What is best to sous vide
The Best Sous Vide Machines/Immersion Circulators
sous-vide machines are sleeker smarter
and more straightforward than ever
and adam's here to tell us which brand
is best was that your sous-vide saunter
okay there are two types of sous-vide
machines for home use there are water
ovens which are generally pretty big and
then they're the ones that you see right
in front of you here these are
immersion circulators i love these our
testers have some experience with these
they also did a little preliminary
testing and they much preferred the
immersion circulators because you can
use them with a wide range of vessels
they're smaller they're quick and so
that's what we focused on
there's a lineup of seven different
immersion circulators the price range
was 129.99
to 274.95 that's not bad
it's actually not too bad especially for
what these things will do
now we put them through a battery of
both pure cooking and performance tests
the cooking tests were performed in
vessels of different sizes including a
four quart saucepan
seven and a quarter quart dutch oven an
eight-quart plastic container and a nine
and a half gallon cooler
sous-vide machines are meant to cook
food to a very precise temperature so
accuracy mattered testers used
lab calibrated temperature tracking
software and thermocouples
to monitor the water temperatures while
food cooked and while the circulators
heated an
empty six-quart water bath for three
hours first at 149 degrees and later at
190 degrees which is the highest
temperature a lot of these machines will
reach
testers also track the time it took for
the machines to heat up these water
baths
now most of them were accurate to within
an
average of a degree or two which is
pretty good
that is pretty good the white one down
at the end was the most accurate of all
at .2 degrees both temperatures over
three hours
wow that was really impressive testers
also wanted to evaluate the ease of use
by checking out all of the controls
setting temperatures and timers
reading displays toggling between
fahrenheit and celsius
noting the alerts and the alarms that
the different models offered
and checking the functionality of wi-fi
pairings and companion apps if that was
something that the models offered
some of the machines were fairly easy to
use others were needlessly frustrating
and complex to use
the most complex was this one there one
tester said that trying to get this
thing going was like a logic puzzle
because if you press buttons in the
wrong order it would send off this
cascade of chirps and beeps and alarms
that you couldn't turn off
it would switch it between fahrenheit
and celsius or it would just turn the
machine off altogether so it's like a
mensa test
exactly which is not what you want from
your sous-vide machine
once they got this going this thing
actually churned the water while it
heated
so roughly that it jostled eggs inside
of the container
hard enough that when they hit the side
of the container the eggs cracked
oh goodness so testers really preferred
a machine that was simple to set up
simple to use
easy to understand what was going on and
that heated the water both
quickly and gently so that you're not
cracking eggs in there right no white
caps
no white caps now testers also weighed
them and measured them because you
want them to be reasonably small for a
couple of reasons number one you can use
it with a wider range of pots
number two once it's in the vessel it
leaves you the most room for food
and number three it's easy to store yeah
that's what i was thinking yeah
exactly you can just chuck a small one
right in the kitchen drawer and you're
good to go
now when you cook in a water bath if you
don't cover it and even sometimes when
you do if you don't cover it tightly
there's some evaporation over time and
you have to monitor the water level
all of these machines have a minimum
fill and a maximum fill and the water
level has to stay between those two
lines they're usually noted somewhere on
the machine
the minimum one ensures that there's
enough water to heat and to circulate
through the heater ports
the maximum makes sure there's not so
much that gets close to all the
electronics at the top which you
definitely don't want to do
makes sense most of these had about a
three and a half inch span
which is fine that white one down at the
end had a
six and a half inch span that just made
it that much easier to use because you
didn't have to think about refilling if
the water evaporated
that one is the winner that is the jewel
it's 179
and testers loved it for a couple
different reasons number one it was the
most accurate
it has that really wide range between
the maximum and the minimum fill lines
it's sleek it's small it heated the
water quickly but
gently now that one you have to pair
with wi-fi and a smartphone or a tablet
and the companion app which isn't that
hard no it's pretty intuitive
it put testers off at the beginning but
the more they used it the more they
really came to appreciate the fact that
you can set it up in the morning
go to work turn it on from across town
monitor the water level
change the time and the temperature it's
really really convenient
start your dinner on your commute i love
that how can you not love that
now if that does put you off though and
you want one that operates both with
wi-fi
and old style buttons this is the anova
precision cooker
it's 199 dollars so it's a little bit
more but
you can use buttons if you want to all
right so there you have it if you're in
the market for a new immersion
circulator
check out the jewel at just 179
thanks for watching america's test
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