Well I got mine from Sur La Table this morning. I decided to get one after reading the discussions here about them. I am not at all worried about bacteria. These cooking method has been around nearly 40 years and I have been unable to find anything about someone getting sick from the technique or dying from it. I think you stand a better chance of dying from bad fast-food than this. Just follow good anti-contamination procedures like you would do for any cooking method.
Tonight I did some russet potatoes, carrots and beets pulled from my garden. They were all done in the same bag at 184F for 2 hours. I think added ice to the sous vide to cool it to 145F left the bag of veggies in and added a bag that had a nice ribeye that I got from Trader Joes that I added two cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and a teaspoon of bacon grease. This went for 1 hour at 145F for a medium-well. They vegetables had salt, pepper and olive oil in them and stayed in to stay hot while the steak cooked.
When I removed the steak I browned it on my George Foreman grill at 450F for one minute. Since it cooks on both sides at once it was a great option.
The vegetables were perfectly cooked. Had great true clean flavors and were not soggy. The steak was perfect a nice medium-well just the way we like it. The steak was cut in half, half for me and half for my mom. And, we split the vegetables. The steak was still a little pink but even throughout the steak, it was probably the most perfect steak we have ever had.
Next we are doing chicken breast with the free fajita seasoning sheet they included in the box. I am going to cut the chicken in to strips, put the seasoning strip on it with some oil, add in some strips of bell pepper, red and green and so e red onion. This will then be sealed in a bag and cooked and then served with homemade flour tortillas, cheese, avocado, sour cream, etc.
So far so good. The only thing that did't work out like I wanted is that I had to get the sous vide supreme as Sur La Table didn't have the smaller Demi which would have been a better size for the two of us and $100 cheaper.
Finally if you have a Sur La Table near you check with them and see if the do on site classes, mine here I Santa Rosa does and they offer Sous Vide class for $79. It is hands on, with cooking and eating at the end of the class.
Oh, one last thing I got a Foodsaver 2244 at Target for $84.95 and a couple of boxes of quart and gallon pre made bags. Works perfectly with it and cheaper than the Sous Vide sealer and more reliable from what I have read.
Robert
