This $88 sous vide machine makes me look like a fancy chef with minimal effort
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- Sous vide cooking has become all the rage in recent years and countless companies are trying to capitalize on this underwater slow cooking.
- Gramercy Kitchen Company is one of the smaller, less-known companies to enter the immersion circulator space, but they have garnered a 4.6-star rating on Amazon.
- I liked that the Gramercy Kitchen Co. sous vide machine was quiet, accurate, and easy to operate and clean.
- One of the best features of the Gramercy Kitchen Co. Sous Vide Immersion Circulator is its price (currently $88 on Amazon), and they offer a no-questions-asked refund if you are not satisfied.
When the novice home chef hears the term sous vide, they often assume it's some fancy cooking technique that they could never possibly grasp. Think again. Despite the bourgeois-sounding name, which means "under vacuum," sous vide cooking makes delicious gourmet meals incredibly simple as long as you have plenty of time.
Sous vide cooking is basically a more delicious alternative to using a traditional slow cooker. At its most basic, you pop the ingredients into a plastic bag, remove as much air as possible, seal it up, and cook the food in a water bath at a consistent temperature for several hours.
Gramercy Kitchen Company was started by a small family looking for a healthier, more delicious alternative to your typical slow cooker as they tried to make dinner day in and day out while working 9-to-5 jobs. They sent me their immersion circulator for free to test out. Below are my experiences with it.
My first experiences with the Gramercy Kitchen Co. Immersion Circulator
What struck me first about the Gramercy Kitchen Co. Immersion Circulator is its large size. It's about 2-3/8" in diameter and 14" long. The circulator comes with a black velvet storage bag, which piques the interest of everyone who sees it hanging in my kitchen: "What's in the velvet bag?"
Without reading the directions, I was able to have the device up and running in about five minutes. The buttons and dial are just that intuitive. First, you press the temperature button to scroll to the temp you want. Next, scroll to the time you want, up to 99 hours. Then, press the play button. Voila!
Thanks to the adjustable clamp, you can use the Gramercy Kitchen immersion circulator in just about any container you want. And, it heats up to 15 liters of water at a time. For maximum affordability and efficiency, I used an Igloo Island Breeze Cooler and drilled a hole in the top that was just big enough to fit the sous vide cooker through. YouTube is full of great tutorials on how to do this.
Read more: The best sous vide machines you can buy
How the Gramercy Kitchen Co. Immersion Circulator performed
What I like most about sous vide cooking is that I can take a cheap cut of meat and turn it into filet mignon… or, at least, a worthy substitute. I started with a top round beef roast cooked at 132 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours. Afterward, I put the vacuum-sealed bag of meat in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Then, I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet until it was piping hot - turn your fans on and open the windows - and seared the roast for a minute or so on each side. The results were tender and juicy.
I had similar tender experiences with chicken, salmon, lamb, pork chops, and pulled pork. I also used the sous vide for reheating frozen leftovers I had vacuum sealed. It did a lot better job than the oven, microwave, or stove because you didn't lose moisture in the reheating process. I'm still trying to master vegetables. I tried asparagus and carrots with underwhelming results.
Before I get into the quasi-scientific testing, one other family favorite with the sous vide was making caramel, or dulce de leche. I vacuum sealed an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk and heated it at 185 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 hours. Carefully open the can, and it's full of delicious caramel.
The Gramercy Kitchen Co. Immersion Circulator has a temperature range of 104 to 194 degrees Fahrenheit. I found that it stayed within a few degrees of the target temperature, which is more than the claimed "+/-0.1 degrees Celsius," but close enough for most cooking jobs.
The Wirecutter created a benchmark test for sous vide cookers that I decided to steal.
I timed how long it takes this circulator to get 6 quarts of water from 69 degrees Fahrenheit to 135. It was about 21 minutes, which is not bad. I used a kitchen thermometer probe to take secondary temp readings, and I found that the readings on my thermometer were almost exactly the same as what the immersion circulator was showing. So, we can assume it's accurate.
This sous vide machine runs quietly. The ambient noise in my house is about 41 decibels, and the sound of the unit was 49 decibels when measured from 12" away. This is similar to what you find with the more popular models.
Since some meals can take a day or more, it's important for an immersion circulator to start right back up after losing power. I inadvertently tested this in my kitchen, where running multiple appliances on a single outlet will trip the circuit breaker. When the power failed, the Gramercy Kitchen Co. unit picked up right where it left off once I reset the breaker.
Read more: 30 appliances and tools that we swear by in the kitchen, from a $6 fish spatula to a $340 Dutch oven
Some concerns about the sous vide machine
Many of the most popular sous vide models these days feature Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity. The Gramercy Kitchen Co. cooker does not have either. It's not a "smart" device. There is no app. The connectivity would be nice for monitoring my meal from afar, but I really didn't miss it. Gramercy does this on purpose because they want to keep the device as simple as possible.
The device allows you to set the temperature in intervals of 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, which is odd. If you want to heat the water to 135 degrees, you can choose between 134.6 and 135.5 degrees. You can't set it to anything between those two. If you switch to Celsius, the interval is 0.5 degrees, which makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, most of the recipes I saw were in Fahrenheit. This wasn't a major problem, just a minor annoyance.
As with any sous vide, it's hard to tell if the food is ready or not. You're basically going strictly by time and past experience. Ideally, you could pop a true wireless meat thermometer into the vacuum-sealed bag with your food and take readings as you go, but that technology isn't quite there yet.
Bottom line
Overall, I really enjoy using the Gramercy Kitchen Co. Sous Vide Immersion Circulator. It's accurate, reliable, quiet, and simple to use and clean. Though some of the more popular models have wireless connectivity and smart apps, they usually cost as much as $200, and the extra features can be a bit overwhelming for a first-time user. Therefore, I recommend the Gramercy cooker as a good beginner immersion circulator for any home chef interested in trying sous vide.