A year ago after purchasing a sous vide contraption and asserting that I would not waiver while traversing the learning curve involved in mastering sous vide cooking, I returned the equipment to Costco. I could no longer justify taxing my patience learning the process while continuing to experience the joy of my wife’s easily rendered delicious roasts and steaks utilizing good old fashion methods.
So, I bid you all farewell and may your pursuit of succulence march on.
Tori
Shame, instead of trainer wheels approach & kiddie portion steaks to practise on (an 8 oz is an adult portion here 
) eggs & so on, you jumped in the deep end with a roast which is a different animal altogether imho equivalent to the trials & tribulations of the first moon landing.
I don’t think many folk simply throw their progeny in the river to teach em to swim these days, it takes a bit of curation & reining in via the humble banger (thick sausages) chicken breast portions, eggs, & small pork portions to build up the knowledge, …the biggest clanger on the sites guide is assuming all steaks are american coronary inducers not the atypical european (& there are give or take 748 million of us here) compared to 340 million-ish o’er yonder) the result, for lack of digital calipers in most kitchens is “fudged up” meat-stuffs if you follow the guides to the letter (which it is all too easy to do)
I didn’t brew well until I’d got some miles under my belt with my grainfather brewing / distilling capable kit either.
Sausage degrees of cooking teaches a lot straight off the bat (the guide description of spongey etc) allows you mental awareness before briefly giving it colour in a frying pan, or how much time in an airfryer is too much, in small portion bites rather than a whole damn roast done badly with much apologising for an unsatisfactory result.
This is why I now insist (except to professional chefs) when loaning out a spare anova that we cook together a variety of foodstuffs to a degree of done “perceptions” (it does necessitate a notebook, some pre-cooked samples in need of heating back up & pan finishing but after that they tend to click as to uderstanding what is touted as possible versus the empirical realities without flesh mounds of waste.
Today, for the very first time (still experimentally aware & ready to don trainer wheels) or maybe tomorrow I’ll be cooking TOO thick steaks, rib & rump (grass fed) …ie the whole hour not 45 minutes.
Pork joints are more forgiving & here at least cheaper than beef, when plunging into sous vide, which allows us to play more with degrees of done, as did SALAD chicken, which I bang the gong for to really change folks mindsets as to texture & a damn fine chicken salad that gets fought over once folk “trust it” in terms of texture & appearance (the old, hints of pink = bad from trad form cooking) that may arise as dicing the salad chicken.
A big lump of roasting meat for a new to sous, is akin to allowing an overgrown elephant to high dive into a small pool.
Take the humble burger, cooked so many ways to understand mincing in action (& the salt effect) cheap gateway foodstuffs leading to bigger cooks & proportionately sized dunking bags… (eventually)
Shame you choked therefore Tori, did you ever take a read through any of the early serious eats stuff for burgers & eggs by degree of cooking to get closer to what you should achieve via certain settings?
I take umbrage with anyone calling sous vide bagged meat-stuffs as taxing ones patience, when it is essentially setting a timer, a temperature & air purging a bag via vacuum or submersion, …as much as I do when someone refers “humourously” to it as “boil in the bag” …bagging & walking away (setting a noisy timer) allows us to really do more & achieve better without being a kitchen galley slave.
My daughter was 13 when she started prepping & bag dropping for sous vide, now settled into university halls she uses one for meal prep, on a limited budget portion & therefore quality control are essential to her oft treadmill dietary lifestyle.
Collectively we have more issues checking the american butchery cut language translation & converting F to C than anything else, which is hardly taxing as the big obstacle when setting up a cook for ourselves, so much so that I have a beef cuts translator on my phone.
In terms of meat & sous vide the bragging (ugh) term “go big or go home” is a falsehood that needs excising, because practise with the small waves makes you infinitely more capable with the big stuff through balance, prep, run up, in flight positioning, spotting your landing etc…
Start with a sausage n’other small stuff not haunch of bison et al to avoid “tears before bedtime” (in this case apologising to the forks raised, hungry with lofty culinary expectations)
Technically I ought give up on our 3 instantpots because when pressure cooking a chicken there is a chance the beautifully moist meat in the wings & legs will bow under pressure & fall off, …no it’s all process & adaptation, …that & I tend to butcher / portion a bird straight out of the thing when cooked because a carcass in a fridge dries fast, takes up space & is wholly unappetising compared to boxed & ready to go…
If given the choice as a beginner to boil off a stuck together bag of ice cubes or an iceberg which does the logical person choose as a first timer on that job?
No fuss, Gus,
Neither a bag of ice cubes nor a bag of of icebergs is how I want to melt ice by putting one or the other in a sous vide bath.
Yours truly and happy New Year.
Tori
Nor I, it was merely an analogy for large meat versus small meat.
I’ve spent time with more than a dozen folk walking them through SV fundamentals now, no car crash joints involved, success & confidence aplenty.
Ah well.
To each his own, Mr. Gus. Happy trails.
And to you as well. Were I the astute person I think I am, I would have taken a clue from never having grown fond of learning to play golf. I had the balls just no patience.
I am certain that you did not give enough time to learn the many, many ways you can prepare food with Sous Vide. Although many things have no place being cooked in a bag, many items do come out tremendous once you perfect your technique. Giving cooking devices back? Sacrilege
Feeling the need to announce it to this community tells the tale. Thousands of people here would have put you on the right track to success with a small amount of effort.
So, perhaps I should have kept to myself and enjoyed my failure alone? No way. Can’t let you folks think everybody who tries sous vide will become a convert.
Speaking of “sacrilege”, after twelve years of Catholic inculcation, I thought I wanted to become a Benedictine monk until, that is, I began studying mythology and came to the conclusion that atheism supersedes all religious beliefs.
Bottom line, for me, I just decided to bag sous vide. I’m not going to give up cooking or eating, but for you folks, though, carry on.
If you ever feel like giving it another go, there is a lot of people on here with way too much info on the subject to help. It is actually a very simple way to cook, you just have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Takes experimenting with your local groceries.
I will keep that in mind…who knows? It was certainly evident that the Anova Community is comprised of a lot of knowledgeable people willing to help. Thank you.
I am still learning, “never stop learning” is a mantra I realised I had taken to heart but sometimes forget to apply when I had to re-learn how to walk without falling over for the third time in my life.
Indeed that applies to Sous vide & the reason I pillage discounts at supermarkets for the opportunity to at least fudge it up on the cheap!