A restaurant gadget called an immersion circulator is gaining new popularity now that it connects to your smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. WSJ's Wilson Rothman demonstrates how to cook "sous vide" with the wireless Anova circulator. Photo/Video: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal
By Wilson Rothman Dec. 10, 2015
IF YOU’RE A TYPICAL harried professional, your options for making a homemade meal during the week are pretty limited. But nerdy home cooks and pro chefs have long known a secret to preparing perfectly cooked meats and vegetables with minimal effort: sous vide, a technique in which ingredients, sealed in plastic, are cooked unattended in a low-temperature water bath, often for hours. Steak cooked sous vide while you’re at the office will be exactly medium-rare when you get home, ready to sear and serve when it’s convenient. By heating food slow and low, sous vide can also bring out more complex flavors from basic ingredients like carrots and fingerling potatoes.
Cooking sous vide is simple. All you need is a large pot, some Ziploc bags and a gadget called an immersion circulator, which sits inside the pot (off stove) and maintains the water at a steady temperature. The problem is, the technique has traditionally required you to consult daunting tables of ideal temperatures and cooking times—which makes whipping up supper feel like studying for a chemistry exam.
The latest immersion circulators aimed at home cooks, however, are getting a smart upgrade that at last makes sous vide as practical as a slow cooker or microwave: Wi-Fi connectivity, which allows a companion app to walk newbies through the once-esoteric process. Wondering what to do with those beautiful farm-market carrots you bought? Just search the app for “carrots,” and, with a tap, the immersion circulator will start heating up your pot of water to the right temperature. Then just follow the simple recipe on your screen: Peel the carrots and seal them in a Ziploc bag (easier and just as effective as using a vacuum sealer) with butter, salt and brown sugar. Drop the bag in the pot and walk away. When your phone buzzes 45 minutes later, your sweet yet earthy, buttery yet snappy roots are ready to enjoy.
The apps don’t just make sous-vide cooking more accessible; they’re also designed to ensure food safety. Unlike traditional high-temperature techniques such as roasting and boiling, sous-vide cooking happens closer to the temperature “danger zone,” 40 to 140 degrees, which food-safety experts advise you steer clear of if you want to avoid food-borne bacteria. If you were to invent your own recipe—say, cooking cod for six hours at 110 degrees—the apps would warn you of the potential danger so you could adjust the settings. They’ll also alert you when your circulator loses connectivity—which is helpful since you don’t want your food to linger at too low a temperature.
THE PIONEER
Anova Precision Cooker
For the past few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with the newest Anova Precision Cooker ($199, anovaculinary.com), which features both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. About the size of a can of tennis balls, the circulator clamps to the side of a large pot. This Thanksgiving, I skipped the oven and used the device to cook turkey breast sous vide (145 degrees for 2.5 hours). Because the meat was gently heated in a sealed bag that traps in juices, it turned out especially moist—and was still moist days later when I sliced it to make sandwiches with leftovers.
The Precision Cooker’s connectivity makes cooking sous vide even more hands-off. I was surprised by how convenient it was to control my immersion circulator from afar, using my phone. One day before leaving for work, for example, I dropped sealed frozen steaks into a pot of ice water to keep them chilled all morning. Then at around 2 o’clock, I opened the app and brought my water bath to 133 degrees. By the time I got home, the steaks were medium-rare all the way through and ready to be tossed into a hot cast-iron pan to get that brown crust. This dish required a total of about five minutes of actual work—a light load, even if you’re dragging yourself into the kitchen after a hard day.
THE NEW CONTENDERS
The forthcoming ChefSteps Joule
Wi-Fi Nomiku
Anova’s was the first connected immersion circulator on the market, but it isn’t the only game in town. This week, the Wi-Fi Nomiku ($199, nomiku.com) starts shipping. It has a companion Android and iOS app, called Tender, that can automatically set the correct time and temperature for whatever you’re cooking. You select rib-eye, tap “Cook This,” and the countdown to deliciousness begins.
While deciding between those two is tough, yet another option is on the horizon: the Joule (preorder for $199, chefsteps.com). Designed by the online cooking school ChefSteps and due out in May, it has a slim body that will make the device considerably easier to store than the bulkier models currently on the market. The Joule doesn’t have a screen (it’s controlled entirely through an app) and instead of attaching it to the side of a pot with a bulky latch, you secure the device to the bottom of a stainless-steel or enamel cast-iron pot via its magnetic base.
THE FUTURE OF SOUS VIDE
As handy as it might be to have your smartphone play sous chef, you needn’t have culinary ambitions to reap the benefits of an immersion circulator. Though the cooking nerds who were early sous-vide adopters may consider it cheating, Nomiku is developing partnerships that will allow the app to place orders for pre-made meals that can be reheated via sous vide. (The company already has a pilot program with the Bi-Rite grocery in San Francisco through which customers can order pre-seasoned vacuum-sealed raw meats.) ChefSteps is exploring possibilities as well. According to Chris Young, the company’s co-founder and CEO, “The microwave wouldn’t have been successful if you didn’t have microwave meals.”
Source: Wall Street Journal
