Great cooking results. Design needs some work.
I’m overall very happy with my purchase of the Sous Vide Supreme. It does what it promises — it silently hits temperatures precisely and holds them there. Other reviewers have already stated the obvious (no vacuum sealer included, etc..) but there are enough niggling problems with the physical design that they’re worth calling out for potential buyers to be aware of.
First, the lid design is disappointing. It’s a flimsy 1-ply piece of stamped stainless steel. For a tool intended to hold temperatures, it should really be insulated to give the most stable temperature possible while consuming the least energy — and the SVS folks know this, as they’ve included an “insulating mat” with the lid. It’s essentially a cheap piece of rubber like you’d find in a mousepad from 1995, cut to the shape of the lid. It doesn’t sit flat and it looks/feels very cheap for a $400+ appliance.
The lid also is completely flat on the underside. During regular operation, a great deal of…
Fantastic Small Appliance – Easy Gourmet Cooking for Busy Home Chefs
Our interest in sous vide cooking grew from being lucky enough sporadicly to sample food prepared this way in a few restaurants. Nothing as fancy as The French Laundry, but still wonderful, memorable food. The sous-vide process is very easy for any cook – just season the raw meat or veggies; seal in a vacuum bag (not included, but our FoodSaver works great); cook at the listed temperature for the recommended time; sear to put a nice color on the outside of the food, if desired. The advantage of the method is that as the food is sealed in a bag, it loses very little moisture during cooking. Most items take about 1-2 hours with zero supervision, but you can sous vide cook them months in advance and then freeze them. When you want a delicious meal, just defrost and sear them to rewarm and finish, making the method a really nice time-saver for midweek gourmet cooking. The food is reliably cooked to perfection, incredibly moist and totally delicious. Timing is very forgiving, so it is…
Good execution for a great technique
You should be careful to distinguish in reviews the commentary on the product itself and the technique of sous vide. Sous vide is simply awesome, and far better chefs than I have proven that. If you haven’t experienced it yet, you should spend the $400 on a couple of trips to the French Laundry or Alinea or WD-50 instead. If you already have, then you know what you’re looking for, and the real question is how close does this device come to giving the results obtained by a Fischer Scientific immersion circulator.
I was little concerned about whether the device could maintain temperature without circulation. After playing with it and an thermometer, I can tell you that there is some gradient, but it was about a degree, which honestly is perfectly acceptable for food. After bringing it to 135 F and turning it off, 15 hours later it was 95 F, so the insulation works well. Essentially that’s all there is to a sous vide machine. I can tell you that my poached eggs are…
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