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.
The water frequently sits in the danger zone for bacterial growth, and even though it is a sealed bag, fats can migrate through the plastic (not considering contamination to the outside of the bag either from cross contamination or from juices drawn out during vacuuming/sealing).
I would suggest changing the water if:
- is looks dirty/cloudy
- it smells like anything other than water
Additionally from the PloyScience site:
Occasionally or when a cooking pouch may have leaked, simply replace the water with a vinegar/water solution and run unit at 160°F for 25 minutes to remove any residuals or lime.
So you can probably throw a little vinegar into the water to up the pH and make it more hostile to bacteria (though it will smell up the house when you use it).
Best Answer
The standard hack is to use a PID controller. IF you google, you will find many articles detailing exactly how, such as this detailed one from Over Engineered.
There are now also a couple of vendors of moderately low cost circulators intended specifically for this application such as Sansair that you insert into a pot or cooler. They are new to the market, so there are some early adopter issues being reported, but the idea is quite elegant.