Sous Vide Cooker Anywhere To Be Found?

[wintermute]

This is probably a long shot but does anyone know of a store that sells Sous vide cookers?

The sous vide supreme series etc..

[Gippy]

No, but maybe you can find the parts to rig one up yourself?

Sounds like an interesting technique, I'd like to try ribs cooked for 72 hours.

[theseahorse]

I'm guessing you mean a water bath when you say Sous Vide Cooker.

Although I've never bought one in Thailand, when purchasing water bathes back in Europe for proffesional kitchens I'd buy them from a science lab equipment supplier. There was no such thing as a 'Supreme Series Sous Vide Cooker' then anyway.

Sorry, I don't know of any lab suppliers here though.

[bonobo]

There are a number of sous vide cookers on the market, both circulating and non-circulating. In the US, the home versions run several hundred dollars. But you can pretty much do the same thing with a stovetop or slow cooker.

FOr the stovetop, put the burner on low, then put in the bag after achieving the desired temperature.

If you have a vacuum sealer, then that is true sous vide. However, you can achieve pretty much the same results with a simple zip-lock after forcing out most of the air.

Personally, I am not a big fan of sous vide. For meats, I find you have to sear the meat after to get any sort of decent texture, and that defeats much of the purpose. And even with liquid inside the bag, the food tastes somewhat bland. It usually is mushy, too. I can't help but thinking of baby food when I eat it. I had a very nice sous vide version of ouef bourguignon where poaching was done inside the bag, but that is about it in terms of food tasting better that way.

[theseahorse]

Sous Vide cooking can be wonderful when done correctly, sadly not many restaurant chefs do sous vide cooking well let alone amatuer cooks.

For a start, you MUST hve real equipment, sticking a ziplocked bag in a slow cooker doesn't work. The trick to cooking sous vide well is to have a constant exact low temperature for a set amount of time, if the temperature is going up and down constantly it just doesn't come out very well . Different types of food need different temperatures as well, a nice thick 200g portion of salmon for a mii cuit will take 1 hour 20 minutes set at 42oC whereas to slow cook a chicken breast you'd want to set it at 60oC ( for about 35 minutes), this is something that can't be done to the extent it needs to be without real equipment. Sadly too many chefs think that cooking sous vide is just boil in the bag, it's not (well it is, but it's a little more scientific than that).

Personally, I feel if something needs to be seared afterwards it shouldn't have been sous vide in the first place, it should have been seared then slow roasted. I once had a sirloin that had been sous vide whole, then seared and sliced and I agree it was tasteless and lacked any texture. If the meat had been slow roasted at say 59oC until it's 55oC inside (about 2 1/2 hours) it would have been far better, but like to many restaurants around the world the chef wants to do everthing in whatever style is in fashion rather than what produces the best dish.

If you do manage to find a waterbath Wintermute, have fun playing around, you can get some great results quite easily as long as you treat it more like a science experiment. Sous vide cooking is a great cooking meduim when used correcty.

[HOMERUNBANGKOK]

Seahorse is correct........to utilize this style of cooking without a real deal heat seal vac packer is kind of silly.

If you have 100K to toss around you can get QUALITY vac packer and sous vide bath from the link below:

www.hummel.co.th

The bath is expensive because the "real"ones have a pretty high tech thermostat and heating element. Having the water off by a degree or two, or not maintaining a precise and accurate temp throughout the process can lead to horrible results.

Edited February 3, 2011 by HOMERUNBANGKOK

[bonobo]

I have never cooked sous vide myself as I haven't especially yet really liked anything cooked that way, so I have to bow to theseahorse and homerunbangkok's expertise as posted above. I have eaten sous vide-cooked sirloin, fish, pork loin, and eggs, and only the eggs were OK to me. The fish was especially horrible. Baby food mash.

All I can say is that as an avid watcher of food shows on television, more than one tv chef has demonstrated cooking sous vide with a ziplock bag where the air has been forced out and using a stovetop where the temperature is monitored closely. With a gas stove, especially it should not be too hard to keep a constant temperature. Of course, a serious cooker would be better, but if a zip-lock and a stovetop can do even an passable job, it may be a cost-effective way of dabbling in the process.

On both Top Chef and Masterchef tv shows, the reception from the judges has been about 50/50 for sous vide-cooked foods. About half of the time, the chef judges have liked the dishes, and they have decried using sous vide for the other half of the dishes.