

Cook Your Meat in a Beer Cooler: The World's Best Sous-Vide Hack - JoelSutherland
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html

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yish
I have made a modified sous-vide setup based on the following excellent
instructions which I have not seen mentioned here. Total cost was under $75
for me since I simplified the setup a bit. Temperature accuracy is excellent.

[http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2010/02/diy-sous-vide-heating-
imm...](http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2010/02/diy-sous-vide-heating-immersion-
circulator-for-about-75/)

Quick overview of my modifications. I used a 6" deep full size hotel pan I got
in chinatown as my water bath and a standard $9 1500 watt water heater element
instead of the set of immersion heaters.

~~~
shpxnvz
Thanks for the link! I've been looking for plans to build a mash heater for
home-brewing, and that looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

~~~
yish
Actually, what gave me the confidence to use the 1500 watt heating element was
when I searched for the PID I was buying on google, I found a lot of links to
home-brewers who used these heating elements drilled into the side of big
aluminum/stainless steel pots. They were using even higher wattage units to
get quicker boil times.

~~~
shpxnvz
It's great that we can so easily share information between different hobbies,
isn't it? :-)

Oh, I also ought to mention one thing regarding the heating element for those
who might not be familiar. If I remember correctly the National Electric Code
indicates that a constant load (such as a heating element) cannot be more than
80% of the peak load rating for the circuit - which (I think) ends up being
1440 watts on a 15 amp branch.

It's almost certainly safe to operate on a 15-amp circuit, but if one is
particularly worried about the letter of the law or insurance coverage if
anything unfortunate happens, be sure to run on a 20-amp circuit.

~~~
sokoloff
In general, if it has a plug on it, it's considered a "demand load" not a
"continuous load" as far as the NEC is concerned.

Hair dryer, slow cooker, electric space heater, etc are all demand loads and
can use 100% of the rated ampacity.

Edit: Source: Article 100 of NEC

~~~
shpxnvz
Interesting, I wonder if this is a new development (can't find that in my 2005
NEC codebook). I did run across something else, though, 200.21B2 states that
the total load on a single 15-amp receptacle cannot exceed 12 amps, which
might also apply.

I guess I'm going to have to go back and re-read the whole section. This
concludes the thread-jack. We now return you to the regular discussion.

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tptacek
This is an awesome hack, but I gotta point out that the price point on "real"
SV he's using is off. It's $400+ if you buy a Sous Vide Supreme. But you can
also buy a $40 rice cooker (which is a multitasker) and a $130 PID controller
from Auber Instruments.

The only downside to the beer cooler hack, besides the fact that it's not
precise enough to do eggs, is that it won't work over very long cook times. It
looks like it'll kill on steaks, but it isn't going to work for medium rare
short ribs.

More Hacker News on Sous Vide, another topic I seriously will not shut up
about, is here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093433>

~~~
icey
Auber has great customer service too - the sensor on my PID went bad and when
I emailed Auber about it, they FedExed a new sensor to me within minutes.

~~~
geedee77
Do you live between the Auber factory and a FedEx office?

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roberte3
I did this last weekend, it made one of the best steaks that I have ever had
in my life.

I used a cheap cooler, so I cranked up the temp by 10 degrees above what I
wanted the steak to be at when it finished.

One thing that isn't brought up on the page, you probably want to use a rapid
digital thermometer rather than your standard analog meat thermometer, I
probably let out too much heat when I checked the temp halfway though.

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chrisa
This reminds me of a staple of my Boy Scout cooking: eggs in a bag. Just crack
your eggs into a zip top bag (it must be a freezer bag to handle the
temperature), add cheese, or peppers, or whatever you like in an omelet, suck
out the air, and put it in boiling water until it’s done. Then, if you eat
your omelet straight out of the bag, you have no clean up!

It had never occurred to me then to try to cook anything else in bags, but I'm
certainly going to try this out.

~~~
tptacek
Just remember that there's a huge difference between boiling and SV'ing eggs.
Boiled eggs sound gross. Boiled steak _is_ gross. You don't want to let the
eggs get over 150. Eggs cook _fast_. Water boils at 212f.

~~~
chrisa
Ah yes, I forgot to mention: watch your eggs very closely, or they turn slimy
(which is as gross as it sounds, yes). If you get them out in time though,
they taste basically like an omelet cooked in a pan. Then again, I was a
teenager last time I did that, so maybe I'd have a different opinion if I
tasted them now :)

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DrSprout
Any consideration for toxicity? I can't imagine plastic baggies are designed
to keep food safe for human consumption when you heat them enough to cook
meat.

~~~
tptacek
Cheap bags start breaking down around 190f. You wouldn't want to eat anything
that came out of a 190f bag anyways. It's a valid concern though.

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hernan7
Ziplock's may be toxic:

[http://camping.about.com/od/campingrecipes/a/ziplocbaggies.h...](http://camping.about.com/od/campingrecipes/a/ziplocbaggies.htm)

~~~
jacobolus
This is talking about a completely different temperature range. What you meant
is “cooking your Ziplock at > 195°F may make it melt, and the effects thereof
have not been adequately studied”

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jimdeterman
Home brewers have a very similar problem. When you make beer from all grain,
you need to stop the heating at certain temperatures and stay at that
temperature for some amount of time to let certain enzymes activate. Using a
cooler to maintain heat is fairly standard in home brewing. Very neat.

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geoffc
That's cool! I'm going to try an omaha steak in my cooler, it is already
vacuum sealed so as far as I can see I just throw the steak in the hot water
and go have a few cold beverages while it cooks. Mmmmmh.

~~~
logicalmind
I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, but you should call omaha
steaks and ask them what the USDA grade of their steaks would be if they paid
for them to be graded. Combine that with the fact that they are usually frozen
and you're not getting a good deal on their meat.

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stjarnljuset
This reminded me of something my friend sent me: cooking salmon in a
dishwasher.

<http://www.salon.com/nov96/salmon961118.html>

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whyenot
I would be at least a little worried about food poisoning. Cooking salmon at
115 deg F, or beef at 125 deg F or even chicken at 140 deg F is not a high
enough temperature to kill off many harmful bacteria and parasites. In normal
cooking, the external surfaces of the meat, where most contamination occurs,
reach much higher temperatures.

~~~
logicalmind
Killing most bacteria is a function of temperature and time. The higher the
heat, the less time it has to be at that temperature. The lower the heat, the
longer it has to be at that temperature. It's all a numbers game. Nothing is
completely safe.

~~~
whyenot
That's not entirely true. If you for instance "cook" meat at 100 degrees you'd
end up with more bacteria than you started with. You do need to cook at a
temperature that is hot enough to actually kill the bacteria. It's not a
numbers game at all, it's understanding a little microbiology.

Nothing is completely safe, but food poisoning is also not fun.

~~~
logicalmind
I highly recommend that anyone read this information before attempting sous
vide. It outlines the various bacteria involved and the time/temp calculations
for various items:

<http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html>

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dzlobin
It seems like there are a decent amount of misconceptions people have about
sous vide cooking. Everyone should have a look at the sous vide primer here
<http://www.cookingissues.com/primers/>

