Cooking & Baking

Tab

(11,093 posts) Wed Aug 7, 2013, 05:28 PM Aug 2013

Oooooh... gimme

The New $199 Sansaire Sous-Vide Circulator is the Solution We've Been Waiting For

With the debut of the SousVide Supreme four years ago, sous-vide cooking—the process of cooking foods in precisely temperature-controlled water baths in sealed bags—hit the mainstream. Sort of.

The technique has been used by chefs and the food service industry for many years now. Initially, as a method of maintaining consistency in cooked products, and, in the last decade, as a means of achieving new textures and flavors that were previously unattainable using conventional techniques. (Read up a bit more about the basics of sous-vide cooking here).

The problem for home cooks has spanned familiarity, price, convenience, and design quality. Familiarity is slowly being solved as more and more advocates of the process teach the basics. Price, convenience, and design quality are bigger issues.

Scott Heimendinger, the Director of Applied Research behind Modernist Cuisine, thinks he might have the solution: The Sansaire, a new all-in-one sous-vide solution that is designed to work in any container and retails at just $199.

It's not for sale yet, but they've just launched a kickstarter campaign to roll out their first production run. You can make a donation and pre-order one for $179.

Is it worth the dough? We got our hands on the first working prototype to test it out. We cooked everything from steaks to eggs to slow-braised short ribs to put it through its paces.

In terms of functionality, it operates very similarly to the $1,000+ Polyscience models. You stick the base of the device into any vessel filled with water, turn it on, and adjust the target temperature. The unit immediately begins circulating water with a pump, while heating it to your specified temperature, with a precision level of 1/10th of a degree (you can switch between °C and °F).