From the NYTimes today on the latest high-end toy. We've had fish prepared sous vide in a couple of restaurants and it's always been amazing. Article is excerpted below:

Sous Vide Moves From Avant-Garde to the Countertop

December 9, 2009 NYTimes by Julia Moskin

ONCE you sous vide, you never go back. That, at least, is the chant of a global pantheon of chefs like Heston Blumenthal, Joël Robuchon, Ferran Adrià , and Tetsuya Wakuda  who have made this low, slow cooking method the standard in the last decade. And last month, Fritz Cloninger, a technical writer in Jersey City, joined that elite company with a pork chop and a SousVide Supreme, the first self-contained sous-vide machine for home cooks, which has just come on the market priced at $449.

"My wife thought I was crazy to get this thing, but already she doesnÂt want to eat anything else," Mr. Cloninger said last week. "I even made a hamburger in it this morning."

Sous vide combines the gentle, steady heat of poaching and an airtight seal, as in traditional methods of cooking in clay. "The food literally stews in its own juices: no air, no water, no evaporation," said Wesley Genovart, the chef at Degustation, a restaurant in the East Village, who has experimented with sous-viding everything from carrots to crème brûlée.

Until now, home cooks wanting to try the method have had to improvise, with solutions from low-tech (a stockpot and a handful of ice cubes) to high (a chamber sealer and an immersion circulator, generating about $1,500 in start-up costs). But there seems to be an audience, however small, for an easier and cheaper way. The first 500 SousVide Supreme machines sold out via the Internet before shipping in November, according to the manufacturers. More are on the way, available for order online now, and scheduled to reach Sur la Table warehouses in January.

I recently spent a week with the device, basically a bread-machine-size hot-water bath, with simple, intuitive temperature controls. The heavy, boxy countertop unit and the long cooking times of some sous-vide recipes (up to two days) are not always inviting. But simple dishes like skirt steak were, as promised, transformed.

Oven-baked apples usually have good flavor but a mealy, exhausted texture. To test the machine, I combined peeled apples with butter, spices, brown sugar and raisins, then sucked the air out of the bags with a handheld sealer. (The SousVide Supreme is not sold with a vacuum seal system.) Because of renegade air bubbles, I had to force the bags underwater, and there was splashing, scalding and profanity. Even so, the apples that emerged six hours later (they were done after two, but bobbed in the water for another four without complaint) were exactly as hoped for: tender, almost custardy, infused with butter and sweet juice but not at all overcooked.

While the apples were in, I scouted to see if I could slip in some whole eggs (sous vide is the reason there are so many beautifully slow-poached eggs on menus these days). But no: the apples demanded a 170-degree cooking temperature, and eggs prefer 150; the machine generally canÂt cook two different foods at the same time.

One true believer in the techniqueÂs usefulness for home cooks is Jason Logsdon, a Web developer in Southington, Conn. He uses a large Crock-Pot that is filled with hot tap water and plugged into a SousVideMagic, a $139 device that turns the heating element on and off to maintain steady temperature. Mr. Logsdon became interested in sous vide when his wife gave him the chef Thomas KellerÂs glossy 2008 book "Under Pressure."

Frustrated by the bookÂs lack of instructions for everyday cooking, he used its time and temperature guidelines to develop his own recipes for green beans and fried chicken, which is cooked through in the water bath, then pan-fried just to produce a good solid crust. (He went on to build a Web site for home cooks, http://cookingsousvide.com/.) "I think everyone who tries it will want one," he said of sous-vide machines, citing his success with pot roast and whole chickens. "I can put it in on Friday, then eat it on Saturday, or Sunday  whenever IÂm ready."