Adventures in Sous Vide

Six months ago if you had asked me what Sous Vide was I wouldn't have had a clue. I've been hearing/seeing more about it through various other forums related to smoking. Sous Vide uses water to cook food at an exact temperature that you have set. Basically your Sous Vide cooker attaches to a pot filled with water, and you place vacuum sealed food inside the pot of water. You can use standard ziplock bags or purchase a vacuum sealer. The benefit of Sous Vide is you can cook say steak, to the exact finished temperature desired without overcooking. You can take it out when its done cooking, or leave it in until you are ready to eat and it will not overcook.

So I decided to ask the wife for a Sous Vide cooker for Christmas this year. She/We ended up getting the Anova Precision Cooker (Wifi/Bluetooth model) on sale on Amazon for $119, normally $199. To get started you really only need the Sous Vide cooker. You can use an existing pot you already have if it is big enough and ziplock bags. I decided to buy a 12 Quart food storage container and a cheap manual/hand pump vacuum sealer kit. For reference, here is what I used:

Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker WIFI, Immersion Circulator (2nd Gen), 900 Watts, Black

Camwear Polycarbonate Square Food Storage container, 12 Quart

Sous Vide Bags Kit for Anova Cookers

So my first attempt at using this I just went with 3 boneless/skinless chicken breasts. I used Meat Church Lemon Pepper spices on two of them, and Meat Church Honey Hog spices on the third for the kids. I vacuum sealed them in bags using the kit I mentioned above and stored in the fridge for a few hours before cooking. Set the temperature on the Sous Vide to 150 degrees with a 2 hour timer and threw them in the water once it was up to temperature.

I forgot to take pictures afterwards... I'll do that next time and add them. The food does look a little funky when it is done cooking. I've seen this in other videos before so I was expecting it. I think most people sear it in a pan or on the grill afterwards if that is a problem. The wife didn't appear to be into the looks of it so we ended up searing it in a pan on the stove top for a few minutes. I'm pretty sure it was the juiciest piece of chicken I've ever had so I was pretty happy with it. Next we are going to try a Beef Tri-Tip, so I'll update this with the results after that.

I won't go into a full blown review of the products I mentioned above since I've only used them once so far, but here are my initial impressions:

Anova Sous Vide

There are a TON of recipes you can reference in the Anova App.
You can monitor the temperature and timer from your phone remotely and stop/start it remotely via your phone.
My experience with the Wifi is that it seems a little flaky. I've probably got 15-20 other devices on Wifi in my house that all work fine but it doesn't want to connect. I took it out of the box when I got it and set it up, but did not actually cook anything. When I went to use it the first time it would not connect and I didn't really feel like messing with it at the time so I'll have to play around with it some more.
Very little cleanup involved. It only sits in the pot of water and doesn't touch any of the food. I rinsed it off afterwards and let it air dry before putting away. Unless you are using reusable bags that need to be cleaned, they just go straight in the trash afterwards.

Sous Vide Bag Kit

Comes with 20 reusable bags, hand pump, and some clips used to clip the bag to the food container when cooking.
It was only $25 and works about as I expected it would. I bought this thinking it would be just a starter and it will be.
The bags say they are reusable, but they didnt come very clean afterwards so I'm not sure I'll bother.
I've already since purchased an electric Food Saver vacuum sealer. I'll put up a review of this at some point later on after had a chance to use it some.

Camwear Food container

Not much to say about this. It holds 12 quarts of water and is dishwasher, fridge, and freezer safe.
Sous Vide cooker attaches to it with no issues.
There are lids that go along with this particular container and Sous Vide cooker that i may get in the future.

Updated 1/15/18

For my second Sous Vide cook I went with 2 2.5lb Tri Tips. Put them in the Sous Vide for 2 hours at 135, then seared for about 2 minutes on each side on my Kamado Joe. They were delicious. I can't use anything other than Meat Church Holy Cow on steaks, we love it. Here are some pictures: