Has anyone had success at large scale sous-vide at home?
My scale was not quite as big as yours, but I cooked my Thanksgiving turkey for the extended family this year sous vide. Not only was the outcome a huge hit among the guests, but it was a huge relief for (your truly) the chef.
I want to go to party scale, say 30 to 40 servings, what are my chances of success?
In my experience, scaling up is one of the biggest advantages of cooking sous vide. Cooking 30-40 servings on a home stove would be a daunting prospect, to say the least. With sous vide, 15–20 servings is only marginally more work than 4–6. Again, I've not done 30–40, but it should scale accordingly.
Should I just get three or four chilly bins or just one large bin?
If your food will fit in one cooler, it will work, but I think you'll find it much easier to use more. The more water you have, the slower it will lose heat, and thus, the less you will have to pay attention to it. I also typically cook chicken and beef at separate temperatures, so I would probably have two coolers for chicken and two for beef.
Edge sealing vacuum machines like yours are not really designed to cope with liquids, either water or oil. In fact, you can permanently damage your device if those liquids get sucked into the pump. There are ways around this, one is to feeze any liquids you wish to add to the vacuum bag or if your model supports it you can follow the advice from eGullet here:
http://forums.egullet.org/topic/144300-sous-vide-recipes-techniques-equipment-2011/page-2#entry1779665
Sealing liquids is possible with clamp-type machines. Other members stated this long ago. I did not manage to do so at first, but now I have learned the trick. It does not work with fully-automated machines that have no "seal"-button and no external vacuum-port.
Place the machine in a way that the bag can hang down vertically. Place the adapter on the external vacuum-port (without the tubing). When you start vacuuming, air will enter through the external vacuum-port, so almost no vacuum is built up. By closing the port with your finger, vacuum will rise and so will the liquid in the bag. Before the liquid approaches the sealing bar, reduce vacuum by lifting your finger, and press the seal button. Make a second and eventually third seal in case the first one should not be perfectly tight.
Best Answer
I have an answer for you, and then I will comment above about your post. In terms of salt and sous vide, in general for shorter cooking times, say less then 2-4 hours, salting in advance is fine. In longer cooks, salting in advance produces more of a "cured" result in terms of texture. Some folks like this, others not so much. In general, I salt after the sous vide step and before the finishing step. So my preference, based on lots of sous vide cooking, is no pre-seasoning.