Dcarch I hadn't thought about the relatively slight difference in temp for artichokes steamed and cooked SV. I was hoping that avoiding the loss of flavor into the water would be a significant difference. Water even under steamed artichokes is fragrant and green. Maybe I'll try SV again with small and very fresh 'chokes. And I'll be MUCH more sparing with the lemon. I routinely SV fish, lamb, beef, and venison, and the meats are always interesting and usually just flat great. I just discovered the SV Kitchen site as I searched for SV artichoke recipes and quite like it. I think this Saturday I will try their recipe for Chickpea Soup with Shrimp and Chorizo. Never considered soup in the SV. You have been my inspiration and resource more often than you can imagine. Because of your information, I am seriously considering putting together an inexpensive and easily stored SV system I can use in smallish saucepans or small coolers. Cranking up the Supreme for four eggs is a bit much. I would love to know which other forums you might recommend. Sandra (edited to add link to the soup) Here is a link that might be useful: Chickpea soup with chorizo and shrimp This post was edited by Bellsmom on Fri, Mar 7, 14 at 11:16

Yeh, I was wishing it was deeper but went ahead and bought it because it looked like it would be easy to set up and the price was right. After I got it home, I remembered that I have one of those kettle type warmers down in the basement...much smaller, of course & I haven't dug it out to see if it's much deeper. I was thinking that I would insulate the top some way....at first I was concerned that the rim would be too hot. Now I realize that shouldn't be a concern because the element is on the bottom and the rim won't be any hotter than the water. (Unlike if you're using a Nesco.) Now, can you point me to some directions on how to wire the relay? (And what to buy.) This spring I wired up a PID to control my seedling mats and noted on some of the blogs that they recommended using a relay. (I think those were prolly on the home brewing applications.) Others didn't mention it so I went without. Obviously, I'm pretty much electronics ignorant so I need to have a 'For Dummies' tutorial! Oh, and muchas gracias, DC!

A very good question. Have you noticed that when you buy roast beef from a deli, the beef is always the same, identical everyday, every year? I believe the beef is cooked very similar to sous vide. Sous vide cooking has great benefits for restaurants and for some food makers. It can basically guarantee expensive meats will be cooked perfectly every time. It does not matter who is doing the cooking. Quality end result is predictable and repeatable. Sous vide cooking has another benefit that meat shrinkage is less, and that can add up. For restaurants, meat can be cooked ahead of time in quantity, refrigerated and reheated to be served without losing quality or overcooked. However, sous vide is just part of the cooking process. There is still a need for good recipes and good total preparation for the food to be delicious. Sous vide cooker is like any other appliance or cookware, you are correct that it cannot automatically make quality (delicious) food. dcarch

Oy. I'll have to check. Dcarch, do you have suggestions? ETA: In the preamble to his basic techniques chapter, he compares a convection steam oven's lack of consistent enough temperature (stated to be insufficient for using his tables) to water bath, and, in the next paragraph, explicitly states his converse, in the topic sentence, as "circulating water baths heat very uniformly". From that one may infer that he does, indeed, mean circulating. I was trained at a young age to read Engineer, and this is a prime example of the lingo. Sigh. And I'm grateful to FOAS for the link. There may well be some trial and error going on here... That's another great thing about starting with cooked. Not going to poison people with the experiments. :) But mostly, there's no point in partially cooking meatballs, and they'd squish too much if they were raw. I did one bag of turkey balls which weren't frozen enough before I vacuumed and they sort of squished too. Not big wet squishy, just not as solid as the ones that were frozen hard through. If they come out a little funny shaped, no one will care...but me. :( Much better booboo than undercooked!