Sous vide – a high tech cooking technique that involves placing food in an airtight, vacuum-sealed bag and cooking it in a controlled low-temperature water bath – is quickly becoming more accessible to home chefs. Last year, a slew of compact sous vide machines (aka immersion circulators – devices that keep a water bath at an even, constant cooking temperature) hit the market and made it possible to cook sous vide without dropping thousands of dollars on equipment.
However, despite becoming much cheaper than they were a few years ago, most sous vide machines are still relatively spendy. High-end ones will run you as much as $800 or more, and on the low end you’re still looking at around $200. Sousimple, on the other hand, will only put you back about $65 bucks.
The reason it’s so much more affordable is because it isn’t actually an immersion circulator – it’s really just a power regulator designed to be used with kitchen appliances you already own. With a little bit of wiring work, Sousimple attaches to things like crock pots, rice cookers, coffee pots, and basically anything else that has manual temperature controls. Then, using a thermometer, it’s able to keep track of the temp of the water inside the device you’re using, and moderate the power input so that it stays at a specific heat.
It’s definitely not as sleek and user-friendly as some the new immersion circulators on the market right now, but it produces exactly the same result – succulent, juicy, flavorful meats cooked to absolute perfection. As an added bonus, it can also be used for stuff other than sous vide. When you get down to it, Sousimple is really just a little wooden box that gives you more precise controls over your cooking appliances, so it could ostensibly be used to keep things like soups, dips, and fondue at the perfect temperature.
Creators Darren Jeseritz and Mark Bliss recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for their first large-scale production run, but for some reason the project was suspended shortly after it went live. The project was on track for success too, and had raised more than 30 percent of its $25,000 goal raised in just a few hours. According to Jeseritz and Bliss, Kickstarter hasn’t yet given a reason for the suspension, but the two are considering moving the project over to IndieGoGo if things aren’t cleared up soon.
Check out their Kickstarter page for more info.
