The Best Sous Vide with Recommended Books
We've reviewed the best sous vides and best cookbooks for you
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The best sous vide provide an interesting alternative to putting together delicious meals besides simple boiling, baking, cooking and grilling, there are more than a few exciting ways to add a bit more zing to your dishes.
One of the best-loved precision cooker standards in the professional culinary trade is sous vide. A sous vide cooker will help you to achieve the perfect temperature for the perfect flavour, tenderness and experience. But can sous vide machines make a difference to your life?
At WhichCooker, we look at a huge variety of different cooking tools and methods and wanted to answer the question: Why are so many people investing in sous vide technology?
If you are new to discovering sous vide you may like to read The Keen Cooks Guide to Sous Vide Cooking. It’s packed with all the info you need, but, for those of you who have done your research and are ready to buy here is our guide of the best Sous Vide with recommended cooking books.
We’ve reviewed some of the best products on the market for sous vide and water boiling including Anova and Breville, two leading brands in the home sous vide cooking industry along with a handful of great books you can buy to start you on your way.
The Top Contenders of 2022
This impressive-looking sous vide cooker is also very reasonably priced. You can heat up and maintain a water bath for almost 100 hours with this system! This system actually avoids the Bluetooth, app and wi-fi connectivity that other immersion circulators fall on, instead insisting that the best precision cooking comes from interior engineering. It’s hard to disagree when you have products like this available! The system boasts a clear control panel and is very easy to use. It’s very comfortable on the hand, and you don’t need both hands free to make the most of it. The Instant Pot SSV800 is an affordable, adaptable sous vide machine which will likely appeal to anyone who is just getting started in this style of cooking. Prepare a hot water bath and cook from anywhere between 10 minutes and 72 hours on auto mode. The system boasts touch screen controls and is built in stainless steel for ease of cleaning. Many people will likely choose this sous vide machine for its focus on even water heating, meaning you get a precise cook all the way through. Anova tends to be one of the leading brands as far as sous vide machines are concerned, and their AN500 range is a popular choice. Much like the Breville option above, this Anova sous machine works through an app, with the added bonus that you can access all kinds of specialist recipes before you start cooking. This Anova precision cooker is a little less powerful than the system listed at the top of our guide, but at the same time, it is likely to be a lot more affordable. At the same time, you can still use Bluetooth technology and the fantastic Anova app to keep control of your cooking. Unlike many sous vide immersion circulators, this small and slimline tech can clamp and clip to various pots and pans of your choosing. If you have around $250 available, Breville’s leading Joule sous vide will appeal to you if you’re looking for something slim, sleek and easy to use. This immersion circulator saves you time when cooking and heating anything up through sous vide, as well as plenty of space. If you’re looking to really dive into sous vide immersion circulators and more, you’re going to need a little helping hand to get started. This wonderful guide is super easy to use, allowing you to discover why people take on sous vide cooking at all, as well as all the wonderful and tasty things you can create with just a simple gizmo, a plastic bag and a hot pot of water. This book is the perfect complement to most sous vide machines, meaning that even if you have a budget Joule or a pricey Anova precision cooker, there’s a lot to get out of this book. It explores the phenomenon of sous vide as well as techniques and recipes. This smart, beautifully-presented book is a great choice for anyone looking for the best ways to bring sous vide cooking to life. A great guide for anyone who is already familiar with the cooking style, this book should open things up to you if you’re looking for some new culinary tastes and horizons. It’s very easy to put this book to great use alongside vide machines of various sizes and shapes. However, do be prepared for this guide to take you a little out of your comfort zone in terms of recipes and cooking styles. Providing you heat up a vacuum bag to enough degrees fahrenheit, it’s simple to think that you can do anything with a sous vide machine. This guide certainly takes that idea and runs with it! This cookbook should appeal to anyone who is already used to various styles of traditional cooking and recipe books. Ultimately, if you’re just getting started with sous vide machines, you’re going to need something that will introduce you to the variety of food and meals available to you. While all the books we list here do that to a fantastic degree, this particular book offers up more meal ideas than most. There are almost 600 high-temperature things to try out! What’s more, it has a clear index, it’s really easy to follow, and it’s hugely inspiring if you are just getting into Joule cooking and more besides. Is it the best sous vide cookbook for beginners? It’s well up there in our collective opinion! Ask any expert chefs about sous vide, and they will likely tell you that it’s an art form worth getting into – but not worth rushing. Thomas Keller’s leading book on the best sous techniques will likely help beginner cookers and more experienced masters get things up to temperature. Only the finest French cooking arts take time to learn thoroughly – but ultimately, it’s all worth it! Whether you are using a Joule cooker or a fancy app to keep an eye on your water temperature, Keller’s leading book is the perfect choice for anyone looking for ways to get straight into the high-end of sous cooking. If you’re just getting started, you might find other books a little easier to read – but this is one tome no Joule our sous cooker should be without. If you’re really looking to get the whole family into sous vide cuisine, this book is likely to help get you there. With over 600 recipes which won’t break the bank, this book takes away a lot of the snobbery that some people perceive with sous vide. It’s more than easy to get set up with the best sous vide recipes at home, and this enormous guide really does have it all. Struggling to get up to temperature with other books? Apps and Bluetooth not doing it for you? There are worse things you can do than fall back on a reliable cookbook every now and again. The more recipes, the better!
Features
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Reasons to Avoid
This vide cooker also has a sturdy clamp, which you can attach to an instant pot of your choice, or otherwise. Providing you have water and bagged food available, you should be absolutely fine!
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This single immersion circulator, which you can attach to a pot or container of your choosing. The system is much more affordable than the Breville model, but a little chunkier. It has a temperature accuracy within 0.1 C either side.
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This unit is built to be one of the smallest and most portable units in the Anova line, meaning that you should benefit from all the best engineering the brand has to offer in one handy pocket package.
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Worrying about the temperature of your water bath? Providing you have an iOS device running 8.0 or higher, you’ll be able to download the free app and actively see how far your food is off being cooked. You can even connect via Bluetooth if you use a different device. It’s an amazingly convenient Joule vide from a brand you might well know best for sandwich toasters!
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Our Final Thoughts: Things to Consider
How Does It Work?
A sous vide machine isn’t a pot on its own. It’s often a small attachment which you can attach to a pot or pan. You will then need to set your ideal temperature, as per your own recipe, and immerse your food in a bag in water. Once the sous vide machine tells you that everything is as hot as you need it to be, cook for as long as you need, then remove to finish grilling or braising.
It’s as simple as that. Of course, various immersion circulators will differ in terms of the technology they use and, of course, in terms of cost. Therefore, it’s worthwhile comparing the best sous vide immersion systems on the market. Which is why we have provided this review listing the Best Sous Vides.
What is the Best Circulator to Buy?
An immersion circulator can do a lot for sous vide cooking. Rather than simply heating up water to a high temperature, a circulator – as you might expect – will circulate water in your pan. This, as the best sous vide masters will tell you, is crucial if you want to maintain an even, precise cook all the way through.
But what is the best immersion circulator to buy? If you’re new to vide, then you might find cheaper options particularly tempting. However, there is plenty of worth in checking out mid-range to more expensive products for the best results. It all depends on what you want to get out of your cooking!
Budgeting
As you can see, the price of a great sous vide machine will vary. However, that’s not to say the best machines cost the most money! If you set aside at least $60, you should be able to pick up a good Joule or Anova system. However, you may need to budget for plastic bags, too.
Adaptability
The best sous vide cooking machines will be adaptable to your needs and tastes. Can you switch temperature easily? How high will your water temperature go? Can you leave your sous vide to heat water up for hours at a time? Temperature and time are very big factors to consider. What’s more, can you use a sous vide with varying cooking times with various pots and pans? Or will you need a specific container? What about a vacuum sealer for the bags you want to use?
Type of System
Generally, whether you are buying Joule, Anova or otherwise, you will find that you can buy immersion circulators, which can clip onto pots and containers, or complete sous vide ovens. Depending on your kitchen flexibility, it’s worth looking across Amazon and elsewhere for the best deals.
Smart Controls and Ease of Use
Of course, this is something you should always keep in mind. You’ll find that there are Joule and other water systems out there which will let you monitor temperature through Bluetooth. Some will even let you use an app that connects to your device! Others will simply have temperature controls which are easy to access from the main system itself. You may even find that some water monitors will avoid using any fancy tech at all! Consider weight, size and comfort of use, too.
Conclusion
So – are you ready to test the water? Sous vide cooking is some of the most precise you’ll find across the globe. The best overall sous vide cook systems will depend on individual taste and experience. Therefore, it’s well worth checking out as many reviews as you can, and to immerse yourself in a few books to do some background reading.
The process might take some time – but the moment you know the best temperature range you want to work with, you’ll find that it’s a delicious cooking standard you simply can’t do without. Take a look at our picks for best sous vide machine online – some even work with Amazon Alexa! Pick up a few guides and recipes to inspire you, too and don’t forget to check out ‘The Keen The Keen Cooks Guide to Sous Vide Cooking’ if you would like further information about Sous Vide and immersion cooking.
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I had the idea for Which Kitchen Appliance? In 2016 when a friend was planning a new kitchen and asked me to help her choose her new kitchen appliances. She knew that I had trained as a chef, had a passion for cooking and an interest in interior design.
After hours and hours of trawling websites looking for a double oven, built-in microwave, hob & extractor fan the excitement that was soon waned…we were bored and frazzled. But finally, we succeeded and she got her new kitchen.
This led me to think that there must be a better way of researching kitchen appliances, if only there were somewhere that you could go and find kitchen appliance reviews and helpful hints and tips on getting the best from and look after your appliance under one roof with information that was comprehensive, easy to understand and that you could trust…and so WhichKitchenAppliance? was born. I now work full-time on WhichKitchenAppliance?