The theory is that you use the water bath to slowly bring the entire hunk of meat to the exact temperature you want it - 130-140 for medium rare. Once it's done, you take it out and sear it over fire or in a screaming hot skillet. You still get the crust and the tastiness from the maillard reaction, but instead of having a ring of over-done meat and a perfect center that occurs otherwise, you have a perfectly cooked steak.

We'll see soon.

So you're just basically simmering a vacuum packed steak in water? Why do you need a $300 machine to do that? Seems to me that you could do it in a pot (cast iron, of course) on the stove.

In order to do it properly, you have to have very precise control of the water temperature. And most stoves, even on the lowest setting, won't keep a pot of water at only 130 degrees.

By my random measures of the water over the past hour, the sous vide has been within .8 degrees (according to my Thermapen) every time.

Temperature has to be too precisely controlled to do on a stove.

OMG

Ah, I see. I've never even heard of this before. I suppose a crock pot runs much higher than that as well.

Crock pots are definitely NOT precise.

Lol.
Posted via Mobile Device

Well yeah, that too. Most kitchen appliances other than an oven aren't thermostatically controlled, and I'm sure those vary quite a bit as well.

Some of them have a 'keep warm' setting on them, although I have no idea what temp that is but it's lower than the cooking temps.

Agreed

Sounds interesting. It's the exact same concept we use in semen processing, we use a waterbath to bring the semen extender to an exact temp of 102 degrees and then add the boar core and it keeps the sperm cells from being shocked. Then we slowly bring it down to 64 degrees for storage. The only difference is we don't sear it on both sides and then consume it. Well , there was that one time Frazod showed up for a kegger but I'm gonna keep that to myself .

I enjoy both cooking and baking. Yes, they are definitely different. As a cook, I don't measure anything and as a baker, I measure everything precisely. I am a cook first, but a lot of meals require a combination techniques, such as pizza, pot pies, and biscuits and gravy. I also take pride in doing the whole meal, including dessert. Plus fresh baked goods are delicious. So I bake and cook.

PID

Maybe this is why I like it with my chemical engineering background