Juvo Sous Vide

[dexters_lab]

I wouldn't normally post stuff here but i just saw this... a water bath cooker

now the reason i post it is it's 'App' controlled and i just thought why? Is it really necessary to have another UI on a separate device when the cooker itself clearly has a LCD screen and buttons anyway.

Surely you would put stuff in cooker, set the program and walk away, when it beeps, it's done!

The app seems to have recipes but surely that's just going to just resolve temperature and time, hardly something you need a whole app for!

Maybe i'm being a luddite ?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/juvo/juvo-sous-vide-app-controlled-cooking

[Kjelt]

Surely you would put stuff in cooker, set the program and walk away, when it beeps, it's done!
The app seems to have recipes but surely that's just going to just resolve temperature and time, hardly something you need a whole app for!

Yes I agree for 95% with you. I cook sous vide for over 3 years now and 95% of the recipes are set temperature, put food in and set a $5 kitchen alarm for the time to beep when ready.

Then there are a few recipes for instance stew meat that has to braise for over 24 hours at 65 ^oC and some recipes even go for 36 hours at 60 ^oC that can be a bit better when the first few hours you raise the temp higher to lets say 75 ^oC then back to 60/65 for the remainder of the time.
The reason is that this meat has two structures, one needs a higher temperature to convert to a gel substance, the other being the meat it self doesn't need this high temperature.
All the sous vide baths I saw don't have these multi parameter timed PID , just a single PID.

But I don't think the app supports this, I do not think you can control the temperature with the app, just set the recipe and it probably is a single PID controlled bath.

Then there is this critical timing myth: if you take for instance a steak and put it (depending on thickness) for 1 hour at 55^oC then it really does not matter if you take it out 10 or even 30 minutes later. Since the temperature stays at 55^oC the inners of the meat will also stay at 55^oC and it won't cook any further, just a bit more tender (the structure changes a bit over time) but nothing very critical so having an app for this is indeed bullshit.

So my advice for the cook that wants to experiment on a low budget
buy the book Sous Vide for the Home Cook from Baldwin for the time tables and advice ,
buy the $5 kitchen timer if you don't have one 
buy a standard waterbath used for keeping food warm capable of going to 90^oC they cost around $60
build your own PID, buy a cheapo chinese or a good one here .

[echen1024]

I built my own sous vide system, and none of this is necessary. It's a simple PID controller and a timer. Smartphone connectivity? Wtf?

[miguelvp]

This one that just got founded just last month was a deal. Even at it's full price of $169 and available probably by the end of the year for everyone.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/anova/anova-precision-cooker-cook-sous-vide-with-your-ip

The Juvo one well is not really a good deal

[Kjelt]

Looks more like a womans toy then a serious sous vide device.

[miguelvp]

Looks more like a womans toy then a serious sous vide device.

They took their $199 already successful sous vide and made it cheaper and better.
Not only supports ios and android phones but even windows phones.

As for the woman's toy there are plenty of independent reviews out there just google anova reviews. I don't think they are buying it for that.

Myself I don't do sous vide although a coworker brings some to share to the office every now and then.

[Kjelt]

Well they better get their marketing right because the video example see picture is stupid:
Sous vide cooking requires:
1) a PID controller calibrated on the waterbath (larger waterbath different PID parameters)
2) a constant temperature over a long time
3) fully surrounding of the product in the water
4) isolating the products from eachother if using more then one product (if for instance two bags with a 1 inch steak stick together you need the cooking time of a 2 inch steak which is >3 times larger then for a 1 inch steak)

In their video they do not meet any of these requirements:

- an unisolated bucket/icecooler? Outside temperature influences the watertemperature.
- the product lies against the side of the bucket, this means that side of the product is not getting the same temperature as its front, worst case resulting in a HACCP  dangerous situation.
- no seperators for multiple products

This is a toy product marketed for christmass gifts, you can better spend a couple of hundreds extra for a decent product if you are seriously going to use it.

[Legit-Design]

So a cheap rice cooker and cheapest chinese pid controller from ebay will probably do a better job?
Also cheap mechanical rice cooker has extra safety feature if all the water boils, it will just stop heating and wont burn the whole house.

[dexters_lab]

Well it looks like the Juvo has their pricing right looking around for other similar stuff. Though i think the app control is just pointless.

That other one that you have to stick in a bucket looks like a half thought out idea, surely you need a heater around the bath of water to make sure you get even heating, unless it has some kind of water stirrer in it?

[miguelvp]

Polyscience is the top player (may be the first not sure) and they all follow the same principle, it does produce convention on the water and they heat all the water evenly, my friend has one of the Polyscience ones and he paid top $ for it when it came out.

But i'm not too much into this other than I've eaten food from friends who has them.

Being the shape they are means you have flexibility on containers. One thing to consider is that since it cooks at vacuum (sous vide means that) the food has to be on plastic bags. Granted it doesn't heat the plastic much but you gotta make sure you use the right bags that are safe because the last thing you want is bpa or whatever it's called on your food.

[PlainName]

unless it has some kind of water stirrer in it?

You know, it would help if you actually the stuff you're slagging off. From the Kickstarter page:

The Sansaire is an immersion circulator: it houses the heating coils, thermometer, microcontroller and water-circulating motor that work together to maintain a precise temperature in your water bath.

Doesn't that say it does indeed have "some kind of water stirrer" in it?

It's worth checking out the chap's original 'freeware' DIY version which was the precursor to this:

DIY sous vide

But seeing as how the link to that was cleveryly hidden in full sight on the Kickstart page I guess you'll miss seeing it here too