Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love this gadget! I've been meaning to get into sous vide cooking for a couple of years, when my stepdaughter and her husband first started using the method. But they had to go through a lot of maker-style cobbling up of pieces and parts in order to do it,and I can't do a lot of "cobbling" these days. So I was waiting for a neat, self-contained solution that didn't cost an arm and a leg. This immersion circulator is just the thing. Immersion heaters have been around for decades -- a metal (usually aluminum) coil on a little handle you dunked into a cup of water in a hotel room, plugged in, and it rapidly boils your water for tea or instant coffee. They're not the safest devices to use, though, because the old-style immersion heaters were just an exposed heating coil. This cooker is totally safe and simple to use. The immersion coil is inside a stainless-steel skirt, where it can't contact anything it might melt or burn. There are multiple thermocouple sensors around the coil,to monitor the temperature of the coil, and the temperature of the water it's immersed in from two separated points. In addition, there's a powerful but tiny circulating impeller -- like a small boat propeller -- pointing down. There's a movable cap at the bottom that redirects the flow from this little propeller, to move the hot water around in your cooking tub. It's very quiet, but there's still a sort of bubbling hum as it works. It comes with a truly innovative double clamp, with one knob to clamp the clamp to your cooking vessel, and a second knob to secure the cooker in the clamp. It's good looking, durable, and holds the cooker rock-steady. The cooker is about the size of a stick blender and about as easy to use. Mount the clamp on a tank large enough to hold the bagged food you wish to cook, and deep enough that you can put enough water in it so the level is between two extremely clear markings on the steel skirt. Fill the tank to the specified level. Put your food in either a vacuum sealer bag and seal it up, or use a Ziploc-style bag (I use freezer bags, they're more durable) and use the "displacement" method to press all the air out. This involves dipping the bag bottom-first into the water, slowly, so the water squeezes the air out around the food. Then seal the bag, being careful not to let air (or water) in. Plug in the cooker, set the target temperature using an illuminated wheel -- much like the scrollwheel on a mouse -- and press the "start" button. You probably want to wait until the water is at the specified temperature before you immerse your bagged food. I use the hot water from my tap to fill the tank and the heater raises it to cooking temperature very quickly for such a small device. You can also dip water from the tank into a pyrex measuring cup and heat that in the microwave, then pour it back into the tank to take some of the burden off the coil and raise the temp faster. But if you just let it work, it'll raise the water temp to your target temperature and hold it there with extreme efficiency. My very first attempt at sous vide was a pair of ribeye steaks...and they came out a couple of hours later completely cooked to a precise medium-rare from edge to edge. A few moments with a butane chef's blowtorch and they had that crispy and delicious brown sear on them, improving their appearance a bit and making them utterly succulent and delicious. We ate them so fast I forgot to take a picture for my first review! The next day, I put four 2-inch porkchops into cook, letting them cook all afternoon until we were ready for dinner. They were the BEST porkchops I've ever eaten, and I know where the GOOD restaurants are around here! This is not a fast technique for cooking. It is a phenomenally SLOW technique. But it is also remarkably precise, never overcooking the food, even if you leave it in the cooker for hours past the point where its completely cooked. It can't overcook -- it brings the food precisely to the temperature you set, and no further. This is good for cooking tough and inexpensive cuts of meat, because you can leave them to slowly cook for days without worry that it'll overcook. It turns that tough connective tissue into lip-smacking, tender gelatin, making the toughest cuts into fork-tender deliciousness with NO possibility of overcooking, ever. Also, if you are disabled in any way, this is the cooking method for you. Cooking methods that require precise TIMING require dashing about your kitchen to have everything all ready at the precise moment of doneness. That can be taxing on a person with disabilities, using up more energy and straining joints and muscles. I can't do it anymore, so I tend to eat a lot of processed "timesaving" junk because it's less strenuous to cook. But I can cook the most finicky and fussy foods to utter scrumptiousness without hurrying, and without straining my body past its comfort zone because it isn't about precise TIMING, it's about precise TEMPERATURE. We're in the process of changing all of our food priorities because of the benefits of sous vide, and this stone-simple cooking tool.