Product review: Sous-vide Supreme water oven

Have you been hearing about sous-vide cooking?  Not sure exactly what's involved, or maybe seems a bit "out there" to be doing at home?  The people at Sous-vide Supreme are hoping to make it a little more approachable for home use.  The digital water circulators used in professional operations certainly work well, but they are very expensive and a bit awkward for the home if you don't have a huge kitchen.  They consist of a large unit that needs to be fastened to a suitable basin (which you also need to source out) and ultimately take up a large amount of space.  The Sous-vide Supreme water oven does essentially the same task in a tidy 10L self-contained unit.  It's digitally controlled and stainless steel for easy cleaning (not that it should need much since everything will be in a vacuum sealed bags).

A little about sous-vide cooking.  As technical as it seems, it makes so many things easier and often nearly fail-safe.  By sealing food in plastic, all the aromas and flavours of the food (and any aromatics you add to the bags) are retained (rather than lost to the air in the cooking process), therefore intensifying the flavours of the finished product.  The slow cooking may take longer, but it is gentler on the food and optimizes the desired texture of the finished product.  Vegetables come out with brighter natural colours and a more uniform firmness than steaming or boiling.  Tough cuts of meat can be tenderized better than ever before with minimal shrinkage.  Tender cuts of meat can be brought to a perfect medium rare 100%, then seared just on the outside for that caramelized flavour - meat lovers will be shocked I guarantee.  Duck confit can be done with a fraction of the fat.  With this unit you can even make the starchless potato recipe from my previous blog - just set the temperature to 70 degrees and let it go.  Puree soups are incredible because you lose no flavour to steam like you would making soup in an open pot.  If you like you can boil an egg so exactly that when you crack it, you actually get a beautifully poached egg coming out of the shell - or cook it a little less and you'll have the whites fall away, leaving you with a poached egg yolk.   Really incredible possibilities come with sous-vide cooking, I encourage everyone to try it.  To have a closer look at the Sous-vide Supreme, CHECK IT OUT HERE.