36-hours 55°C Sous Vide Short Rib

I have received a few requests to explain how the Sous Vide Magic (SVM) can be set up for home use.

I will gather all the essential info on SVM in this post.

The picture below illustrates how the set up is done. As you can see, the rice cooker, working as a water bath, is doing the cooking and the SVM is basically functioning as a temperature controller, switching the rice cooker on and off to do so.




There is an online instruction manual that you can refer to. As you can see from the pic below, the controls are basic and self explanatory. The green lighted numerals display the temperature you set which the controller will keep the water bath at. You can set the time which works only to indicate how long you have been cooking (from the point where the set temp is reached) and the alarm will go off after the set time is reached. but it does not auto switch off the cooker. You have to do this manually.


This is the back panel of the SVM: A power button, input for the power cord, output for the rice cooker and the input for the sensor.


Note that the output is to a US power plug. If your cooker uses a non-North American power plug, you need a power plug adapter. Mine is like this:


A transformer is not needed because SVM is voltage universal and will operate from 110V to 240V.

You can read the online guide here
You can view and order the SVM here.

I know the SVM does not look cool and maybe the maker can look into redesigning it to reduce the geek factor. But it is simple to use. As with every gadget, there is some learning to do but you should be up and running in no time.

If you like, you can also opt for the cooler looking Sous Vide Supreme but be prepared to pay more. There are pros and cons about the various SV gadgets available online and you may want to google or yahoo (hey, give yahoo a chance) the info.

In the next post, I will list out the different recipes you can use and temperature/timing from my own experience. Meanwhile you can check out the SV recipes I have been blogging on. For a start the easiest is to cook Sous Vide eggs: 62°C at 45 minutes. I have met some novice cooks who have jumped straight into SV and are finding it easy to cook great meals with it.

I trust this post is helpful to get you going. If you like to cook, Sous Vide is definitely the way to go as an additional tool for home-cooking. It will be the next wave. I have described its advantages in this post.