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

SousVide Professional of Polyscience (Immersion Circulator)
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)

JF

Remember end August Fresh Meals Solutions announced the launch (end 2009) of the FreshMealsMagic.
In the meantime Frank Hsu (you secretive thing!) has put up the SousVideMagic 1500D for sale.

What is new with the SousVideMagic 1500D compared to the 1500 B/C versions?

• The power capacity has been raised from 2,000 W to 3,000 W
• 2 digit screens are now available (one for the temperature and one for the timer)
• Possibility to control the temperature of a large pot, up to 35 L

The price of te SousVideMagic 1500D is still very competitive USD 159!
For your information the global cost for the SousVideMagic 1500D to be sent to Europe should be around:

• SousVideMagic 1500D: USD 159 + USD 25 = USD 184 incl. sending to Europe
• Custom duties: EUR 35
• Basic rice cooker: EUR 45
• Input power cord and socket adaptor: approx EUR 16.

Grant total (1 EUR = 1.5 USD): EUR 218

Frank, what about the FreshMealsMagic Bubbler? When will you launch it?

Jean-François

I received several questions of people interested by the swid of addelice. Their main worry was to determine if the swid is for professional purposes or for home cooks. To all of them I replied and said that I am not a professional and therefore don’t know their expectations as a professional. I realized that I tried the swid in  3.5 litres and 8.5 litres pots only. The manual of the swid indicates that the stability of the temperature is optimized up to 20 litres.

I went inside my uncle cellar and found an Ikea plastic box (€ 3) that I filled with 20 litres water.

I had to face a problem with the plastic container which is very flexible. Attaching the swid with the clamp to the container was not possible as the swid was too heavy. Therefore I found a glass cutting board that was perfectly the hight of the container. I put this board between the plastic container and the clamp. This generated an excellent stability for the swid to be attached.

I set the swid at 55°C only because I am not realy trusting in the Ikea container that could melt or not resit to higher temperatures. The manual of the swid indicates the Adaptive PID controller (that assesses the amount of the water i n the pot) was optimized if the starting temperature is at least 15°C lower than the target temperature. It took 15 minutes to heat the water from 25°C to 55°C and, after 5 more minute,s the stability of the water bath was excellent.

I decided to make an addition test: immersing a bottle of cold water (3°C) simulating a cold pouch in a water bath.

It worked perfectly.

To sum up I confirm the swid thermal circulator can heat easily a 20 litres water bath.

Jean-François

Click here to view the embedded video.

Addélice confirmed the swid will be available this week.

Jean-François

I received the Swid this morning and had only time to take some pictures before leaving. I am very excited to share my first impressions about this sous vide appliance!

I was very surprised by the size and the weight of the Swid. I had to give back the Julabo EC that was borrowed to me during summer holidays and therefore I can’t show you pictures to compare the 2 appliances. Nevertheless I took some pics to compare the Swid with the SousVideMagic.

The Swid is compact and can be stored easily in one of your kitchen draws. This is an excellent point.
The casing is amazing, very soft and sensual to the touch. The protection grid is part of the whole metal structure of the Swid. For the record a metal grid is always coming as an option with the other immersion circulator such as Polyscience and Julabo…The Swid grid as a funny design with holes like bubbles carved in the metal.

I didn’t have time to try it so far but my first feeling about the swid is excellent. I’ll come back to you as soon as I have a little bit more time.

Jean-François

Sousvidecooking.com mentioned some weeks ago fresh news about next Fresh Meal Solutions’ PID controller called Freshmealsmagic!
Fresh Meals Solutions is well known for providing the most price competitive PID controller dedicated to sous vide at home. I purchased and tested Sousvidemagic 1500B. I have to admit I was very satisfied about it.

For your information the global cost for my SousVideMagic 1500B was:

• SousVideMagic 1500B: USD 169 + USD 25 = USD 194 incl. sending to Europe
• 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)

This article indicates next Fresh Meals Solutions’ equipment will keep the original appliance (the PID Controller) but add a new device: an immersible bubbler.

Fresh Meals Solutions replaces the rice cooker by the built-in immersible bubbler which has 2 functions: heating the water of any kind of container and stirring water so that the heat is spread evenly in the pot.

I personally think this is a great evolution of Fresh Meals Solutions products and expect this product being sold below 200 USD. The release of this new sous vide equipment has not been disclosed to date.

Jean-François

I was not really convinced after my first 42 hours sous vide pork ribs trial. The meat was tender but the texture was not as extraordinary as you can read it on some internet comments made by cooks who experimented 42 hours pork ribs.

I therefore decided to cook sous vide pork ribs for 72 hours.

The result was fantastic and, this time, I have to admit the texture of the pork really changed compared to the 42 hours one!  The meat was so tender that it was almost falling apart!

I have only one thing to say…just try it!

Jean-François

Their is now a long time that I wanted to cook sous vide salmon with Turbigomme and a probe. Viktor Stampfer book indicates salmon should be cooked 54°C for 10 minutes (core temperature) with a 56°C water bath. In my former experiment I raised the time to 14 minutes, as I didn’t have any equipment to take the core temperature.

This time I purchased Turbigomme on a French site called svdiffusion.com. Turbigomme is a gum made to be glued on a pouch. The gum is supposed to be airtight if you go through with a probe. I bought it 8.85 euros (3 meters) + 10.94 euros shipping costs! I was really mad when I reallized that SVdiffusion cheated on shipping costs. Who can believe that a 110 gr parcel could be sent for 11 euros!

Anyway I have now everything: 4 cm Turbigomme piece, a 3 mm Mastrad probe (I know this is very thick but this is a cheap thermometer – less than 40 euros) , 2 rubbers to fix the Turbigomme in the case the self-adhesive would not be enough and a nice piece of salmon.

I glued the Turbigomme on the pouch, strapped it with rubbers and pierced the all with my 3 mm probe. I didn’t face any issue during this process. The pouch did not look like “loosing vacuum”.

During the cooking process I was doubting if air was not coming inside the pouch as I could see some bubbles appearing. I was feeling more comfortable when I saw the other salmon vacuum pouch I made without Turbigomme was doing the same…

To sum up I would say my experiment was successful. 8 euros Turbigomme (plus shipping costs!) and a cheap thermometer (40 euros max.) where enough compared to those very expensive 1 mm hypodermic thermocouples probes (approx. 200 euros) and thermometer.

My only issue was the cooking time. The starting temperature of the salmon was 8°C and it took 30 minutes to reach 54°C core temperature. My water bath was set at 56°C. I decided to take the salmon of the water bath as soon as the core temperature reached 54°C (instead of waiting 10 more minutes as suggested by Viktor Stampfer).

I was afraid the salmon would be overcooked. It was the case…nothing to do with a raw appearance salmon!

Next time I’ll try 72 hours pork ribs. No need of an internal probe for this kind of cooking!!!

Jean-François

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jean-François

When surfing on the excellent CookingIssues.wordpress.com site I found a very interesting post about vacuum machines affecting textures of ingredients (click on the image bellow for a direct link to the post).
To sum up this post I would say that there is no need of a powerful vacuum machine for vegetable, fish and poultry (such as chicken). CookingIssues even says that for some ingredients such as chicken, the more you increase the amount of vacuum the more you affect the texture and the flavour! On the other hand CookingIssues did not mention any drawback regarding high amount of vacuum for meat.

Just to say that sous vide cooking at home is definitely possible with a cheap vacuum machine. Remember that the issue consisting in sealing sous vide a marinate can be solved by freezing the marinate.

Jean-françois