It depends on how sensitive to temperature change your sous vide item is. For many tasks, mostly the higher temperature and short duration ones, you don't need +/- 0.5-1 degree accuracy (all of the time, not just as an average), but +/- 10-15 degrees will do.

So, for the less sensitive sous vide, a pot of water on any stove will do if you monitor it. For very accurate sous vide, nothing less than a PID-controlled setup or device will do and an induction cooktop would not be accurate enough.

Head over to egullet.org if you want more detail from experienced sous-viders and what the options are (many of which are less expensive than a dedicated sous-vide cooker).

A lot of sous vide dishes require many hours to complete. An induction cooktop will usually turn off after four. Also, few of them run by temperature. The settings are by power output, and while they are very steady, they're not that accurate.

I'm pretty sure it was Zartemis, or maybe PeterH, who showed us a gizmo for transforming an ordinary slow cooker into a sous vide cooker (the gizmo has the temperature control). I think it was in the $50 neighborhood.

I did some sous vide steaks in my oven. They were of short duration. I also figured that with the oven the heat would be more even coming from all directions. We have a few family members that want steaks well done as well a couple of the women that are pregnant and have to eat their meat well done. I preheated the water and oven to 155. I added the steaks in a zip lock with all the air out. I stirred the pot every 10 minutes or so. They were an inch thick and I think they were in about 90 minutes. I also monitored the water temp with a thermapen and it stayed very constant. We then put them on a very hot fire briefly. They turned out pretty good(for well done).
I think the danger for food born illness can be very high though for a lot of the items you find cook that way with out proper equipment.

I've had a pot of water on now for 4 hours. Level 1 was getting too hot, so I turned it down to L. L is staying pretty constant at 147 degrees (with the lid on). A little too high for sous-vide. Maybe if I tried it with the lid off and added a trickle of cooler water as needed. Thanks Zartemis, I will go check out that site!

Search over on the Cooking Forum. A participant there named dcarch has rigged up his own sous vide apparatus using fairly simple and easily available "boy scientist" components.

wekick - A bit of an aside, but beef, lamb and veal need only be cooked to 145 (medium) to kill toxoplasma parasite. Pregnant women need to be doomed to eating over-cooked red meat. There would have been a serious revolt in my house has I been told to eat well-done steak while pregnant - I'd rather have starved. Not to mention that if you order well-done steak in a restaurant you will get an inferior cut or older piece of meat because once over-cooked most people can't tell the difference, likely more dangerous for a pregnant woman than rare meat.

Here is a link that might be useful: CDC recommendations

For food safety, there are more exact and rigorous pasteurization tables you can use. It's a function of both time and temperature (and food item and thickness..). Some tables are available in Douglas Baldwin's Practical Guide to Sous Vide and his PDF paper for a food journal

And yes, you can make your own PID control from parts from any of the dozens of guides on the net, although now many people sell premade ones on ebay rather cheaply. It's good to plan for some sort of water circulation as well, e.g. by aquarium pump or bubbler. Or spend a little more and buy a versatile set from, say, Fresh Meals Solutions that can be used either with a slow cooker or with their heater in nearly any container. egullet.org will have discussions from folks using all of these techniques and more. Their threads and discussions on this have gotten so long, they had to divide the main thread last year: The 2004-2010 main sous-vide 138 page thread andd the the 2011- main sous vide 45 page (and counting) thread page

Their doctor told them to eat meat well done and I'm the MIL so I just go along, saving my "Have you considered ___?s" for major things. They normally prefer med rare and were happy that it wasn't shoe leather. They also had a list of other things they couldn't eat.

People who like well done meat absolutely can tell when they're given inferior meat. That's why they don't return to the restaurant in question, but rarely send back the meat and make a fuss since people in their party have been waiting on their preference. They just remember being served crap and tell everyone they know what a bad restuarant it is. They also refuse to eat in any steakhouse and always order the chicken. A poor piece of meat just gets worse as it's cooked more.

Sous vide, as I understand it, is a great way to maintain a texture more like what the young women prefer while adhering to the doctor's orders. Wekick, I'm impressed. :)

I have made my own sous-vide gizmo, using it to control a crockpot. To my surprise, I have found the recirculating pump unnecessary; when I occasionally stir the bath, the indicated temperature does not change a wit.

Interesting thread. My son cooked tri-tips on his, then BBQ'd them this weekend with a real Sous Vide gadget that he bought for $200. Don't know the brand, but he said, "Ma, you could probably do it on your induction." I have a pot of water on 1 setting now. Will test each hour with an instant read. Kinda fun.

The price on stand-alone sous vide devices (that can be used with any pot) continues to come down. Anova, which was top-rated by Food Republic, was running a pre-release sale on their version 2 unit that comes out this October - 2 units for $149 total. Deal may be over by now, however.

My water on setting 1 never got over 99 degrees. On 2, it was unstable. Took a long time to get to 139, and then it varied. I'll probably do some searching for one. Hey! Labor Day Sales!

Desertdance, there are some specials now. Sousvide Supreme is selling refurbed units for $149, though they have already run out of a few colors h

and Anova is selling their existing model at $50 off (enter TAKE50 at checkout) through 9/5/14 - the new model which is coming out in Nov with mobile phone control and recipe is also available through kickstarter

http://anovaculinary.com/

Here is a link that might be useful: sousvide supreme

This post was edited by Barryv on Wed, Aug 27, 14 at 20:48