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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Do you get any benefit out of the circulator beyond just a PID-controlled rice cooker? The circulator vendors have all sorts of blog posts about how you're not getting uniform cooking if the water isn't moving, and it's true that I'm getting maybe a degree or two variance up and down, but it's not enough to make a difference to me in practical applications.

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The circulator pump has high/low so it really gets the water moving. I typically keep it on low since I use it in a large pot. I haven't noticed any real difference with compared to a hacked setup for typical proteins (poultry, beef, pork, etc). The only place you're really notice is where you want high precision, like the various degrees of egg cookery and some fish.

The real benefit is the ability to "set it and forget it", which matters for me when cooking items for 24/48 hours. That and the volume.

I do 48 hour dishes pretty regularly in a rice cooker (short ribs, duck confit [sv: the duck confit dispensing machine]) without event.

I'm really tempted to spring for a circulator; I just need to justify it to myself.

I thought the Keller book warns cooks that +/- a couple of degrees can result in disaster, but the engineer in me refuses to believe that. Maybe it's just the fish dishes that matter.

Thomas Keller has a different definition of disaster than most of us. He has a sous vide tank where the liquid is not water, it's butter! He sous vides lobster tails directly in the butter. No, I'm not kidding.

I've been thinking a lot lately about SV'ing things in a liquid other than water. Oil poaching is obviously a really old technique.

I have though about this for different reasons. Over time I get hard water buildup on my circulator and have to spend some time cleaning. Yeah, I could use distilled, but it's a pain. Not only that but over time the water evaporates, especially at higher temps and I have to keep refilling which drops the temp for a bit. I know there are "ping pong" balls you can place in the water to keep the surface area to a minimum. My current solution is to simply make a tin foil lid.

But if I could find another medium to use instead of water it would be nice.

I haven't read the Keller book, but for Keller's applications he's probably right. On the other hand, one of my partners is a trained chef and cooks SV constantly with the same ghetto rig I have, and has consistently excellent results. I should find the link to his octopus post. It's almost enough to make me willing to eat octopus.

A couple degrees either way aren't going to screw up beef, pork, or chicken. If you aim low, it won't screw up fish. If you have a very specific egg doneness target (and eggs are one of the very few things I'm better on a skillet with than in SV), one or two degrees matters a whole lot.

And finally, I think one of the big places temperature control matters is with vegetable cookery; there are SV applications that aim to get in between the temperature at which starches break down and the temperatures pectins break down, and if you're trying to do that (I guess to make watermelons that have the mouthfeel of filet), maybe the PID controller is a dealbreaker.

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