Should I buy a SVS

In the Getting Started with Sous Vide Forum


In the Sous Vide Recipes Forum
After spending the last couple of weeks researching sv I finally decided to take the plunge and purchase this wonderful kitchen appliance. I live in England and decided that I would go to the food show in Birmingham at the end of the month as sv are having a promotion there and I hoped I might be able to get a good price as over her am looking at around the £450 mark for sv and sealer combo. I was fortunate to find your wonderful sv forum that I have nearly read every page of and now this is my dilemma.
Before reading your forum I was 90% getting the combo package the 10% was just down to price but after reading the many stories I am now at 70% AGAINST A PURCHASE so many horror stories have really put me off. Bacteria, not cooked, playing with different temp/heat I am so confused and the cost is even more relevant now to my decision. PLEASE HELP ME TO SORT THIS DILEMMA. Help me get my faith back in this product any advice would be much appreciated. Yours hopefully mark from England


3 Replies So Far

I have had sous vide equipment for almost two years. Mine is made by Polyscience. I absolutely love it. I have a couple of suggestions. Go to eGullet.com and look up the sous-vide thread there. It is an incredibly useful thread. Also, get yourself a couple of books. One is Sous vide help for the Busy Cook by Jason Logsdon and the other is Sous Vide for the Home Cook by Douglas E. Baldwin. Baldwin's book is perhaps the more scientific of the two. I no longer cook steaks, for example, any other way. It is particularly useful for the tougher cuts as doing them sous vide creates a meltingly tender steak. I will do a few of them up at once and, when finished, cool them very quickly in an ice bath. Once cold, they can go straight into your freezer and be reheated from frozen using your sous vide equipment. Very handy and very safe, provided that you cool them quickly. Chicken breasts are another thing I find is spectacular cooked sous vide. Actually, many cuts of meat benefit from the sous vide treatment. I don't bother with vegetables but I understand that they are very good cooked this way as well. Don't let the scare stories deter you from buying your equipment. Just follow proper instruction and you will be fine.
Thanks for info very interesting am now looking at the Anova product tip off another sv can't wait to get started cheers
Mark, I'm in the UK and have bot a SVS and a Grant circulator and have had a lot of fun cooking with these and an occasional hiccup.

It can be a bit confusing to new users as sous vide allows you to mess around with the temp/time factors to get different products from the same protein you started with which is fantastic. I tend to cook chicken breasts and belly pork SV on a regular basis and then freeze.

You've mentioned Anova but there is also Sansaire which is due to sip at the end of Jan 14, bot of which look great products, the only problem being the cost of shipping from the US ($50-$70) and potential for import duties/vat.


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