Recipes

[blackhole99]

No thanks.

[gardenman]

I think the yay or nay question comes down to how you cook and what equipment you already own. If you already own a vacuum sealer and you're never in a rush to cook your meals and you're good at preplanning, then a sous vide cooker could be very good for you. If you often need to hold a meal until everyone shows up and you're never sure when that will be, a sous vide cooker might be ideal for you. If most of your meals are smallish (so you don't need something huge for the water for the sous vide) then it might be ideal for you. 

If you wander into the kitchen ten minutes before a meal and wonder, "What can I cook the fastest and easiest?" then it's not so great for you. If you want to cook enormous meals (large roasts, huge steaks, ten pork chops at a time, etc.) it's not so great for you.

The advantages of sous vide are that it's impossible to overcook food (assuming you set everything right.) You can hold cooked food for an extended time with little to no degradation of the food. The cooking process is very gentle.

The disadvantages are that it takes longer. You get better results with vacuum sealing the food which means you probably should have a vacuum sealer. (You can use a Zip-Loc type bag and try to squeeze all of the air out, but if enough air gets trapped the food can float and affect the cooking.) Things like meats typically will want to be flash-seared afterward to develop a crust. Some argue that cooking anything in plastic isn't good due to chemicals leaching from the plastic. (I'm not so sure I believe that, but whatever.) There's typically no warning if it fails. You just find cold, raw food where you were expecting it to be hot and ready to eat. 

If you're the right type of cook, sous vide is perfect for you. If you're not, it's not right for you. I might only use one once every couple of months, so it's not right for me. I tend to do more baking, deep-frying, and skillet cooking. I may get an air-fryer at some point, but sous vide is way down on my list of things to buy based on the way I cook.

[Rockycoast]

We purchased ours a few years ago from HSN.  We like it very much.  It is just another cooking method. It is a low temp. cooking method. We mostly use it for beef and chicken, but have also cooked potatoes for potato salad, sweet potatoes, corn, etc. All cooked fine. We season whatever meat we are going to cook. Vacuum seal it and then cook it in the sous vide. The meat comes out the same done ness throughout. No rare in the middle, well done on the outer part. Juicy and flavorful. If you like after you  can also put the meat in a pan and fry it to get a crust on the outside. As with most cooking tools, it is how often you will use it. We use ours frequently and like the set it and forget it feature.