A private message that I received:
I just ordered a WiFi Sous Vide cooker. I will be the first person to use one and not post about it on Facebook.
My friend then proceeded to message me and the rest of his friends with tales and photos of sous-vide heroics. (At what point have you private-messaged enough people that it is the moral equivalent of bragging on Facebook?)
Let’s consider the home range. It costs a lot of money. It takes up a lot of space. It is difficult and time-consuming to clean. It requires periodic service (if Viking, more or less continuous repairs!). Sometimes it will burn a resident of the home or set the house on fire.
Why take these risks when Amazon’s favorite sous-vide cooker costs $125? The water is heated to 135 or 140 degrees, right? Nobody will get burned and no fire can be started. The food is in a plastic bag that will be disposed of humanely and therefore there is never a need to clean the pot or the cooker?
Maybe you would also want a Breville countertop oven (for toast!) or GE Advantium microwave (can toast with a crazy bright light), but if sous-vide is as great as Facebookers says and if Ziploc are available in huge quantities at Costco, why have a range at all?
[Separately, is it true that the literal translation of “sous-vide” is “Facebook douche”?]
Tell me about sautéing or searing with your souls-vide device…
A subtly different idea for a stoveless kitchen. https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/who-needs-kitchen-stove-when-you-have-tillreda.html (Using portable induction hobs frees up your counter space when you’re not using them)
While we’re getting avant-garde, why not replace a cabinet with a second dishwasher and wash your dishes where they’re stored?
https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-mounts-wall-and-doubles-storage-cabinet.html
I think the truth is that kitchens are generally built to add value to the house (during a sale), not to be actually used, so there’s a lot of pressure to put in fancy but entirely conventional appliances and features.
“While we’re getting avant-garde, why not replace a cabinet with a second dishwasher and wash your dishes where they’re stored?”
The ultimate bachelor’s kitchen:
One dishwasher with a “DIRTY” sign, one with a “CLEAN” sign, switch signs when turning on dirty dish dishwasher!
Also: pissoir in a corner of the garage, and a gigantic keggorator!
Sous vide is great for slowly and precisely cooking large hunks of protein. They replace absolutely nothing, but they do one very specific thing more easily than any other process.
A countertop convection oven and a couple plug-in induction units will replace 99% of a range. But, you really want a hood if you’re doing anything other than reheating soup, and countertop space is at more of a premium than under-counter, so when you get down to it, a built-in range is fairly efficient.
What would make more sense for many people would be a Euro-sized range which is maybe 2/3 the size of an American standard unit. But much like cars, people tend to buy the kitchen they need for Thanksgiving, rather than Tuesday night.
I just don’t like the idea of plasticisers moving from the plastic bag into the food. I know people keep yakking about it is all overblown, but I ain’t seen any proof that plastic is now behaving different just because sous vide is meant to be cool.
Fun fact: your dishwasher can be used for sous-vide cooking (search YouTube “dishwasher salmon”). Just put salmon portions in zip lock bags for the full cycle and they come out perfectly cooked. Plus it freaks out your guests (my brother inlaw refused to eat it, but it was delicious!).
Our experience with sous-vide is it takes most of the day. Great if you’ve planned ahead, not so great if you just got home from work. Also, we find we get the best meat cooking results with a temperature probe in the food, rather than just guessing with time. A few of our sous-vide attempts came out undercooked (side-effect of waiting all day & getting hungry…)
If range safety is your concern, induction cooktops are nearly ideal (the only con is they require using iron-based cookware with a perfectly flat bottom, not aluminum). No risk of fire, and even safe for kids as the cooktop itself doesn’t heat, the cookware does. Induction ranges are ubiquitous in Europe, but still a rarity in the US, go figure.
@Viking I’d think that even a woman-run household could benefit from an obviously great idea like the dual dishwasher system.
@philg I’ve ordered one of these: http://www.suvie.com/ It’s a combination mini-fridge multi-zone sous vide cooker with a pasta/rice cooker and a tiny broiler built in. They intend to launch it with a meal plan in pouches (although they claim you will be able to program it yourself for meals where you’d like to provide the food). It supposedly will keep everything refrigerated until the appropriate time before you’ve told it you’d like to eat, and then it will orchestrate everything. I think you need to intervene to un-bag things that need to be broiled, but it’s supposed to be mostly hands-off. Whether the food will be good or come out like airline food remains to be seen.
Supermike – I built a new kitchen a couple of years ago. It includes:
1. An induction stovetop. Induction burners are great but they are limited in wattage and you sometimes need more than 1. It’s true that the value is not there ($1,000+ for induction cooktop vs $70 x 5 for an induction burner) but there aren’t cords all over the place either.
2. 2 dishwashers . If you have custom (or even not so custom) cabinetry, a dishwasher is cheaper than a cabinet.
To answer Phil’s question, lots of sous vide recipes call for the food to be browned. If not on a stovetop then you could get a blowtorch.
Our experience with sous-vide is it takes most of the day.
In a rush – electric pressure cooker (Instant Pot). Induction hob plus sous vide plus instant pot plus countertop convection oven = 99.9% of functionality of range.
Most gas ranges (even “professional” home ranges like viking) are a joke compared to an induction cooktop (NOT a 120V plug in burner which caps out at 1750 watts). When I cook at friends houses with gas ranges I can’t believe how SLOW they are – it takes all day to boil a pot of water.
My experience with sous vide its that it’s great for onsen tamago (very soft boiled eggs), but overrated for everything else. You’ll notice that it’s mostly tech geeks who rave about it.
Also, it’s crockpot slow, and can’t bake or boil pasta.
No need to boil pasta because Whole Foods sells it pre-cooked for today’s young achievers.