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

I just had a lightbulb moment! I decided to go for it in May for the milk and eggs, but after overindulging in luscious almond duck, and thinking how sad it was that there were meats I couldn't serve at my apps party, like almond duck, because of the prep/production schedule... LIGHTBULB! Sous vide! Cook and hold at constant temperature. Never overdone. And I have two coming... mostly because it was fun participating in their kickstarter campaign, even though I had saved Arley's DIY instructions. Okay. Sometimes I'm slow. I get it now. :) I bet I could even cook the chicken drummettes that way, then just coat them and flash fry. That would be so much easier than fry cooking that many, and they could go straight out, rather than taking oven space. Okay. Revolutionary. I get it... And I can still pasteurize eggs...

Very interesting post, FOAS. Thank you for taking the time to do the experimentations/investigations. Your efforts definitely will further everyone's knowledge in this Forum. Ultimately that is a very important part for the participation here. It is interesting that you have had mixed results. Let's look at it this way; at least it was not a total lost for you. Obviously your experience is not the same as mine. That is not to say that you have done anything wrong or you don't have good taste. Eating experience is very subjective and details for preparation can be unpredictable. I have been luckier. I have sous vided many kinds of foods. As I can remember, the biggest failure I had was with squid. My timing was wrong and the squid turned into mush. Otherwise all meats, all seafood; lobsters, clams, fish, scallops --- all were from good to fantastic. Unlike you, I had great results with shrimps, but I did my shrimps at 138 F for 25 minutes, and I was able to get very fresh shrimps, not the chemically treated ones you now find in stores. I can only suggest to you, given that fact that if you search the WEB you will realize the practice of sous vide cooking is more than just a fashion trend, that you may want to play with it a few time times before giving up. I am not going to discredit Jonathan Gold's opinion about sous vide, after all he is a Pulitzer-price winning writer. However, I do humbly disagree that a perfectly cooked piece of meat is by definition boring. No one eats a steak directly as it comes out from the cooker, there are other preparation steps before the steak is to be served. Off-topic, I noticed that Costco is now selling sous vide cookers. I must point out again that sous vide only guarantees that you will not overcook or undercook your food, but it cannot guarantee that your food will taste good. It is like having a fancy grill will not automatically give you great BBQ. I might also add that sous vide cooking for chefs is not necessarily easier than regular cooking, but that's another topic all together. dcarch

FOAS, I will always look at the name Thomas Keller and think of Hubert. Plllog, I know risotto is not a difficult dish to make. But I would love to tuck it in the SV and go on about my business until the timer rings. As I read the Modernist Cuisine chart I posted above, they cook many risottos (I was not aware that that was a generic term which did not apply only to an arboria rice dish) sous vide, but NOT arboria rice, which is the one I want to do. I am confused by terminology and exclusions. I can make spelt, oats, and pine nuts risottos sous vide, but not arboria rice risotto? I am confused (Yeah, well, that ain't unusual), but I am going to try the Sous Vide Supreme recipe for arboria rice SV. I'll report on it when it's in my tummy. And, congratulations on becoming a sous vide cook. I have really enjoyed my SV Supreme, which I bought years ago on a super special package on eBay (Er, actually, which I convinced DH to buy for me as a birthday present.) It was my introduction to vacuum sealing as well as SV cooking. Thanks to Dcarch, I think, I got in on the Anova innovative deal and bought two of their new units for a great pre-production price. One went to my brother and sister-in-law, who keep telling me how WONDERFUL chicken is in SV. Please post your experiences with SV cooking. And please, has ANYONE cooked risotto (with arboria rice, which I did not specify), in a SV setup? And if you did, how did it work, what would you do next time. . . all that stuff.)