Sous Vide Cooking

This post is not related to sous vide cooking. Nevertheless I wanted to share with you a nice moment I enjoyed testing this strange delicacy.
A friend suggested us to taste the Whif at the end of a meal. I heard, few years ago, about the Whif concept but I didn’t have until now the opportunity to try this product. This is not a new product nevertheless this is still a curiosity that is appealing!
The idea is to inhale through the mouth fine chocolate powder particles (or other flavors) to obtain an intense taste but without the usual texture of chocolate in your mouth. This tidbit is an aerosol (they call it AeroShot) that is supposed to give you the pleasure of chocolate without the calories … on paper you call that an invitation to pure pleasure!

The design of the packaging and the product is attractive. We have tested several flavors, chocolate, chocolate mint and chocolate raspberry. Using the Whif is easy, it can be closed for multiple use.

In conclusion : This is definitely an interesting concept, it will set the mood of your party, but this is underwhelming. None of us has done “Whouaouu!” after testing the Whif. We are probably facing a significant cultural barrier with this product. For me it is impossible to dissociate, in mouth, the taste of chocolate from the texture of the chocolate.

Electrolux Design Lab is an annual global design competition open to industrial design students invited to present innovative ideas for household appliances of the future. The competition theme for 2011 is ‘Intelligent Mobility’. More than 1,300 entries from more than 50 countries were received in the frame of this competition.

On of the eight finalist of this competition has focus my attention: Adam Miklosi with his Sous-Vide Cell Cooker.

Lets cross one’s fingers for Adam who will present his sous vide cooker design concept to a final jury at a live event in London on 7th September at the Room Home Intelligence Conference.

JF

Coming soon a review of the most representative sous vide equipment of the market (from the left to the right) on this page :

- SousVide Professional of Polyscience (Immersion Circulator)
- Sous Vide Chef of Vac-Star (Immersion Cirdulator) Swid by Addélice (Immersion Circulator)
- Pearl by Julabo (Immersion Circulator)
- SousVideMagic by FreshMealsSolutions + Bubbler (PID Controler SVM-FMM1500D)
- SousVide Supreme (Unstired PID controlled water bath)
- Sous Vide Chef of Vac-Star (Immersion Circulator)

JF

Julabo is known as the European leader in manufacturing Constant Temperature Circulators used for research, science and industry with a reputation since 1967. Some weeks ago Julabo launched the Fusion Chef Immersion Circulator series devoted to sous vide.

I received some days ago the Pearl an Diamond immersion circulators and could not stand giving you my first impressions of these fabulous pieces of sous vide equipement. Today I’ll show you the Pearl and will post tomorrow about the Diamond. I’ll make a full review of these equipements during the next days and will share my conclusions with you.

The Pearl is a very simple and nice finish immersion circulator. The front display is composed of one screen and 4 buttons

Julabo’s immersion circulator is totally composed of stainless steal (casing and protection cage) which gives an excellent “feeling” about the machine.

The Pearl is sold with a protection grid which is a good point as protection grids are usually sold separatly at EUR 100 . The protection cage is fixed with 4 screws on the down part of the casing which is, in my opinion, not really practical if you want to proceed to a fast cleaning of the immersion circulator after each use.

Pearl’s price list is EUR 899 (excl. VAT?).

Main specifications :

• Temp. range: 20°C to 95°C
• Temp. stability: ± 0,03°C
• Power: 2,000W
• Circulation pump: 14 l/min
• Low-level water alarm
• Safety protection grid

JF

Today I saw an interesting piece of sous vide cooking equipment called Chef Touch System from KitchenAid. This concept gather a vacuum chamber sealer (a must in terms of vacuum that gives you the possibility to add liquids such as oil or a marinade in you pouch without destroying the machine) a shock freezer (very usefull and safe device if you want to keep meats in the freezer after you cooked it at low temperature) and a steam oven.

The concept of this all in one sous vide equipment gives an idea of what could look our kitchen in a close futur. The only weak point of this beautiful item is the steam oven. Why not replacing it with a PID controlled steared water bath?

Any idea of the price of the Chef Touch System and availability?

Information added October 23rd :

Thanks to N.Lavirotte, we now know the ChefTouch System is available since September in Europe. Official retail price are as follow :

-Vacuum chamber : 2,950 € incl. VAT
- Shock Freezer : 5,000 € incl. VAT
- Oven : steam ( 1,550 €) combi (1,850 € ) incl. VAT
- Kitchen high cabinet : 2,700 € incl. VAT

Total = 12,500 € (combi oven) incl. VAT (approx. 17,500 USD)

JF