Monday, March 19, 2012

Sous Vide Cooker

I recently built a sous vide cooker. For the controller, I used the open source osPID as a controller.

I used a cold serving tray as the bath. This needs to be a cooler to better maintain the temperature.



I cooked some eggs followed by some meat. The eggs were too runny. When I cooked the meat, I found my thermocouple was overestimating the temperature consistently. Using an analog thermometer, I was able to set the temperature precisely.

I followed the directions on the Serious Eats blog post about sous vide meat. I cooked a flatiron steak to medium rare for two hours. The steak was perfectly consistant, but the flavor was lacking. I think this was a problem with seasoning, not cooking.

Below here is an image of the cooker uncovered.


And here is a picture of the cooker covered. I cover it with blankets to help with insulation.


Here is the meat cooking in the bath.


And here is the final product!