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Sous-Vide Cooker & Cooler

Cools Food and Cooks It Sous Vide
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A regular sous vide cooker will maintain a water bath at an exact temperature to cook the food precisely. As a modification to this idea, there could be a sous vide cooker that would also be able to cool a water bath to an exact temperature to keep food cooled or refrigerated. The device would be programmable, so that it could keep food cold until some set time when it would heat it and cook it like in a conventional sous vide cooker.

So you could put your food in the water bath at night, and it would be kept cold until, say 6am, when it would heat up the food to the programmed temperature for cooking the food sous vide. By the time you've woken up, your food would be cooked and ready.

The device could be equipped with 2 separate independent water baths, each capable of being programmed for individual behavior. This is done for the purpose of cooking different food items at different temperatures/rates. So at night you could put your eggs in one bath, and your sausages in the other, and both would be kept cool overnight. At 4am the sausages would be warmed up to be cooked sous vide @65degC. At 6am the eggs would be warmed up in the other bath to be cooked sous vide @60degC. By the time you're down for breakfast at 7am, your sausages and eggs have both been sous vide cooked to perfection.

Comments and critiques are appreciated.

sanman, Aug 09 2012

Lab equipment is overpriced http://www.thelabwa...oduct/__BJ154-18__/
Because they can. [MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2012]

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       Yeah, I have a few of these. Its a common scientific apparatus. Timed process controller and everything.
WcW, Aug 09 2012
  

       WcW, But you're talking about scientific equipment, and not something purpose-built as a kitchen appliance.
sanman, Aug 09 2012
  

       //It's a common scientific apparatus.// I've often contemplated producing 96 small (or 386 very small) perfect meringues in a PCR machine.   

       But I think the idea is a good one. [+]   

       Not sure about sous vide sausages or eggs, though. Breakfast foods are meant to be fried.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2012
  

       Max, Well, heh, maybe if someone comes up with foil pouches for high temperatures, then food could be fried inside them somehow. Frying or searing is often briefly done to food after it's been cooked sous vide, just to make the outside look appealing.
sanman, Aug 09 2012
  

       It's more a question of flavour than of superficial appearance.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2012
  

       I am talking about devices constructed to maintain the temperature of a water bath exactly as you describe, why does it matter how they were initially marketed?
WcW, Aug 09 2012
  

       Ah right, I was thinking of thermocyclers.   

       But it does matter, because lab equipment is usually priced at several times the cost of a consumer item. (And is not necessarily better made.)   

       Typical example: thermostatic waterbath (non- cooling, not programmable) at £520 ($750 ish). There's no excuse for that even for lab equipment, let alone as a domestic appliance.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2012
  

       agreed, I never buy my equipment at retail, retail prices are set for people who are spending grant money, and thus do not seem to have any sense for value at all.
WcW, Aug 10 2012
  

       Ive seen some pretty overpriced consumer cookware too. I suspect that there are quite a few people more than willing to shell out $750 for a "PROCHEF" sous vide setup. I suspect that a heat pump with a process controller might run you something in that range. Can we go into the biz now?
WcW, Aug 10 2012
  

       It could all be programmed/controlled from a smartphone or similar touch interface. Maybe you could daisy-chain as many water baths as you liked.
sanman, Aug 11 2012
  
      
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