for things like steaks and fish, and less so for things like shrimp. We don’t end up using ours as much as I thought we would though; it’s something of a pain to set up and run vs just cooking a steak skillfully the old way. It is excellent for fish though, and surprisingly good for sausages.
It’s more of a fun culinary toy for me than a serious put-food-on-the-table kind of device; it’s not typically the kind of thing where you can just throw a meal together and use.
Words cannot express the love we have for our sous vide. We use it as often as possible, particularly for pork and chicken dishes. Last year we did our entire thanksgiving dinner in it over the course of a day or so- 28lb turkey, potatoes (sweet and mashed), cranberry jam, and all the veggies. Warmed everything up the day of, and voila- no muss, no fuss, no counter full of dirty dishes.
Agree about the ziplock bags- we had a food saver already, but the ziplocks work just as well, particularly for marinated items.
I love my sous vide. I probably use it most often for steak, but have had great results with short rib, fish, and even Thanksgiving turkey. Even vegetables like asparagus.
One nice thing is that if you are cooking for a holiday or dinner party, it takes out a lot of timing stress since most things you can cook +/- an hour and without being watched, and perfect every time.
Probably the most annoying thing about it is the multistage process. The bagging, the sous vide, and the browning.
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I have an Anova unit that is wifi and Bluetooth enabled.
My favorite thing is to get a couple of custom cut filet mignon (obscenely thick), sous vide them to rare, then quickly sear the outsides. Amazing!
ETA: recently did some lamb chops. Vacuum sealed them with their herbs, cooked to rare, then a quick sear on cast iron. Very nice!
I’m still doing it ghetto style, ziplock bags, a cooler, and a candy thermometer. I find it useful for meat cooked very rare, a whole tenderloin or prime rib, rack of lamb, or for something like a chuck roast that needs slow cooking. Otherwise I’m not finding it any better for good quality steaks or seafood. Turns out I like my pork at least medium-well so I’m not using it for that, but it’s all been loin and tenderloin so far and I’d like to try out some chops. I can see it used for great advantage by restaurants to cook and hold meats prior to finishing for serving. I tried vegetables but didn’t get anything better than typical cooking techniques.
I’d say that anyone considering buying a sous-vide circulator probably ought to give the ghetto sous-vide method (also called "beer cooler sous vide) a whirl for the most common dishes- steak and fish, and see if they’re impressed.
If so, then look into the various devices. If not, then don’t bother. Having a circulator isn’t going to make a better steak than a beer cooler, hot water and a ziploc bag. It just expands what you can cook sous-vide.
I love mine but so far I’ve only cooked meat in it.
For Thanksgiving I deboned the turkey breast, seasoned all sides, and then tied the pieces together into a turkey log. The dark meat I roasted as per normal. That came out super great.
Last night I made a cross-rib roast, 8 hours @ 135F. It came out a nice medium to medium-rare. Very tasty!
I also have the Anova immersion unit. I’ve mostly used it for steaks and chicken breasts. I’ve also found it useful for reheating. You can reheat to 140 without cooking the food further, which is sometimes nice.
My corollary to the beer cooler sous vide is the Jumbo thermos fish re-heater. I love fish and shellfish. I HATE reheated fish and shellfish from the microwave. And that’s my only option at work. And co-workers hate-- and rightly so-- the smell left behind someone who is rubberizing their fish in the microwave. So I have a jumbo sized thermos style mug from a local convenience store. When I cook fish at night, I put the 2nd helping in a food saver custom bag and bring it to work. 30-45 minutes before I eat, I pop the bag in the thermos and fill the thermos from the heated water tap off the coffee maker. 15-20 minutes later, I dump the water out and fill it again. The resulting fish looks, smells, and tastes like it’s fresh off the stove, grill, or out of the oven.
Another Anova user here. By far, I use it most for burgers. Some ground chuck, a sprinkle of onion powder and pepper, into the bath for an hour at 145. Lazy-Cook’s-Protip: I wind up skipping the sear as often as not. I made some lamb burgers a couple weeks ago that I did sear over lump and some hickory, just fantastic even reheating with a healthy shake of cumin and slice of feta.
Carrots and asparagus are great if you’ve never tried them. I just read that beets turn out really well so that’s on my list.
I don’t have a vacuum sealer and I don’t trust ziplocks for more than a couple hours so I haven’t tried any longer cooks (beef ribs, especially) yet. I use this enough that I’m starting to come around to justifying the investment.
The Anova unit has a $99 Black Friday special coming up.
The Anova is $99 right now as a Black Friday sale. Recommend picking one up as it’s about as good a deal as you’re going to get for a SV device.