I like to play in the kitchen (my dream is to make crackling pork skin like at Meat and Bread), but I’ve yet to master the art/science of making soft juicy meat, especially chicken breasts. Sous-vide is essentially a water tank where you precisely control the temperature, and by cooking at low temperatures for long time (I’ve seen pork ribs recipes for 96 hours!) in theory you get your whole cut cooked to precisely the right point.
You can buy a sous vide device for around $150-$200 (at least two of them came from successful kickstarters), or you can build your own. I want to do this instructable (Sous vide cooker for less than $40). You do need a slowcooker (rice cookers probably also work), and it seems to work fine. This is a very simple hack, and although it’s not as cool as using an arduino, I think it has less chance of burning down my house. If anybody is interested in building one too, let me know and we can do a group order, and maybe a build night.
I’ve had amazing results(48hr Short Ribs) simply by using a large stock pot, and a thermometer on the stove, and monitoring the temperature.
My 9 year old son has stated that the short ribs I made were the best meal he has ever eaten. He is ultra picky.
This is a hack that I would be in on if you are trying to get a group buy for parts! But remember that you still need a vacuum sealer to accompany this rig!
I’ve heard that you can make do with ziploc bags (seal them in a pot of water to remove air), but they might leak chemicals. I think Walmart sells cheap vacuum sealers.
Definitely interested in a group buy. Last I checked the digital temperature controllers were $10-$15, and the rest of it is the box, so it would be pretty cheap.
Walmart does, and Costco has a good one. Same one I got on Craigslist.
The advantage of the Vacuum sealer is that you can pull marinades and Seasonings through the food. I’ve used the immersion method once to prove that this method of cooking works to my wife before she would authorise the expense of the vacuum sealer.
I’m interested. I’ve been thinking of hacking together a sous vide too, but with a different design than the one in the instructable. My plan is to use a picnic cooler as the vessel, and some sort of water circulation system. I have an inline water heater device (used for homebrewing I think) that could be repurposed. I was inspired after seeing this one on craiglist a couple days ago.
Anyway, I haven’t given it too much thought yet. Happy to discuss designs. Thanks for posting and motivating me to think about this some more.
I was originally planning to get/make a full tank version, but space is quite precious in our tiny appartment and I couldn’t justify getting another device. What I really like about this project, besides the cheap cost, is that you can adapt it to a rice cooker, and I already have one. It’s probably not as precise as an immersion circulator, but it doesn’t make sense to me to need 0.1 degree precision for something you leave 8+ hours cooking.
The problem with using these temperature controllers is they are dumb. Basicly when they detect that the temperature has gone over a certain level they turn off, when it gets too cold they turn on the heat. You get this temperature profile that looks like a sine wave.
This is NOT A PROBLEM for Sous-vide cooker as the meat won’t care about a 0.1C wave.
If you want to over engineer this simple project, you need a PID loop that creates a temperature profile that can react to the characteristics of your cooker, the amount of water, and the density of what you are cooking. To do this you need to reduce the difference of the wave of temperature differences. There is a ton of research on this topic.
Its pretty easy to copy from the research into PID loop and build a system with an arduino or similar microprocessor and a relay. It would cost about the same as the above digital thermostat temperature controller.
Looking around, you can also get them on amazon.ca(#1, #2) for around the same price, and a couple of bucks cheaper from aliexpress. All of those options ship from China, so 20-30 days delivery. There’s a couple from amazon.com that have amazon prime shipping, and I’d be willing to go to Point Roberts.
Thermostats with PID loops are about $30, but for maximum fun I’d probably start with this $3.50 thermostat board.
I think I’ll order the amazon.com option. Amazon suggested an ABS box to go with it, does anyone have any thoughts on enclosures for this kind of thing? Is ABS easy to cut?
ABS is easy to cut. Just be careful if you are drilling holes. My fond memories of making enclosures in electronics calls in Junior high was that if you pushed the drill too hard, they boxes like to crack, and grab on the the drill and spin with it.
You could design your own enclosure and 3d Print it.
On the software side, it has a beautifully over-engineered smartphone app which communicates with the device over bluetooth. Just uses a regular sawtooth thermostat algorithm — no PID.
I’d be in for that. I just need to get a compatible slow cooker. I’ve got one of those damned smart ones that would shut off and need to be reset if it was to lose power.
I grabbed my Vacuum sealer on CL. There could be a few on there. I think that I get more consistent results with vacumm sealed bags vs the immersion method. But the immersion method is cool for getting started to see if it’s for you. Some people don’t like the texture of different foods cooked with the sous-vide method.
I would like something a little larger than more slow cookers. The anova thing is good as it’s capacity is up to 5 gallons. People have used them coolers as vessels or large pails. I’ve found even a large stock pot can sometimes not be large enough if you are cooking for a larger group of people.
