aaronowens•2mo agoProlific Poster

Spent $400 on a sous vide circulator and I'm not sold on the hype

I got an Anova Precision Cooker last year thinking it would change my game, but honestly, it just adds another step and a ton of plastic waste with the bags. For a busy service at my spot in Tacoma, searing 40 steaks to order after a bath is a real bottleneck. Has anyone found a good way to integrate these into a high-volume kitchen without slowing everything down?

3 comments

3 Comments

carr.lily2mo ago

But you're doing the searing AFTER the bath, right? That's your whole bottleneck right there, doing it to order. Why not sear a big batch ahead of service and just hold them?

mia6382mo ago

Ugh, that whole sear-ahead idea gives me flashbacks... we tried holding a batch of pre-seared pork chops warm once and they turned into leather shoes in the window. The sous vide was perfect but that hold just killed the texture. Maybe it works for some cuts but it really messed up our flow that night.

sean_barnes831mo ago

Oh man, the leather shoe thing is real. We had a similar disaster with a rack of lamb once, seared it all ahead thinking we were geniuses. Ended up ruining a whole service because the crust just got this weird soggy-chewy thing going on after sitting too long. It wasn't even warm hold either, just ambient temp for maybe twenty minutes. The fat rendered out funny and it felt like chewing on a tire. For me personally, I think the key people miss is that searing isn't just for color, it's for that specific texture you get right before serving. Holding takes that away, no matter what cut you're working with. We started doing a quick flash sear per order with a blowtorch setup and it saved our sanity. Not perfect but way better than pre-searing.