Copying description from a previous post.
Have been wanting one. Back to the usual $69 discounted price. No need to pay a subscription to use the app unlike Anova.
CamelCamelCamel.
Good to hear!
Pork belly will be one of my first ones to try. Can't wait to see how tender it is.
Its next level - I went with 24 hours at 75C, uncovered in the fridge for the day, then did a fan grill in the oven to crisp up the top. Bloody delicious
Did you pierce the skin? Or was the fridge enough to remove moisture to make the skin super crispy?
@stormtrooper-c: Scored it before throwing it in the sous vide. Probably could have gone in the fridge overnight rather than ~10 hours, but was pretty damn good
What temp and for how long did you have it in the oven to get it nice and crispy? Sounds like something i got to try!
@Crazy-Eyes: Wrapped it in foil so just the skin was exposed, put the oven as hot as it would go and pre-heated it for about 20 mins. Threw the meat in there for about 20-30 mins and then swapped it over to fan grill. While that was going on I heated the saved fat from the sous vide process and once it was as hot as I could get it I pulled the pork out and poured the fat onto it to crisp the skin.
I'll note that it didnt quite work out the way I wanted. I should have let it dry out more in the fridge (overnight), let the pork warm in the oven as it preheated (rather than leaving it on the counter to come up to room temp while the oven pre-heated) and the pouring of the oil didn't do the fancy puffy skin thing I wanted it to do, but I think that could have been due to the pork not being dry enough (24 hour fridge might fix that), or the entire bit of meat not being fully warmed through? Either way it was (profanity) incredible, but there's some room for improvement if I want to turn it into a longer process.
@Intoxicoligist: Very thin coat of oil and you don't want oil pooling so if you can put the slab of pork on an angle that helps. Pouring boiling water is a pre-cook thing and wont do anything once it's already cooked. The trick to crispy skin is to remove moisture so I would wrap the meat leaving the skin exposed and leave in the fridge for a night or two, reheat to temp in oven, then blast under the griller.
Try SV pork belly grilled over charcoal, fknnnnn amazing.
Sploosh
Yeah I been comparing steaks with this to well done with steaks my brother fries and there's no competition, sous vide is way more tender for well done. Not that I do it well done for myself usually.
Your brother fries his steaks? Like deep fries?
On a frying pan.
if you're into making ramen at home you can make a rolled chashu the same way. After its cooled in the fridge can slice up and freeze in individual portions.
whole chicken with the right set of spices (choose your flavour) is pretty good too
I thought slow cooking chicken would be dangerous with possible salmonella?
This isn't slow cooking.
Undercooked (time or temp) is dangerous. It's why sous vide is viable.
I don't know the exact numbers, but think about the difference between having to get chicken to 70c internal on a hot pan for 10 minutes to kill X amount of salmonella - you can hold at 50c internal for 2 hours to kill the same X amount of salmonella.
https://douglasbaldwin.com/ has a lot of easy to read info about cooking like this and food safety with lots of academic references if that's your sort of thing.
Sous vide lets you hold at very specific temperatures, as long as you factor in how thick the meat is to let the heat get all the way in.
MinuteFood has a great video on this.
do you have to finish it in the oven? sounds like it would yield sloppy chicken. genuinely interested, as i have one of these and never thought to use it with chicken
I've never done a whole chicken, but I've done breasts and wings. Depending on the temprature you cook at you can go from "firm and springy" all the way to "slow cooked falling apart" textures.
These work just as good as Anova's that cost 6x the price
I have an older Anova and it’s pretty great. I’m sure this is too.
Unlike most kitchen appliances this gets a good workout. Because you chuck meat in a ziplock with rosemary and oil or butter, come back in two hours, give it a quick fry and it’s amazing. No real cleanup.
This sounds very compelling. Really need easy meals with little cleanup. Do you have any good guidance on a start place for recipes etc to upskill?
But you can't close the lid. Pressure pot is better for slow cooking pork belly and legs?
Pressure pot would probably cook it to the same tenderness in less time?
I have both, it's for different types of cooking. Slow or fast and hard
Are we still talking sous vide?
Spring for the 300. It’s IP rated.
I killed my old faithful 100 with all the steam from dulche de leche.
What's the difference between the Inkbird ISV-200W and the 100W?
Think about the 300!
Thought about it and passed. Does the same thing for $30 more, the temperatures you're using shouldn't give steam off.
At 75c (I was reheating brisket) plenty of water vapour is given off which goes directly upward and in and over the stick unit. It actually spazzed out my Anova until the unit dried out.
what about for vacuum sealer
Yes, where to get vacuum sealer?
Can I use a normal ziplock with this?
I'm not keen on paying more for plastic and a vacuum. Plus, bigger footprint is I have to keep buying more plastic bags.
What about the people who talk about microplastics?
I just use ziplock bags and clip them to the side of the pot with pegs. Never had an issue.
Which ziplock bags do you use?
Nothing special, just some glad bags or equivalent.
No one, and I mean NO one should worry about plastics at all. especially heated with your food.
Can you please justify this a little further? While the 'we eat a credit card's worth of micro plastics a week' trope has been debunked, micro plastics are still a very real concern for health, from what I've learned. We're only beginning to understand their impact on our bodies.
You get more microplastics from having paint on your walls or using glass bottles (they contain plastic) than a plastic bag.
Any references?
You'll be limited to shorter cooks so stuff like steaks. The ziplock edges will fail on long cooks.
Who doesn’t like some plastic in their food.
It's more crunchy also! In China they mix plastic in with some of the deep fried meats to improve mouth feel. Works a treat.
Hot tip, get a cheap eski from kmart, put a hole in the top, and now you have a large insulated vessel to cook with. I've done 6kg of pulled pork for 24hrs at 80deg and a little stick sous vide like this handles it fine. The insulation means it uses way less power trying to hold temperature.
This is a great method. Made sure that 80 degrees stays very stable in a plastic insulated container. :)
Can you please show us a photo of yours?
I need to see it to understand.
Nice! Thanks OP!
YMMV but mine broke after ~4 months of maybe weekly use. Amazon gave me a refund but I wouldn’t recommend this
Did they photoshop out the cord in all the photos?
I can't think of a better way to infuse microplastics into your foods! Great find.
I mean unless you've completely cut out takeaway and dining out and you've removed all synthetic materials from your home then I think the occasional SV cook is going to be a drop in the ocean. You've also got quite a bit you can do in an SV that doesn't involve a vac sealed bag, oil infusions, soft boiled eggs, yoghurt, etc, etc. I wouldn't advise incorporating vac sealed cooks in your weekly diet but you don't need to for this to be a handy tool to have around for the home cooking enthusiast.
Agreed. I would argue that keeping high heat while circulating in a plastic bag for hours using this machine is quite a bit worse than dumping 80 degree food into a plastic container that will most certainly leech microplastics into the food but once cooled down, most the risk is gone.
Yeah fair enough but I also think there's a lot more heating in plastic going on in commercial kitchens than just when your food gets dumped in the container. SV did originate in restaurants.
@Cheaplikethebird: Yes true. But I am just controlling what I can. This device is very high risk IMHO. Those plastic bags in ziplock are PET and not made for heating btw.
One of the very best ways to get plastic regularly is to use that black plastic utencils for cooking. :) Some of those are recycled plastic.
Unbeatable for making AVB edibles for the cheapskate stoners among us.
always wanted one of these!
Are there reusable silicone pouches or something to use with these? Not super keen on cooking food in plastic..
It's a good thought. Silicone is thought to be safer although apprently 'cheap' silicone can break into micro particles. I am unsure of the health effects but there can sometimes be additives to silicone. In theory, food grade silicone is quite resistant to breakup if you use it within it's temp tolerances. The real issue is choosing 100% food grade within the myriad of choices. We all know it's made in China under varying QC.
One other consideration is to make sure there are no major plastic components in contact with the water (within this device). Just because you are continuously circulating the hot water threw it for hours etc….
These are great, love mine and a good price.
And thank you for not starting this off with long time lurker, first time poster please be gentle..
:P
Love mine. Bargain. Great for steaks and salmon, chicken breast too. Take the guesswork out.
Purchased this exact unit back on 31 Jan this year according to Amazon. Have done a variety of steaks cuts and chicken breast. Yet to really screw anything up as it's basically impossible to. Would be good to give to your kid before they go off to Uni/live away from home as all you do it put in the settings you want and let the unit do the work for you. I just ask Chat GPT for marinade recipes and cooking times and go off that. It's yet to let me down on this type of thing.
Pros:
* Hands free cooking. You spend 2 minutes putting the ingredients into the bag then walk away for 2 hours
* You can cook as much meat as you can fit in your bags which is good for bigger families or meal prep
* Cooking things of varying thickness like chicken breast which could be 2" thick at one end and 1cm thick at the other is perfect for the Sous Vide technique
Cons:
* You need to buy multiple size medical grade silicone snap lock bags which adds to the cost (about $50-60 for 2 bags, a big and small one I found)
* Cleaning the herbs and oil remnants out of the corners of the bag and along the snap lock seal is tedious and I find sometimes the used bag gets left in the sink for a couple of days coz no one wants to deal with it (not time consuming just a bit gross and tedious).
For $70 I'd recommend this to nearly anyone. It's about the size of a stick blender ad fairly streamlined shape so stuffing it in a draw in the kitchen is fairly doable regardless of how little space you have remaining.
Do you have a link to the silicone bags you found?
This is a direct link to one of the bags I got. I own 2 of them in varying sizes but I've never used the smaller one to be honest so I'd say start with a fairly large one and get a smaller one after if the original one is too big.
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01DZQT9CU?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_f…
If the link doesn't work the title of the listing is Stasher Sandwich Bag 828ml Capacity(Clear) - Reusable Silicone Zip Lock Food Storage Bag For Travel And Kitchen Use | 19 x2x18cm |100% Pure Platinum Food-Grade Silicone | Non-Toxic Bag"
Can anyone comment on the latest science around microplastic leeching using high temp sous videos? BPA Free is a bit of a marketing scam IMO as there are a lot of other molecules aside from BPA that are potentially hazardous especially at high temp for longer times.
This! 👆
Any uses for this outside cooking?
new to cheese making It would still be considered "cooking" but I used it for managing temp when making cheese (put a saucepan of milk in a water bath).
Great idea, needed a reason to buy this and now I have one!
Got mine today. Never cooked with one. Chicken best to start with? Apparently bone in and skin on is best what I read for flavor.
Chicken breast (small or large doesn't really matter),
One large spoon of terriyaki marinade and one large spoon of cooking sake.
61 degrees 1 hour and 30 minutes
ZIplock lock bag, use the water dispalcement method to get rid of the rid.
No need for vacuum sealer..
perfect every time..
You can put a large spoonful or any marinade in the bag… and it ends up a delicous sauce
I've pretty much, gone with the terriyaki, soy and honey, korean BBQ beef marinade, soy and pepper, anding cooking sake, seems to work really really well, as the sous vide, doen't kill thel alcohol… You start getting versions of drunken chicken, which is nice cold..
Seems to keep for up to two weeks in the fridge after sous vide… so long you dont open the zip lock bag
over two weeks, the textures goes an bit weird. and begins to get a funny smell .. still fine to eat (so far)… but it usually ends up and my dogs treat / dinner instead..
Thanks kelvin. Gonna give it a go.
Chicken turned out very juicy.
Tried with a steak. Just a trial. 60c for 2 hours and then seared it. (Wife doesn't like too pink). This was from same cut that was bit chewy last time we cooked it. Cooked same way as other times and come out great. Must be a bad cut.
Either way. Using this it came out super tender and lots of flavors. Almost too much pepper came through as had some in bag. Bit excited to try more now lol.
What about microplastics?
Any good recipe sites?
I own this exact unit and purchased it at the start of the year. I've cooked mainly chicken breast and various forms of steak with it. I just use Chat GPT to tell me how long to cook each meat type. I also ask if for a marinade but often with boof I just go garlic and butter and with chicken its butter and rosemary/thyme. Just ask for multiple versions from GPT and choose what sounds the most appealing.
I don't see the benefit with sous vide. I've tried a steak at a friend's place and the texture just seemed a little different to me and not in a good way.
With steaks, you get a far better crust with a pan only vs sv + pan (= thin crust)
With pork belly, I don't see how it could be any better than using a properly prepared belly and following any of the methods all over YouTube. Comes out perfect everytime..
With chicken breast, mine are ready in under 15 mins, I just check internal temp for safety.
With all these traditional methods there's less work and less cleanup because you're not adding in an extra device.
Having said that, I'll consider getting one for science.
Just cooked a pork belly with this bad boy that my partner described as "literally the best pork belly I've ever had"
- So yeah they go ok