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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

$400 is relatively expensive. You can get a 1100 watt Polyscience circulator for that much.

No circulator or water bath I know of requires vacuum sealers; all of them work fine with zips.

Also, not to nitpick, but duck confit only takes 8 hours or so; it's one of the easiest things to do with a water bath.

It looks neat, though. It'll be interesting to see if the cooling feature is useful, or more of a gimmick. That cooling system doesn't look powerful enough to chill down a low-temp cook (you're supposed to ice down anything you don't serve immediately); I assume you use it to delay the start of cooking?

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Hey tptacek,

A lot of our copy is directed at people who're not that familiar with sous-vide and might have very basic questions when browsing. Let me clarify further:

-$400 is expensive, you're right. And we're not making that much of a margin on these right now. That's because Mellow does so much more than just warming water. Whether those features are valuable is another question.

-On the bags, we're probably the only device out there that can routinely cook using open, unsealed bags. Due to the tall, skinny geometric, you can plop food in non-ziploc bags and use those to cook you Mellow. Huge cost saving in the long run, no floating bags, and a much quicker operation all-in-all.

-You're right on the confit (though I like mine cook at 70c@24h), it's just an easy example. A chicken breast or large fillet steak would be a better example of something you wouldn't be able to cook for 8-12 hours with regular sous-vide.

-Well-supposed on the cooling.

Ultimately, Mellow's the product of almost a decade of frustration with sous-vide non-pragmatism. It won't be optimal for everyone, some people will do better with their Polysci's, but for busy home cooks like us, I think it's a hell of a help. Thank you for the chance to debate.

Help me understand how the unsealed bag thing works, again? What kinds of bags are we talking about for what kinds of prep?

(Sorry that I sound ready to debate; I shouldn't be. This is a neat looking device and you should be commended for bringing it to market.)

Please don't apologize, I'm happy to be challenged on these things. It's the way I learn to explain them.

Look at the part in our video where Catarina (catv here) walks you through the use-case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiNmTI51GPw&t=1m17s

If you notice, the bag she puts inside Mellow is a HDPE bag for vacuum sealing, unsealed. There's a jump cut or whatchamacallit, but that's how we cook using Mellow. Regular non-ziploc sous-vide bags, open.

Did that help at all?

Yep, that makes sense.

You are taking all the questions like a champ. Congrats on that.

All very polite, smart and yet giving real answers without slipping off when there is a problem/concern/issue/doubt/whatever.

Cheers.

Thank you, trying to be as present as possible. I'm humbled by the reception in HN, I never dreamed of posting about my own product here. Making a billion dollars seemed more likely than this, somehow.

On the questions: I understand the skepticism. We moved very far from what's normal; Mellow isn't an MVP by any means, so I was expecting hard questions on the use case. The fact that people take the trouble of questioning what we're doing instead of just brushing us aside is a big deal for me.

Let me know if you have any questions yourself on sous-vide, Mellow, development or whatever else might go through your mind. I do palm-readings on Fridays.

IANAchef but the video has the user selecting a "medium rare chicken breast". Is that a thing? =D

Yes. Longer consistent cook times allow you to pasteurize at lower temperatures, so you can serve chicken at a lower temperature than you would in a conventional oven. (I'm not saying you'd want to do that; I don't like pink chicken.)

Chicken is unfortunately one of the less effective things to cook this way. At the times/temps I'm comfortable with, breasts get mushy. Legs, on the other hand, "pink out"; the proteins from inside the bones leach into the flesh and give a bloody appearance which I can't get past.

Thanks! I think most people equate "medium rare chicken" with food poisoning, so it was interesting to see that used in the video. Never knew that you could actually cook it safely that way.

Medium rare chicken is like medium rare pork. If you can get over your upbringing enough times to get used to it, you can never go back. It me took 3-4 times for each, and the only reason I stuck with it was that my snobbery overpowered my mother's education.

But really, sous-vide, medium rare chicken breast has a taste and texture you'd never think chicken breast could have. Same with pork, it's a revelation on all the things you miss out in the world due to prejudice and bad information.

EDIT: I've never gotten mushy breasts tptacek, how long are you cooking those things for? I do 1.5 hours@57-60C or so.

60C is really very low for a chicken breast.

It's an acquired taste, for sure. 63C is still worlds away from what most people consider a normal chicken breast.

i disagree. having grown up eating hockey puck pork chops and dry chicken, medium rare pork is delicious while medium rare chicken is just gross and unappetizing.

a good thoroughly cooked, yet juicy and delicious roast chicken is still one of the most basic, yet difficult, dishes to prepare.

Living in Japan it's much more acceptable to eat pink or even raw chicken here. I will vouch for it being much easier to cook a nice juicy (and tastier) piece of chicken when you don't need to worry about under cooking it.

I think the laws are different in Japan, in the United Kingdom at least, it's entirely legal to sell chicken which contains Escherichia coli, which causes food poisoning, where as meat such as Beef is not allowed to be sold with the bacterium.

That certainly has an effect on my thinking, it's not that I don't like a more rare presented chicken, it's that we're conditioned to think of it causing illness because of the laws around it's distribution.

Mushy breasts?

It specifically says in the FAQ that it can't do cook-chill. I was debating trying to work on one that could awhile back but man is it hard to get that kinda cooling power economically, at least given my cursory exploration.

Also, I've never done duck confit sous vide. Maybe I'll try that next. I made some the good old fashioned way a couple months ago and wow.

Must have run into the guy who made it. Three innocuous comments downvoted at once :)

Nope, I'm up voting these, they're helpful. Yours, too.

Low-temp water baths are like duck confit dispensing machines. In particular, you can get by with much, much less fat.

I'm not sure I understand the utility of being able to throw all the ingredients for my dishes into a water bath days ahead of time, since I need to bag the ingredients anyways; why not just keep them in the fridge and dunk them the morning of the cook? Also: it's a little misleading? to suggest that you'll be able to cook lots of different ingredients in a single bath, since the veg will need much higher cooking temps than the proteins.

edit to tone down slightly

I will say that poaching eggs sous vide in the morning is a pain in the ass if you wake up hungry. I end up heating the water on my stove and dumping it in just so it doesn't take an hour, and then it's slower (albeit better and more fool proof) than traditional poaching. I found out the hard way that trying to cook a girl breakfast to impress her doesn't work, no matter how awesome your marinara and poached eggs with salsa verde are, if it takes a freaking hour and a half. That's why I decided that if I built a unit, it would just have a timer. I'd wake up to the water heated, then put the eggs in. The actual poaching is as fast as you can get everything else ready anyway.

Also I am a night owl and often not awake 12 hours before dinner time, so it'd be good in that case.

I was thinking about it for professional use though. Not having to start a 12 hour cook at 7 am for that night's service might be a big win for restaurants. Also I think they'd benefit from better controls, especially if they had a bank of them. Chefs I talked to were encouraging, but realized I probably don't have time to make a product out of it.

Also duck fat is half the fun! After you pull the legs out you get to make yummy stuff with it. I rendered my own and it was actually very cheap.

You still use duck fat, but you only need a 1/5th as much.

I don't SV eggs all that often; it's easier to poach or sunny-side-up them conventionally for me. In particular, I can't fucking stand peeling eggs.

I do mine without any fat; I findthe duck legs render enough by themselves.

With SV eggs, I usually saw off the top of the shell carefully with a knife, and squeeze them out into the plate. It's a fun process!

Oh man, I love the 75°C egg. You don't have to peel it, just crack it. (If you use crappy eggs though, the outer white does stick to the shell.)

75C is a hard-set yolk, right? Blech. :)

No, you don't poach to equilibrium. You leave it in for 11-13 mins. The yolk is runny but the white is a little more firm than you'd get equilibrium poaching at a lower temp.

Wow, $400 is expensive for a water bath these days?

My Clifton dual bath cost nearly $1500 when I got it 5-6 years ago. I love that this stuff is becoming more mainstream.

Tell me about it! The warm glow of being an early adopter...

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