Sous Vide Cooking

I am currently gathering information about culinary instituts, universities, courses where you can learn sous vide cooking. Wherever you are located, feel free to post a comment with the country, name of the culinary school, internet site link…I’ll group this information and make a specific page about it in some weeks.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Jean-François

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Last time I cooked salmon sous vide I tried two different temperatures and cooking times, one to pasteurize the fish and one to cook a “mi-cuit” salmon. Baldwin guide mentions different tables for pasteurized fish. One for lean and one for fatty fish. Even though I knew salmon was a fatty fish I suddenly asked myself if a Bream or a Halibut were a lean or a fatty fish. I searched on internet and found interesting to share this information with you.

Low Fat Fish

Middle Fat Fish & Shell Fish

Fatty Fish

Jean-François

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Good news for sous vide enthusiast who are not comfortable with the English language. Douglas Baldwin “Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking” has been translated en French and German by Addélice. This guide is therefore available in 4 languages (incl. Portuguese).

We are also waiting for the launch of addélice immersion circulator (the Swid) that should be vailable in some days (addélice postponed several time the launch of the Swid but told me some days ago that it should be available within one week. For the record, the Swid should be at EUR 449 incl VAT and sending costs! 

Jean-François

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Addélice twitted yesterday and mentioned some new information about their immersion circulator to be released mid-August.

• Microprocessor controlled
• PID temperature control
• Precision ≤ 0.2ºC
• heating power 2.000 Watt
• Timer function
• Overheating protection and low water level protection
• Acoustic and optical alert
• Circulation pump

Addélice mentions on its online shop that their sous vide appliance will be price competitive…

Here a picture taken from their site supposed to represent Addélice immersion circulator…maybe a protection grid?

Jean-François

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I am now very happy and relieved to jump to the next step of my experimentation consisting in trying all kind of sous vide cookers and accessories. Cooking sous vide with a gas stove, a halogen stove or a basic water bath (bain-marie) was such a pain in the neck! The main advantage of this was the cost of the equipments, close to zero (except for the vacuum machine) but it was really hell to maintain a constant temperature.

Let’s try a PID controller!
But first what is a PID (Proportion, Intregral, Derivative) temperature controller?

The PID temperature controller is the most sophisticated controller available providing exceptional performance at a surprisingly low price. But what is it, really?

Here are 4 articles that should help you understand it!

The first link is the most accessible information I could find about a PID controller. Let’s call it “PID controller explained for dummies”. This fantastic video was made by robot geeks and explains speed PID controller. You just have to replace into your mind speed by temperature! This video is a bit long to download but if you would have to watch one piece of information about the PID controller in your life time I would strongly suggest you to watch this video!

This second link is giving a little more information about temperature PID controller (still understandable for an average intelligent brain).

 Here are 2 links that I would recommend for people who are really interested in tuning PID controllers. In other words, don’t even dare clicking on these links  if your are not a scientist!

Sous vide cooking with a rice cooker paired with a temperature PID controller.

A rice cooker or other heating appliance will cycle on and off, causing fairly wide temperature fluctuations. To avoid this some people pair a rice cooker with a PID controller. The PID controller has a thermo-sensor that is inserted into the rice cooker water. You set the PID device to a certain temperature, and the PID will control the amount of electricity that activates the heater, thus keeping the water temperature at a constant.

Although other heating appliances can also work, the simple rice cooker seems best suited to work with the PID device for sous vide applications. You must buy a rice cooker that has a basic mechanical on and off switch. Don’t purchase an expensive sophisticated rice cooker, it will probably not work with the temperature PID controller.

What are the temperature PID controllers available on the market for sous vide cooking purposes?

Traceable Temperature Controller

Auber Instruments

SousVideMagic 1500B form Fresh Meal Solutions

I purchased the SousVideMagic 1500B as it seems to be the most popular one. Feedback of people who purchased it is excellent. The cost for this temperature PID controller is USD 169 plus approx. USD 25 shipping costs to Europe (USD 99 if you don’t have the patience to wait, therefore you’ll get it within 3 days with Fedex).
For non North American users an input power cord and an adaptor to the socket of local standard will have to be purchased separately.

To sum up, the global cost for my SousVideMagic temperature PID controller is:

• SousVideMagic 1500B: USD 169 + USD 25 = USD 194 incl. sending
• Custom duties: EUR 35
• Basic rice cooker: EUR 45
• Input power cord and socket adaptor: approx EUR 16.

Grant total (1 EUR = 1.4 USD): approx. EUR 234 (USD 327)

I sould receive my SousVideMagic tomorrow. I’ll give you my first comments as soon as possible!

Jean-François

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