I bet you could grow pot with that herb unit:)

I have seen ads/documents from AEG/Electrolux and Miele about cooking sous vide in steam oven. It probably won't hold temperature as well as a good immersion circulator, but it will be convenience if steam oven is already there set up, ready to be used.

Homechef, thought the same thing! Sounds like a great niche marketing plan.

LOL about the "herbs". Aren't the ones you're talking about too tall?

Chanop, even KitchenAid is touting some new sous vide system, but what's the point of vacuum (vide) if you don't have the 1 degree variance circulator? What do you gain? The greatest advantage of sous vide is to prep Wednesday, cook Friday, and have a minimum of an hour or two leeway held at temperature so you don't have to have a pinned down serving time. Without that constant temperature, what have you gained?

Probably depends on the food. There is a post on egullet late last year: sous-vide-in-a-comb-steam-oven that discussed oven temperature accuracy and precision and sous vide cooking.

I think the real point is marketing. It is another feature that people can use steam oven for and it is already there for convenience, although probably not as good as immersion circulator in terms of precision and accuracy. It is along the same line as selling built-in automatic coffee machine for convenience. Most coffee connoisseurs probably would get their hands on, good grinder, and a heat exchanger machine, or at least a boiler machine with PID control, and brew the coffee themselves to get the best coffee they could.

Before affordable immersion circulars were available, people have been using many methods to do sous vide at home on a cheap with a lot less precise and less accurate temperature control and get some results.

Here are some youtube videos that found about sous vide cooking using steam for domestic appliances. I have seen AEG ones before while looking to buy a combi last year, but Miele and Kitchenaid ones are new to me (both released late last year).

It is an interesting topic plllog. I saw some info about sous vide in combi/steam oven a while ago, but did not really look into it. From digging further, it seems like combi steam oven and steam oven is an acceptable device for cooking sous vide. It may not be as precise as a good immersion circulator, but seems to be good enough and well within tolerance for many types of food. I have an earlier version of Anova, but haven't been using it that much. It will be interesting, one day to compare the two cooking devices myself.

PedroG from egullet discussion I linked in earlier post shows a graph of temperature stability of his Electrolux steaming mode at low temperature in this thread.

Here are some more articles that I found talking about using combi oven and CVAP oven for cooking sous vide:

• cooking issues - low temperature cooking
• modernist cuisine - Why cook sous vide?
• Modernist cuisine Volume 2 - Techniques and equipment. On page 170, it lists combi oven setting for low temperature steam for sous vide cooking at 30-60˚C (84-140˚F) as limited capability due to temperature inaccuracy, and 60-100˚C (120-212˚F) as good temperature accuracy. On page 229, it lists combi oven as one of the sous vide cookers where Cost: very expensive; Pros: very large capacity. Capable of very high temperatures, variable humidity, even direct steaming. Some have sophisticated cooking programs. Cons: less accurate temperature stability than water baths or water-vapour ovens at temperatures below 60˚C/ 140˚F. Complex installation requirements. Combi oven referenced there is a Rational commercial one though.

V-Zug, Wolf's OEM for their CSO, called their sous vide in combi oven, Vacuisine. Look at page I linked there, there are some recommended cooking time in steam oven from V-Zug for various type of food. Here are two videos from V-Zug.

Chanop, many thanks! I'm going to have to come back and look at all this information in depth. The friend I was shopping with might get into this stuff, so I have good use for it as well. I get using the combi-steam if it'll be good enough for one's purpose and one already has it. I'm just wondering about paying a lot extra for a sous vide oven if it's not as precise as a $200 circulator. :) I've always done a lot of low temperature cooking/steaming. The difference with precision sous vide is that the entire thickness is developed to an exact temperature. Thinking on what you've said, I'm guessing that for many people, perhaps just being able to seal it up in the morning (or a day or two before), throw it in the oven in the evening, and have a lovely outcome (especially for something that doesn't need to be browned after), could make the vacuum sealing part very attractive, and the precision much less important.

So, from Pedro's graphs, it appears that the steam oven has a wobble of about 3-4 degrees, which is about what I'd expect from the discussion. Plenty good for making dinner, but not precise enough for when that's the difference between different levels of doneness.

I think this is where the immersion circulator is revolutionary and wipes out a lot of the assumptions in the existing texts. Given the assumption that they really are as accurate as they're supposed to be (I tested once with my instant read, because I was using a big roasting pan and wasn't sure about the large volume, and it was fine, but that was nowhere near a scientific test), and have had tremendous results, but haven't had a fail to investigate. When looking at the old style commercial circulators with tanks and commercial or the original high end only CSOs, many thousands of dollars for either, for a specialty piece of equipment, it's a debate worth having. With an inexpensive immersion circulator and a $10 pot or bucket or cooler, easily gotten for free, as well, it just throws those arguments out. The immersion circulator can be classed with the torch, infrared thermometer, and grill press, as a kitchen gadget that's slightly pricey for a limited use item, but is just another tool in the kitchen. It's the price of sous vide grade vacuum bag rolls that's the kicker, nowadays, when a circulator costs about the same as any other countertop oven. I reuse the water for the washing up. :)

Well, that paragraph is a mess. What I meant was that a lot of the discussions are from before the immersion circulator (and from a professional perspective) and I think it really changes things, especially for home cooks who already have a vacuum sealer.

I didn't find what you were referring to in Cooking Issues, but it was very interesting. I did find the discussion of the pickling in vacuum interesting, but I don't know enough to know if the vacuum chamber is necessary or just what they had? Perhaps it builds a truer vacuum, and the pickler was talking about the pressure and pressure release boiling, so maybe that is different with a chamber than just sucking out the air. If so, that would be a reason for the small vacuum drawers, as well.

I've been looking at sous vide turkey breasts. I did the roulades last year, and they were great. I found a lot of recommendations for on the bone, but they still remove the ribs. I don't want to fiddle around with that, though I could probably get the butcher to do it. Some of those drawers don't look like they'd hold a whole turkey breast on the bone, though I'm pretty sure it would fit in my bag material.

Chanop, many thanks, again, for the great discussion and for providing so many interesting sources of input. It's a real treat!

Hmm, cooking issues link got messed up, it is "http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=3908.html"; and is talking about cooking low temperature in combi oven.

I do agree that cooking meat to a temp at set point, particularly at lower temp, a combi oven wouldn't match an immersion circulator. Out of curiosity, I checked how my Miele is doing in terms of temperature stability. I don't have a fancy data logger, just a thermoworks remote probe that I cross check its reading with thermal pen. Tried set point at 40˚C, 50˚C, 60˚C, 70˚C, 80˚C, etc, and found that temperature is around -1 - +3 from set point. During the first cycle reaching set point, oven seems to overshoot a bit more than the second /third cycle after it has reached set point.

I think this would be plenty fine for veggie and fruit where cooking temp is a bit higher, and I would leave meat to immersion circulator.

I think you might be talking about the Irinox blast chiller and built in vacuum sealer (the logo makes it look like it begins with a 'T'. irinox zero and freddy. I need to learn much more about them, but I am considering putting one under each of our Gag combis. I imagine most people wouldn't have use for something so OTT, but I think it might be really helpful for making cat food (because the stuff I was buying changed their recipe and now the cats won't eat it.. grrrrr.. but that is another thread :) !!!

Zero

I have a Vacmaster vacuum sealer, which is excellent, but it's HUGE and HEAVY. The irinox looks like it could prettily stack under the combi and then I wouldn't have to have the Vacmaster on a pull out shelf taking up so much prime real estate in the storage cabinets (and I don't even know if it fits yet). The small counter vacuum sealers couldn't keep up with the volume I was doing.

Freddy

Because I make a lot of food at once, I learned the packages of raw were taking over a day to freeze because they were stacked on top of each other. That shouldn't be an issue, but the cats weren't liking the food, so I can only assume the slow freeze was affecting the quality. My good friend then suggested putting them on cookie drying racks in the freezer so the air was circulating between them, which worked perfectly. That method takes up most of the freezer though, and in the new house, I'm hoping to have an under the fridge freezer which would make that more difficult. My hope is with the Freddy, I can just throw all the packages (or even containers) of raw cat food in there and then it will freeze nicely and quickly, even if it's all stacked on top of each other. I haven't confirmed this yet.

If this all works as described, which remains to be seen, it will be worth the expense for my lazy self, however, my concern would be if they break and discontinue these products. Of course this is only useful to use for the cats.. after that, hmmmmm?

Ohhhh, forgot to add, I researched the Freddy and it turns out that is also the sous vide oven. It is a blast chiller and slow cooker. I have no idea how it compares to the other sous vide options or if it does anything the Combi doesn't do. But, it is nice that it's not a one trick pony. Freddy Brochure

Well, no wonder I couldn't find it! The "T" is a logo! That's the one.

So, what I've learned on a simple Google search is that Irinox is a top maker of blast chillers. You can look them up in the business pages to confirm, but I don't think they're any more likely to disappear than any other maker of high end specialty appliances, and their commercial division is driving it. Since KitchenAid has their own knock off of these in Europe, I don't doubt that there's sufficient demand to keep them going. Heck, I have always wanted a blast chiller. Just don't have enough use to make it a practical investment.

For your purposes, the vacuum drawer makes sense. For ordinary people, for ordinary use, it's just overkill. I suppose if they were doing a regular Costco run, portioning proteins and vacuum sealing them for "shock freezing", it would also make some sense, too. I was just struck by how small the well is. It doesn't look like it'll do even small canisters, either, though maybe it has a hose attachment like the countertop models do.

The Freddy brochure is enticing! I can definitely see how it would improve the cat food. Even if you had to freeze in shifts, it should be fine. You'd have to seal in shifts anyway. How long does the shock freezing take? I wonder if Freddy is single degree accurate?

Gotta admire those fab Italian looks, too. :)

Chanop, thanks for the test and the pictures. Your dishes look very appealing! I think the CSO is probably also fine for proteins if you're also timing the cooking, especially for the many people who are terribly picky about temperature. I'm all for CSOs! So if vacuum sealing is an alternative to other kinds of parchment or bag cooking, that's just another trick, right? I'm glad to have your practical experience to back up my thoughts that the circulator is the thing to choose if sous vide is your main purpose.