Bought a $60 immersion circulator and it's just a glorified hot tub for my steaks

Everyone raves about sous vide but mine broke after 3 uses and the temp was off by 5 degrees the whole time. Has anyone else had bad luck with the budget brands?

2 comments

2 Comments

felix_thomas734d ago

Glorified hot tub for your steaks, that's a good way to put it. Mine was off by so much I could have just left the steak in a warm car for a couple hours and gotten the same result. Budget sous vide gear seems to be a total lottery, and it sounds like we both lost. Guess I'll stick to my cast iron pan and a timer like a caveman, at least that stuff doesn't quit on me after three dinners.

thomas_young4d ago

Fair enough, but I gotta push back on calling it a "glorified hot tub." I had a cheap Anova that ran hot by like 4 degrees out of the box. I just threw a cheap thermometer in there and dialed it down by 4. Worked perfectly for years. The real win with sous vide isn't the gadget itself, it's getting the temp dead on and holding it there for hours. A cast iron skillet is great for a crust, but you can't hold 131 degrees for 90 minutes in a pan without turning your steak into a hockey puck. If you had a bad stick, sure, that sucks, but don't write the whole method off because one cheap model let you down.