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Comment by ifelsethen | Hacker News Reader

"In this case, poaching or hard boiling an egg is so utterly simple, done in mere minutes, that it is simply impossible that this device could make it easier. And the grotesque proposed waste of energy borders on the absurd."

said like someone who has never used the sous vide cooking method. this is about precise cooking, which yeilds very specific results; it's very different than your 'toss a bunch of eggs into boiling water for 10 minutes! duhhh' method.

you cant get these results with your 'utterly simple' method(s): http://www.cookingissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/eggc...

and we're just talking eggs here. your steak wont look like this either: https://d3awvtnmmsvyot.cloudfront.net/api/file/clFhHJTkRraOg...

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this is about precise cooking, which yields very specific results

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I mention people intentionally making simple things difficult. Do you think someone, somewhere was sitting eating a hard (or soft, or variations thereof. Apologies if there was confusion on this) boiled egg and thought "Boy, this really is terrible. I sure wish it was..."? Do you think that was what yielded the invention of sous vide cooking? Are hard boiled eggs a current culinary problem?

No, they aren't. The argument borders on comical. Adding a "Duh!" to denigrate the notion that this is ridiculous easy doesn't prove your point. Further the steaks look absolutely vile (they look like texture monotony, which generally isn't a good result).

Sous vide came about in high volume kitchens. It wasn't because it yielded better results, but because it allowed for in-advance preparation, allowing the kitchen to toss little salmon meal baggies in hot water on spikes in orders, versus preparing it from scratch. It was a "traffic smoothing" technique, not an exercise for better results. In the classic "copy the chef" exercise, people emulated something for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, I do think that. Hard-boiled eggs are gross. Set egg yolks are gross. An egg white that is even slightly undercooked is also disgusting. There's a relatively narrow band of doneness in which eggs are good. You sound less like an advocate of simplicity and more like, as Dave Arnold would put it, "an enemy of quality". :)

A "six minute egg" has been a benchmark for literally centuries. Apologies if there is confusion, but when I say "hard boiled", I mean all doneness levels of boiled eggs.

Yeah, you're right about this. Honestly: I usually just fry eggs; I use the circ only when I need to serve a bunch of them.

> A "six minute egg" has been a benchmark for literally centuries.

That's just the name, it's never exactly six minutes because it depends on the cooking equipment, initial temperature of the egg, size, etc. The exact time is usually found after experimentation in one person's specific kitchen.

Huh that steak pic can't be right? I'm pretty certain the range is 53C (rare) to 60C (medium-done). Unless my thermometer was way off, or maybe it's a sea-level thing? (I'm in NL, sea-level + first floor).

You can check it for yourself, there's a distinct difference in how it feels sticking your hand in water less than 50C and sticking it in water a few degrees hotter than that. That's because your body doesn't like it when its proteins start to denature, either :P

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