Ultimately this is the outcome for all new cooking appliances. Breville bought PolyScience (the godfather of all sous vide devices) a few years back. Temperature-controlled cooking may never be as widespread as the microwave oven, but it has a decent shot at being as popular as the food processor or the large-form-factor toaster oven.
I looked into building such a unit. The problem problem with that style machine (like the sous vide supreme) is the heating element. It's a flexible mat. Getting it at a sufficiently high watt density, to keep it from taking forever to preheat and totally sucking wind when you add a big hunk of cold meat, is expensive. In that industry your build cost generally needs to be about 25% of retail, so an extra $20 for your heating mat means $80 more at the store.
It's also less accurate temperature control because the thermocouple isn't submersed. It's a strip on the outside of a metal pan.
Rice cookers and crock pots don't have to heat up nearly as much water (which has a high specific heat capacity) as a sous vide machine big enough to handle a slab of ribs.
The Kenwood cooking chef is IMHO the (expensive) example on how to get this right. Inductive heating, very precise and even heat distribution. And goes up to 140°C. Thermomix stops at 120°C. But for me it is too pricey.
I am thinking of hacking the Kenwood kcook and add better temerature control to it, though :-) With an ESP8266 - boom. DIY connected kitchen device!
That's interesting, so it's like sitting a pan on a radiant heating element on the hob? Induction hobs are more efficient and responsive than radiant heat hobs, so I wonder if induction heating the metal pan would be the answer here too.
The cost is not in reading the temp. Cookers, and cooking systems in general have a lot of thermal inertia. You need a lot of wattage and a well designed PID to get precise temp control.
Eh not really, it's just a resistive heating element + impeller + temperature sensor + microcontroller. And implementing PID and tuning the parameters is not that hard as it's such a common and well-known algorithm. I built a sous vide cooker myself with a 500W heating element and tuned it well enough to hold +/- .05 degree in a matter of a couple afternoons for like $20 in parts.
The difference with a commercial product is first and foremost safety. You've got high current electricity and moving parts in a high temperature environment, all underwater. The difference between what I made and something like the Anova is that the Anova isn't going to kill someone and also it will work reliably without the user needing to fix and tweak stuff (and that by itself is a feat, considering the environment an immersion cooker is designed to operate in). If I sold what I made as a product it would break and kill someone.
All that kind of engineering and also the important work of optimizing user experience is not something manufacturers of most rice cookers care about. It's not worth the extra engineering effort. That said, there are some pretty fancy high-end rice cookers that have pretty precise control and maybe these sort of features may creep in on those, but that sort of rice cooker is a whole different beast than the little Panasonic cooker that lives on my counter.
At the time when PolyScience released the "Creative series" circulators for something like half the list price of the Pro, apparently the only major difference between the two devices were that the Pro was rated for constant use in food service businesses, and the CS was rated for home use. Both could circulate a bathtub.
Yeah, you have to pay for the extra liability the company incurs by rating things for extreme usage.
I draw an analogy with multimeters. I've got a cheapo multimeter with a safety rating that (dubiously) claims it's perfectly fine to jam the leads in an outlet. Would I? Hell no, it'd probably explode. Meanwhile I have a much more trustworth Fluke meter that cost literally 100x more that doesn't really do anything more than the cheapo but I'm not putting my life at risk probing an outlet.
You pay for that confidence, not only because there is a much larger engineering effort required to design and test a safe device, but also because you expect that they would be held accountable if their shit gets you killed. A legit safety rating is incurring a substantial liability.
Lucky for you, I already jammed my cheapo multimeter into the leads of an outlet, and I'm fine.
The multimeter did explode, and it turned out that I was measuring voltage- and had the lead going to the amp section of the meter, so it kept showing 0 after its fuse blew. I figured the socket was dead, good thing I didn't stick my fingers in there.
Yeah, I was being semi-facetious. Clearly it was my fault, and I don't know if the Fluke is that much different in terms of safety from cheapo multimeters. It certainly has other features and works better overall, but I don't see why you wouldn't try to measure high voltages with cheapo multimeters.
There's a huge difference in terms of input protection, actually. Fusing and a bunch of other protection circuits are the first line of protection... most cheap meters will have a glass fuse and little else (some not even that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glzLlPO6CjY), while a better meter will have MOVs, PTCs and many more lines of defense. Nicer meters (especially those rated for working on really high voltages that can cause a literal explosion) will have metal blast shielding around the inputs. There's also isolation- on cheap meters it's pretty common to see poorly laid out circuit boards that have input traces too close together. High voltages will arc right across and boom.
The nice meter I have would probably blow a fuse if you connected it to the wall on the current setting, but it's a fast fuse so the rest of the meter would be fine. The fuses in really crappy meters are often quite slow though, so they will blow and cut the circuit but not before the meter gets fried.
There are different levels of "crappy" though. A lot of the cheap meters you can get nowadays are safe enough to jam in the wall, I'm not saying "oh you've gotta spend $1000 on a multimeter or you're gonna die." But if you're gonna probe high voltage you'd better get something nice. I have a $5 meter that claims it'd be good at 1000 V, but that is obviously a lie and would be suicide.
Ah, I see, thank you. I mostly work with the hobbyist 3.3/5/12V, so I don't really need a fancy multimeter (the socket experiment was a one-off and I should have used one of those screwdrivers with the light instead).
I think you're being much too paranoid about this.
Most multimeters I've seen, cheapo or not, are rated to at least 1000V (sometimes 2-5kV). Now, as with all cheapo chinese electronics, you have to assume there is no safety margin on that so I wouldn't probe 1000V with such a meter. But 110 or 220V? Go for it. I'd be genuinely surprised if any common multimeter can't handle that (assuming it's operated properly, set on the right scale and such).
A fluke meter rated for 2kV can measure 2kV, because you know they have a decent safety margin there.
Err most common meters are not rated for 1000V and especially not mains current levels, not even a lot of nicer ones. Are you maybe thinking the probes? Those usually have much higher ratings than the meter. Browsing Amazon...
* Fluke 113 - $110 CAT IV 600V
* INNOVA 3320 - $25 CAT I 300V
* Mastech MS8229 - $50 This one is CAT II 1000V
* Extech EX330 - $50 CAT III 600V
* Brymen BM235 - $125 also CAT II 1000V
* Etekcity MSR-U1000 - $40, CAT III 1000V <- definite winner if it's true
All of those except the INNOVA would be ok to test on an outlet in terms of their safety rating, but most of the really cheap meters I found (<$15) are CAT I rated, meaning not safe to plug into the wall because they aren't rated for high power circuits. Sure you'll probably be OK, but I'd rather be confident.
My comment though was more along the lines of whether or not you trust their ratings. For example, I'm kind of suspicious of the rating on that Etekcity meter and I don't know if I'd be comfortable plugging it in to something really killer. My point was, if you want to really be confident you have to pay for the engineering and legal liability.
A now defunct company in Australia "Sous Vide at Home" actually sold a PID controller that converted a basic rice cooker - it won't work with a fancy one - into a rough temp controlled water bath.
I have one. It actually works pretty well for a lot of things. The temp swing is a bit poor compared to other machines, about 2 degrees. But for the $120 I paid for it, it's pretty great.
Dorkfood is still selling their DSV for $99 on Amazon. I've been using one for years with a cheap crock-pot and it works really well. Their PID control is excellent.
Auber Instruments has been selling these for about 10 years now. I can only assume the prices have come down steeply; I bought mine (including the thermocouples) for around that much in 2007 (I think?), but that's now the price point for a circulator that's about as capable as the PolyScience Pro that I replaced the Auber with.
I've always dreamed of one day starting a company that made what was essentially the Instant Pot, and they did it first (and coincidentally also from my home town).
Nitpick - Anova isn't exactly a startup. The original Anova Scientific [https://www.waterbaths.com] is a lab equipment manufacturer specializing in controlled-temperature water baths. When they realised that chefs were willing to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on their baths for cooking purposes, they made a classic pivot and span off Anova Culinary to make smaller, cheaper products for home kitchen use. The Kickstarter was as far as I understand as much to gauge market size as to raise capital.
Anova recently announced a "nano" edition which is lower power, costs $99, and looks like it's closer to the dimensions of a joule. Couldn't find the specific dimensions anywhere yet though.
Yeah, it's annoying, but the Joule fits so much better into the drawer. It also has a much lower minimum water line, and slightly higher heat output, and as a result, it can heat up small portions to temperature _really_ quickly.
(We had an Anova, replaced it with a Joule and gave the Anova away)
I took my Anova with me to a rented condo in Hawaii, it's nice to be able to make quality food with minimal effort. Joule would be even easier to justify.
Anova has much higher power output especially on the larger (Wifi+BT) model which both speeds up the heating by quite a bit and allows you to cook large volumes.
Anova is also much easier to clean than the Joule, it comes apart so easily and you just dry it out, I have one for over a year and no signs of scaling on the heating element because of that.
The joule on the other hand can't be easily clean you can unscrew the bottom but then you need to use a brush and the heating element isn't fully exposed.
I have them both, and tbh I use the Anova considerably more, it's built better, it's built smarter, and the fact that I don't need to use a phone is a huge plus.
Sure the phone is great for the first week if you never used sous vide before (I cooked Sous Vide on an induction cooker with very coarse temp control and use a thermometer to know when I should turn it off and on for nearly 2 years before getting a proper setup) but once you know the temp it just becomes a hassle.
A common failure mode for Anova is steam condensation in the electronics because the housing is not completely sealed/waterproof like the Joule, so I'm not sure if I would agree with it being built better and smarter. This is especially a risk with long cooks.
I think the overall design of Joule is better, but the fact that you are forced to use a phone or tablet to control the Joule is a big drawback. Is there a specific reason your prefer it?
I chose anova over joule for this reason and this reason only. My concern for a device with an app-only interface is the company might disappear, and the app and internet service might stagnate. With physical controls I'll still be able to use the product.
Id love to see a joule v2 with a display and a twistable top to set the temp.
At least using the iPad with the Joule and ChefSteps isn't as bad as using the iPad with the intelipan, a different 'smart' cooking device. With the intelipan, they make an internet connection obligatory and no option for not signing in. I would have returned the Joule if the app made me do all that. I dont mind using my iPad in the kitchen, I don't prefer it, but I do mind signing in to cook dinner...
Can someone elaborate on what Chef Steps business model is?
The last time I tried to figure it out, they seemed to be a premium recipe/cooking classes website (bordering more on food porn, the videos seemed more artsy than useful to me) that is also pushing a sous vide machine. Am I right in assuming that the Joule is their pivot away from the online cooking lessons?
Bigger heater isn't that useful IMHO. With hot faucet water either gets to temperature super quick, and both have plenty of power to maintain temperature.
You can get an Anova without wifi (network connectivity on these things is only marginally useful) for about $50 less, and it's got higher power output and really nice physical controls.
The precision cooker, which does bluetooth, or first gen? I have the bluetooth precision cooker. The scroll wheel is starting to get a little flaky but i'm still happy. Mostly the joule would be nice for saving a bit more real estate in my cabinets.
IIRC, the Anova cooking was originally one guy at the lab devices company that saw the Nomiku or Polyscience and said, "we can do that" and started basically doing this as a side business.
At the time of their first product launch, before the $1.8MM Kickstarter campaign, they already had 3 cofounders. Anova, Nomiku, and Sansaire all sort of started at roughly the same time. Sansaire is (IIRC) the Seattle Food Blog team, the people behind one of the more popular DIY Sous Vide kits. Nomiku was a DIY SV team from New York.
The thing about all these products is, the fundamental technology isn't difficult. The challenge is just straightforward hardware product development and execution, the basic stuff that's hard for everyone to get right --- along with marketing and inventory and channel management.
PolyScience, on the other hand, has been doing serious equipment manufacturing for a long time.
I don't have a source handy but the guy was present on a ton of food forums at the time, gathering feedback and responding to inquiries. He was pretty open that this was a one man side project at the time. I still own one of the V1 Anovas and sent him some UI feedback (including uncovering a bug where the calibration was done backwards on an early batch of machines).
Good news for Anova - I am a very happy user of their device. I hope this is going to bring sous vide finally into all kitchen stores, especially over here in Europe its still very unknown. Sous vide has changed my meat cooking entirely.
Anova Scientific was a long standing scientific water bath maker that spun off a wildly successful culinary arm (https://www.waterbaths.com/about.html).
Good for Anova but this acquisition doesn't make much sense to me. Unlike most culinary methods, there's no better and worse sous vide, all sous vide machines produce the exact identical quality outcome. There's some minor differentiation when it comes to size, noise, apps etc. but they turn out to be not super important in practice.
As Sous Vide becomes more popular, all of the existing players are going to get murdered by cheap, Chinese generics and there's no real room for profit in the market. The devices are incredibly simple and easy to manufacture and there's no defensive moat around any of the technology.
There's the possibility of Anova branching out from SV into other related devices but it's unclear where it could head to justify the acquisition amount. They can either choose to pursue devices that are even more niche than SV (combi ovens, vacuum sealers, chamber vacuums, centrifuges, rotovaps) in the hopes that they become increasingly mainstream or they can go after more popular devices (microwaves, dishwashers, toaster ovens, blenders etc.) which are incredibly competitive fields filled with tough incumbents. Neither seems like an incredibly compelling choice or one I would stake an acquisition on.
I'm glad the team has gotten this far and has been instrumental in pushing SV more into the mainstream but I don't see many bright prospects for their future.
> there's no better and worse sous vide, all sous vide machines produce the exact identical quality outcome
When I was planning to buy a sous vide machine, people had complaints about certain machines - e.g. that it only had a four hour timer after which it would switch off. The outcome might be the same, but the interfaces will be different. There are other features whereby they can differ (e.g. the clip).
> all of the existing players are going to get murdered by cheap, Chinese generics
If my sous vide machine doesn't work properly, e.g. it drops or cuts out the temperature, then I'll possibly get food poisoning. I'd prefer to trust a manufacturer who has a reputation to lose. Not to mention you have a mix of electricity, moving parts, heat and water - not something you want to play around with.
There's also the complexity of the app. I might want it to hit a certain temperature, then drop to a lower temperature for a specific amount of time. Good UX/UI costs money.
There are ways for a sous vide machine to be obviously terrible, sure. But those early teething issues have long been solved by now. All the machines on the market nowadays aren't obviously terrible (except Joule not having on-device controls) and there's very little that differentiates them on a day to day use basis. As the tech becomes more mature, more and more of those factors are going to simply be assumed.
Also, 3 decades of SV experience has shown us that there isn't any complexity in practice to SV recipes. 99% of SV recipes are 2 numbers (temperature and time) and the other 1% is 3 numbers (cook temp, cook time and hold temp). There's no magic hyper complex SV recipe that we haven't discovered yet and not for lack of trying.
> there's no better and worse sous vide, all sous vide machines produce the exact identical quality outcome.
Factors that might affect the quality of the meal:
— How good is the thermostat? Is the temperature both precise and stable?
— How good is the circulation? Are there are any hotspots in the water?
Less concerned about the quality of the food, but still relevant differentiating factors:
— How easy is it to setup?
— How easy is it to clean?
— How safe is it? How well insulated are the components?
— How durable is it? Will it last me 6 months or 10 years?
All the thermostats are good enough and all the circulation is good enough. these are both established, mature technologies that are available at commodified prices.
The non-food quality factors still allow for some degree of differentiation but they turn out to be not huge in practice. At the end of the day, price reigns supreme and it's a commodity market.
I imagine their 'connected device' pedigree might be the driving factor behind the acquisition?
That is to say their producing 'Internet of Things' hardware and software for the kitchen that's more than just a gimmick? Their app has guides built in, so it's the beginning of an ecosystem, if they were able to push it hard enough?
Presumably it wouldn't be surprising to see Electrolux or the intact Anova brand bring this to other devices, though of course sous vide with its long cooking times and hands-off approach is probably amongst the most well suited to this approach.
The one advantage Electrolux has is branding, and they're in both home and professional kitchens. Maybe they're simply hoping for some goodwill?
You are right though, sous vide machines all do basically the same thing, and there really is no differentiation. I recently bought a Sansaire device, and it does the exact same job as the Polyscience and the massive professional circulators I've used in restaurants.
Except that was marketing backed by genuine quality improvements. I don't doubt there will exist some high end sous vide machine that competes on looks and brand but it's destined to be a niche.
Sous Vide is a market closer to colanders than blenders. There's a couple of ways you can make a colander wrong but there isn't any appreciable way you can make a colander that drains water better than your competitors. For the most part, people buy the cheapest colander that isn't obviously terrible and leave it at that. Nobody has become a colander mogul and made their fortune on branded colanders because all of them work about the same.
And beside, if they wanted to compete on the pure brand side of the market, they bought the wrong company. Right now, Anova is the Samsung to Joule's Apple and they very much remain the market leader because they compete aggressively on price.
>Sous Vide is a market closer to colanders than blenders. There's a couple of ways you can make a colander wrong but there isn't any appreciable way you can make a colander that drains water better than your competitors. For the most part, people buy the cheapest colander that isn't obviously terrible and leave it at that. Nobody has become a colander mogul and made their fortune on branded colanders because all of them work about the same.
This is not a good comparison. There's a lot to be said of the reliability and quality of a sous-vide cooker, especially in a restaurant environment where if something goes wrong you get a lot of people sick instead of just yourself. The $120 Anova cookers are somewhat toy-like compared to the commercial-grade ones (see: PolyScience)
The components inside a SV cooker are dead simple and it's very easy to make them reliable enough to not matter. The Anova isn't a toy at all, even at $120, reliability has been very good and many people report running them hours per day over multiple years. Even if an Anova only lasts 3 years and a Polyscience lasts 10, by the time the Anova dies, you can pick up the next gen model for half the price and still save money.
The only big tricky issue with SV is dealing with humidity and electronics but that's fairly simply fixed just by making the electronics low power enough to be passively cooled and completely sealing them as the Joule has done.
Unless you are cooking for >4 hours and within a few degrees of the pasteurization threshold, all you are compromising is the quality/consistency of the food. If you really need to ensure food safety, you're going to be using an external temp logger anyways.
Honestly all the PolyScience gets you is capacity in water circulation and even then you're going to be limited more by the insulation capacity of the container.
All the current SV companies can see the writing on the wall and hope that they can avoid commodification via their proprietary app. Except that the problem is that Sous Vide is the ultimate open platform since each recipe only consists of two numbers, a temperature and a time.
The apps aren't super useful in the first place and, even if they were, there's no meaningful way for the apps to provide lockin since you can never restrict a recipe to a single device.
