Sous vide wand cooker

oddduck

oddduck

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ok maybe i am a sucker for a good deal. But last night i stopped into aldis to get some cheese and salsa and there they had a sous vide wand cooker marked down to $25 usd. I have marginally read about them but $25 seemed a good deal and so i tucked it under my arm with my groceries and headed to cash out.

So at the time i was kinda thinking this might be a nice way to be able to make a fresh lunch at work. You see 3 or 4 days a month i need to be at work from 8:30am to 8:00pm to fire kilns and often have no time to go find a nice warm lunch or dinner. So i was thinking i could fill some mason jars with various grains, pasta or rice, some premade sauce, and some veggies and when i got into work set up the sous vide to cooking and by lunch time have a nice filling lunch instead of a cold pb&j sandwich and crackers. And then keep it warm for dinner later.

Now i might have misunderstood a sous vide but does this sound like a doable use of a sous vide wand cooker?
 
'Sous vide' is to do with long cooking at a steady temperature - usually for several hours. The food is vacuum packed before cooking, which seals in the flavour. I think it could work in the way you describe but I'm really not at all sure.

I've got a 'water bath' sous vide not a wand. But as I understand it, the wand is simply a method of heating water in a container to a steady temperature. Your sealed food bag is then immersed in the water and cooked for the required time.
 
oddduck said:
ok maybe i am a sucker for a good deal. But last night i stopped into aldis to get some cheese and salsa and there they had a sous vide wand cooker marked down to $25 usd. I have marginally read about them but $25 seemed a good deal and so i tucked it under my arm with my groceries and headed to cash out.

So at the time i was kinda thinking this might be a nice way to be able to make a fresh lunch at work. You see 3 or 4 days a month i need to be at work from 8:30am to 8:00pm to fire kilns and often have no time to go find a nice warm lunch or dinner. So i was thinking i could fill some mason jars with various grains, pasta or rice, some premade sauce, and some veggies and when i got into work set up the sous vide to cooking and by lunch time have a nice filling lunch instead of a cold pb&j sandwich and crackers. And then keep it warm for dinner later.

Now i might have misunderstood a sous vide but does this sound like a doable use of a sous vide wand cooker?
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My friend looks after the boilers at our local hospital. He often takes a cold meal to,work. Warms it by the boiler.
I've never used one. I'm thinking about getting a pressure cooker ATM.

Russ
 
rascal said:
My friend looks after the boilers at our local hospital. He often takes a cold meal to,work. Warms it by the boiler.
I've never used one. I'm thinking about getting a pressure cooker ATM.

Russ
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I have cooked on a hot kiln before but its really not a healthy thing to do as they are off gassing all kinds of bad things, they sit in a vented separate room and i only need to deal with them to change tempertures and such. I already have an instant pot but its kinda big to be bringing to work. The wand is small enough to keep in my locker at work and just bring in a pot and my mason jars.
 
No microwave at work, just an over price cafeteria that closes at 2pm that has no concept of vegetarian.
 
How about an induction burner? You can vacuum seal some cooked meals, freeze them and reheat them in boiling/simmering water. There used to be products called "Boil in Bag".
 
@oddduck - I may not be understanding what you are trying to do. Are you thinking you can put the wand in the jars? Or did you mean filling a pan with water, heating it with the wand and then putting the jars into it?
 
morning glory said:
@oddduck - I may not be understanding what you are trying to do. Are you thinking you can put the wand in the jars? Or did you mean filling a pan with water, heating it with the wand and then putting the jars into it?
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Put the food in jars, jars in a pot of water, wand in pot. This page has kinda a overview of what i want to do. I prefer to avoid plastics when i cook and since i don't do meat near everything i want to cook would seem to make mason jars make sense.
 
oddduck said:
Put the food in jars, jars in a pot of water, wand in pot. This page has kinda a overview of what i want to do. I prefer to avoid plastics when i cook and since i don't do meat near everything i want to cook would seem to make mason jars make sense.
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OK - then the wand will probably work just fine!
 
The aldi one i got was originally about $50 and was marked down as an after christmas mark down for half.
 
Sorry @oddduck, but I don't think you plan is viable. "sous vide" means under vacuum - a pretty fundamental aspect of the cooking method. Your Mason jars will not provide this, and you may end up with unpredictable, possibly dangerous results. I suggest investing in a vacuum sealer and a book on sous vide cooking. Vacuum sealers are great, and have many other uses too.
 
epicuric said:
Sorry @oddduck, but I don't think you plan is viable. "sous vide" means under vacuum - a pretty fundamental aspect of the cooking method. Your Mason jars will not provide this, and you may end up with unpredictable, possibly dangerous results. I suggest investing in a vacuum sealer and a book on sous vide cooking. Vacuum sealers are great, and have many other uses too.
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That is a good point. But on the other hand this is just a wand which heats up the water in a container and maintains a constant temperature. What is the difference between putting a mason jar in (not totally submerged) and simply heating the mason jar in water in a saucepan of water - or would that be equally dangerous? Maybe the temperature of the wand doesn't go high enough to be safe?

I do understand this is totally different from sous-vide cooking though.
 
You aren't supposed to let mason jars sit directly on bottom of pot when canning as they might break/crack from what I've always been told, but that's not the case here, though you probably would want to make sure wand wasn't in direct contact with the jar.

What I would worry about was the whole grains, rice, pasta cooking correctly if they are starting from raw. Remember the fresh pasta cooked, but was pretty much in 1 big clump with the en papillote method I used. The rice and orzo pasta did work, but were parcooked first.

You'd probably also need to seal the jars and cover with water so everything would get hot enough.

I'd suggest doing some trial runs at home so you don't find yourself without a meal.
 
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