Sous Vide Cooking

While checking if the Roner Compact has or not a PID temperature controller I found an interesting information provided by ICC Roner in one of its manual (pages 2 and 3). This document is in Spanish and I hope I did not make any translation mistakes (see the table below). Roner gives some information about the core temperature of some products and the time it should remains at this temperature.

ICC Roner’s information about core temperature and time while sous vide cooking

I have now the feeling that I have to take an interest in waterproof hypodermic probes…

Anyway, thank to Karl who was right. Roner compact water bath does not contain any PID temperature controller. Therefore the main differences between my basic water bath and a Roner Compact water bath are: a water pump, the heating element of Roner Compact is located in the water, a security water sensor, a temperature probe located directly in the water.

Jean-François

As you can see the control panel of my water bath is basic with a drainage valve, a switch on/off and a thermostat.

Contrary to an expensive water bath such as Roner Compact that costs at least EUR 2,000 my water bath doesn’t have a pump, the heating element is located under the container and is therefore not in direct contact with water. Above all my water bath do not benefit from a temperature controller.

I definitely don’t have the perfect cooker for cooking sous vide but let’s try anyway!

For my first try I took a 500g piece of beef I cooked at 58°C (136.4°F) for 1:30 . Please watch out to food safety and read this information.

It took really long before the water of the water bath reached 58°C (136.4°F), approx. 40 minutes, although I started with warm water. The temperature range was similarly to the one achieved with a halogen stove.

For food safety and flavor purposes (Maillard reaction) I seared the meat some minutes and ate the meat immediately.

The texture of the meat was amazing but a bit to raw for my liking. I think next time I’ll put it a little bit longer, 2 hours for example.

To sum up I would say my first try was a success and I really enjoyed this meat. I think I’ll try a couple of timeS cooking sous vide with this water bath before trying another kind of cooker.

Jean-François

I purchased some days ago a water bath (Bain Marie) on ebay for EUR 103 incl VAT and sending. The trademark of this waterbath is Bartscher. A friend of mine told me it could be a good compromise between an electrical stove and a cooking controler. I am a bit sceptical about the efficiency of this water bath and I would be surprised if it works better than a halogen stove. I’ll try tomorrow and keep you inform!

Addendum June 2012 : unfortunately this site doesn’t exist anymore. Therefore I have decided to create my own page that includes tests and reviews of the main sous vide tools of the market.

I was happy to discover some days ago that someone already made the laborious work consisting in comparing immersion circulator prices on the net. Thanks to Molecularcuisine.org who dated this work March 20, 2009.

This comparison is available on a Wiki platform provided by Molecularcuisine.org so that you are free to amend it anytime.

The results of this work shows that the two cheapest immersion circulators available on the net are:

• Fisher Scientific Polystat 36: USD 886 excl. sending costs and VAT (Fisher.com)
• Julabo ED: EUR 852 excl. sending cost and VAT (Laboland.com)

No need to indicate these 2 immersion circulators are the most basics available on the market sold without timer and grid protection.

Jean-François

While checking if a gas or a halogen stove could be used for sous vide cooking at low and constant temperature we used the Mastrad digital thermometer. I didn’t purchase Mastrad external probe to determine the core temperature of a product but to verify the temperature of the water contained in the pan only. For this specific purpose Mastrad probe was perfect except that I learned to one’s cost that Mastrad’s probe is not waterproof! I didn’t know that you should not immerge the probe above a specific point indicated on the picture below.

Then my thermometer became crazy and indicated a temperature 30°C higher than real. This dysfunction remained until I put the probe (including the metal cable) to soak in demineralized water for 30 minutes and dried the probe in the oven. Mastrad probe works perfectly again.

Jean-François