We got the vacuum sealers. Anyone with experience doing sous-vide?
Welcome to the obsession.
My favorite use, by far, for sous vide is cooking meat. You can set a temp (say, medium or just a few degrees above medium rare), 145 f/62.7 c), put your meat under vacuum, and drop them in the water oven for hours, and they won't overcook. When you're ready to serve, get a super hot charcoal fire (or just a nice cast iron skillet) going and sear on both sides for about a minute. There are no words to explain how supremely cooked the meat is.
Also, HAMBURGERS, zomg. grind the meat fresh, shape it into patties, and use the vacuum sealer. Make sure you use the custom-seal option to make sure the meat isn't crushed by the vacuum, and in an hour or so you have the juciest burgers you have ever, ever, ever had.
Try doing salmon sous vide - cook it to medium or medium well, and because of the extremely low-and-slow cooking plus the way that the water oven allows it to come to an ambient temp exactly equal to the final cooked internal temp, and you end up with a fish that has the texture of sashimi, but the taste of cooked salmon. Put some liquid smoke in there, and om nom nom.
Poaching eggs is foolproof and will leave you with an almost-ready-to-eat poached egg in a handy shell (eggs are the perfect sous vide food, dontcha know):
http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2010/10/how-to-poach-an-egg-perfectly-nick-anderer-maialino-new-york-technique.htmlCarrots are another perfect sous vide veggie. They don't need anything except maybe some aromatics. Perfection.
Whatever you do, though, don't put oil or butter in the bag before you seal - it will give you amazingly tasty butter juice in the bottom of the bag and a piece of meat without much flavor.
Here's a pic of my recent burger escapade:
![](http://dev.nycbearsfans.com/burger2.JPG)