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> Sous vide is still used quietly because it's a very practical technique with good results for certain protein preparations, and there are plenty of other usef

> Sous vide is still used quietly because it's a very practical technique with good results for certain protein preparations, and there are plenty of other useful bits of craft through the book. Similarly I guess mayo didn't exactly disappear from american cooking. I was reading the first part of your response and my mind was immediately going "but sous-vide is everywhere" It's one of those things that's just really useful. However it has fallen off slightly, i didn't think anyone is cooking eggs sous vide anymore.

alwa 2y ago
Except, of course, for Starbucks! [0] And imitation salmon eggs still use that calcium/alginate technique the modernist cooks called "spherification"... [1] [0] https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122116/single https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122116/single [1] https://sushiuniversity.jp/sushiblog/today-you-will-learn-how-to-easily-identify-artificial-salmon-roe/ https://sushiuniversity.jp/sushiblog/today-you-will-learn-ho...
jorvi 2y ago
Plus, y'know, leaching plastic into your food is generally ill-advised. It won't matter much if you don't eat out all the time / don't do sous-vide at home, but otherwise, yeah.. best avoided. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ > Results: Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable EA, including those advertised as BPA free. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than did BPA-containing products.
- entropie 2y ago
  You can do sous vide without plastics. For example I infuse oil via sous vide with biomaterial in weck jars.
  - kjs3 2y ago
    Yeah...what a weird derail. My sous vide has a small maybe 3"x0.5" plastic cap at the end and rest is stainless steel. I could have gotten a different one without the plastic I'm sure (maybe more expensive?), but I can read the science and be reasonably sure I'm not going to die horribly from that much exposure. Stainless steel or aluminum[1] pot and you're blissfully plastic-death free. [1] I shouldn't have said that...the 'aluminum pots give you Alzheimers' crowd could descend at any moment.
    - Wistar 2y ago
      It’s not the SV circulator but the plastic vacuum bags folks are most worried about.
      - kjs3 2y ago
        Which you don't have to use either, but that makes more sense.
        Wistar 2y ago
        It is hard to not use plastic vacuum bags for sous vide. Although there are re-usable silicon bags, such as stasher, they are — personal experience here — not very good for sous vide.
        kjs3 2y ago
        Yes, I too have used a couple of different silicon bags as alternates. The stashers are barely usable, and the cheaper but more sous vide friendly are ok but are hard to clean if you're trying to reuse them. But is it about the heat transfer and stable temp, so anything that keeps what your cooking completely in liquid and can tolerate thermal expansion should work, right?
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Or you could not worry about it, like most people do, and be just fine.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Or think they're fine, and then their attempts at having kids decades later take longer or fail completely, and they never connect the two. Hard to know which.
    - loki49152 2y ago
      - their attempts at having kids decades later take longer or fail completely Isn't that normal when you try to have kids "decades later"?
tptacek 2y ago
Circulator eggs never made a whole lot of sense, because you already have a reference temperature to work from and so cooking any number of them is just a matter of setting a timer (do what the Ideas in Food people do and steam them). I can't remember the last time I circulated a steak. But we did a rib roast for Christmas, and I did that in the circulator, in advance, "for insurance purposes", and then cooked it off in a ripping (toaster) oven on the day. There is no better way to prepare sausages. I would replace my Anova circulator immediately if it broke, simply so I can keep going to Paulina Market, buying a couple of every sausage, circulating them all, and keeping them in the fridge/freezer for ready-to-go meals.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  I still poach eggs in the shell in my Anova Precision Oven often. The 13 minute egg is pretty unbeatable. I think the decline in sous vide use in commercial kitchens is largely just because befuddled health regulators pushed everyone toward CVAPs, which do the same thing without the plastic. Now that I’ve got the APO, I cook nearly everything in it. I wish I could get a regular oven-sized version.
  - bbatha 2y ago
    Miele makes wall combi ovens that are standard sized. Well they lose some cooking volume for the steam components.
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      Thank you, those are awesome. I'm stuck with freestanding at the moment but may build a house soon and I would for sure get these!
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    The APO is new to me. Looks interesting. Can it really “sous vide” a steak? Does it brown it too?
    - 2y ago
chaorace 2y ago
It's funny that you mention eggs because there's actually been a recent paper regarding sous vide, soft-boiling, and achieving the "ideal" egg texture through a novel boiling process (novel to me, anyway) which they've opted to call "periodic cooking": https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00334-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00334-w There's a lot of cool diagrams which I'd encourage skimming that link for, but here's the basic rundown: the goal of the described process is to achieve a creamy yolk like what would be produced via sous vide whilst eliminating the unpleasant jammy eggwhite texture characteristic of that process. The recipe involves 30 minutes of carefully transferring an egg back and forth between two vessels repeatedly: one boiling, one room-temperature. You do that 16 times in exact two-minute intervals in order to achieve the "perfect" egg -- very simple and convenient for the modern home-cook in a hurry! Anyway... you can watch this guy on youtube make it so that you may eat some other, more sufferable meal more vicariously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahGGanfPDJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahGGanfPDJw

alwa 2y ago

Except, of course, for Starbucks! [0] And imitation salmon eggs still use that calcium/alginate technique the modernist cooks called "spherification"... [1] [0] https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122116/single https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122116/single [1] https://sushiuniversity.jp/sushiblog/today-you-will-learn-how-to-easily-identify-artificial-salmon-roe/ https://sushiuniversity.jp/sushiblog/today-you-will-learn-ho...

jorvi 2y ago

Plus, y'know, leaching plastic into your food is generally ill-advised. It won't matter much if you don't eat out all the time / don't do sous-vide at home, but otherwise, yeah.. best avoided. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ > Results: Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable EA, including those advertised as BPA free. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than did BPA-containing products.

entropie 2y ago
You can do sous vide without plastics. For example I infuse oil via sous vide with biomaterial in weck jars.
- kjs3 2y ago
  Yeah...what a weird derail. My sous vide has a small maybe 3"x0.5" plastic cap at the end and rest is stainless steel. I could have gotten a different one without the plastic I'm sure (maybe more expensive?), but I can read the science and be reasonably sure I'm not going to die horribly from that much exposure. Stainless steel or aluminum[1] pot and you're blissfully plastic-death free. [1] I shouldn't have said that...the 'aluminum pots give you Alzheimers' crowd could descend at any moment.
  - Wistar 2y ago
    It’s not the SV circulator but the plastic vacuum bags folks are most worried about.
    - kjs3 2y ago
      Which you don't have to use either, but that makes more sense.
      - Wistar 2y ago
        It is hard to not use plastic vacuum bags for sous vide. Although there are re-usable silicon bags, such as stasher, they are — personal experience here — not very good for sous vide.
        kjs3 2y ago
        Yes, I too have used a couple of different silicon bags as alternates. The stashers are barely usable, and the cheaper but more sous vide friendly are ok but are hard to clean if you're trying to reuse them. But is it about the heat transfer and stable temp, so anything that keeps what your cooking completely in liquid and can tolerate thermal expansion should work, right?
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Or you could not worry about it, like most people do, and be just fine.
- lmm 2y ago
  Or think they're fine, and then their attempts at having kids decades later take longer or fail completely, and they never connect the two. Hard to know which.
  - loki49152 2y ago
    - their attempts at having kids decades later take longer or fail completely Isn't that normal when you try to have kids "decades later"?

tptacek 2y ago

Circulator eggs never made a whole lot of sense, because you already have a reference temperature to work from and so cooking any number of them is just a matter of setting a timer (do what the Ideas in Food people do and steam them). I can't remember the last time I circulated a steak. But we did a rib roast for Christmas, and I did that in the circulator, in advance, "for insurance purposes", and then cooked it off in a ripping (toaster) oven on the day. There is no better way to prepare sausages. I would replace my Anova circulator immediately if it broke, simply so I can keep going to Paulina Market, buying a couple of every sausage, circulating them all, and keeping them in the fridge/freezer for ready-to-go meals.

mattmaroon 2y ago
I still poach eggs in the shell in my Anova Precision Oven often. The 13 minute egg is pretty unbeatable. I think the decline in sous vide use in commercial kitchens is largely just because befuddled health regulators pushed everyone toward CVAPs, which do the same thing without the plastic. Now that I’ve got the APO, I cook nearly everything in it. I wish I could get a regular oven-sized version.
- bbatha 2y ago
  Miele makes wall combi ovens that are standard sized. Well they lose some cooking volume for the steam components.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Thank you, those are awesome. I'm stuck with freestanding at the moment but may build a house soon and I would for sure get these!
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  The APO is new to me. Looks interesting. Can it really “sous vide” a steak? Does it brown it too?
  - 2y ago

chaorace 2y ago

It's funny that you mention eggs because there's actually been a recent paper regarding sous vide, soft-boiling, and achieving the "ideal" egg texture through a novel boiling process (novel to me, anyway) which they've opted to call "periodic cooking": https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00334-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00334-w There's a lot of cool diagrams which I'd encourage skimming that link for, but here's the basic rundown: the goal of the described process is to achieve a creamy yolk like what would be produced via sous vide whilst eliminating the unpleasant jammy eggwhite texture characteristic of that process. The recipe involves 30 minutes of carefully transferring an egg back and forth between two vessels repeatedly: one boiling, one room-temperature. You do that 16 times in exact two-minute intervals in order to achieve the "perfect" egg -- very simple and convenient for the modern home-cook in a hurry! Anyway... you can watch this guy on youtube make it so that you may eat some other, more sufferable meal more vicariously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahGGanfPDJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahGGanfPDJw