The Best Sous Vide Machines/Immersion Circulators

sous-vide machines are sleeker smarter and more straightforward than ever and adam's here to tell us which brand is best was that your sous-vide saunter okay there are two types of sous-vide machines for home use there are water ovens which are generally pretty big and then they're the ones that you see right in front of you here these are immersion circulators i love these our testers have some experience with these they also did a little preliminary testing and they much preferred the immersion circulators because you can use them with a wide range of vessels they're smaller they're quick and so that's what we focused on there's a lineup of seven different immersion circulators the price range was 129.99 to 274.95 that's not bad it's actually not too bad especially for what these things will do now we put them through a battery of both pure cooking and performance tests the cooking tests were performed in vessels of different sizes including a four quart saucepan seven and a quarter quart dutch oven an eight-quart plastic container and a nine and a half gallon cooler sous-vide machines are meant to cook food to a very precise temperature so accuracy mattered testers used lab calibrated temperature tracking software and thermocouples to monitor the water temperatures while food cooked and while the circulators heated an empty six-quart water bath for three hours first at 149 degrees and later at 190 degrees which is the highest temperature a lot of these machines will reach testers also track the time it took for the machines to heat up these water baths now most of them were accurate to within an average of a degree or two which is pretty good that is pretty good the white one down at the end was the most accurate of all at .2 degrees both temperatures over three hours wow that was really impressive testers also wanted to evaluate the ease of use by checking out all of the controls setting temperatures and timers reading displays toggling between fahrenheit and celsius noting the alerts and the alarms that the different models offered and checking the functionality of wi-fi pairings and companion apps if that was something that the models offered some of the machines were fairly easy to use others were needlessly frustrating and complex to use the most complex was this one there one tester said that trying to get this thing going was like a logic puzzle because if you press buttons in the wrong order it would send off this cascade of chirps and beeps and alarms that you couldn't turn off it would switch it between fahrenheit and celsius or it would just turn the machine off altogether so it's like a mensa test exactly which is not what you want from your sous-vide machine once they got this going this thing actually churned the water while it heated so roughly that it jostled eggs inside of the container hard enough that when they hit the side of the container the eggs cracked oh goodness so testers really preferred a machine that was simple to set up simple to use easy to understand what was going on and that heated the water both quickly and gently so that you're not cracking eggs in there right no white caps no white caps now testers also weighed them and measured them because you want them to be reasonably small for a couple of reasons number one you can use it with a wider range of pots number two once it's in the vessel it leaves you the most room for food and number three it's easy to store yeah that's what i was thinking yeah exactly you can just chuck a small one right in the kitchen drawer and you're good to go now when you cook in a water bath if you don't cover it and even sometimes when you do if you don't cover it tightly there's some evaporation over time and you have to monitor the water level all of these machines have a minimum fill and a maximum fill and the water level has to stay between those two lines they're usually noted somewhere on the machine the minimum one ensures that there's enough water to heat and to circulate through the heater ports the maximum makes sure there's not so much that gets close to all the electronics at the top which you definitely don't want to do makes sense most of these had about a three and a half inch span which is fine that white one down at the end had a six and a half inch span that just made it that much easier to use because you didn't have to think about refilling if the water evaporated that one is the winner that is the jewel it's 179 and testers loved it for a couple different reasons number one it was the most accurate it has that really wide range between the maximum and the minimum fill lines it's sleek it's small it heated the water quickly but gently now that one you have to pair with wi-fi and a smartphone or a tablet and the companion app which isn't that hard no it's pretty intuitive it put testers off at the beginning but the more they used it the more they really came to appreciate the fact that you can set it up in the morning go to work turn it on from across town monitor the water level change the time and the temperature it's really really convenient start your dinner on your commute i love that how can you not love that now if that does put you off though and you want one that operates both with wi-fi and old style buttons this is the anova precision cooker it's 199 dollars so it's a little bit more but you can use buttons if you want to all right so there you have it if you're in the market for a new immersion circulator check out the jewel at just 179 thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 193,050

Keywords: sous vide, best sous vide, joule sous vide, immersion circulator

Id: M4XOGTJZgBc

Length: 5min 35sec (335 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020