I don’t mean to be an ass, but in no way is a sous vide fundamentally the same concept as a dishwasher.

There is no precision to the temperature or time control of a dishwasher, and there’s no dry cycle on a sous vide.

It's water held at a certain temperature, that heats food sealed watertight. It's exactly the same concept.

Yes it goes without saying it's lacking the precise controls, but it's still the same mechanism of cooking in the end.

But can you wash your dishes in the sous-vide?

Add some agitation device or just do it in ultrasound -- maybe? Still need to figure out automated draining and filling.

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It's not really the same concept. Replicating dishwasher salmon requires first broiling the salmon (the initial high heat to get the dishwasher water to sterilizing temps), then steaming it (after the initial sterilization the dishwasher stops adding heat to the system), and finally baking it (after rinsing with cool water and draining, a lower sustained heat dries the dishes).

A sous vide bath won't replicate any of those steps (except maybe the steaming if you run the bath at practically boiling). Sous vide will cook good salmon but it's not a drop in replacement.

Does your dishwasher actively add heat outside of drying? Mine just uses hot water from the water heater. I don't think it even has heating elements tbh. For drying it has crystal dry which is zeolite.

Yes dishwashers do have a heating element to keep the water's temperature up as it recirculates. It isn't strong enough to let you use a cold water intake though.

European machines have only cold water intake and they heat the water. So it is quite precise temp control there.

Your dishwasher works very different from mine then, which is a common consumer model about five years old.

Mine is just a single constant temperature the whole time.

There's certainly no high heat much less sterilization, just bringing the water up to temperature and keeping it there, through pre-wash, wash, and rinse cycles.

And if the salmon is wrapped airtight, there's no conceptual difference between broiling/steaming/baking. It's all just sous vide, which is none of those. Because it's sealed.

People approximate "sous vide" on cooktops or in coolers all the time. Works fine. About half the things I used to do with my circulator I do with specific time/temp settings on my toaster oven now.

If you wanted to be super pedantic about it, you'd say that none of this is anything like "sous vide" because "sous vide" implies "under a vacuum".

At any rate: dishwasher salmon and sous vide salmon are, literally, the same dish.

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What toaster oven do you use? We've put ours away because it hasn't been that great.

We've got a Breville. It's the most valuable cooking appliance in the house: it gets up to 500f very quickly and holds a much more consistent temperature than our pro-grade oven, and the built in timer makes most things fire and forget. I don't think I'd trade the oven for another Breville toaster oven, but if I could get 2 more in exchange for the oven I'd have to think carefully about it.

I'm willing to wager that sam was aware of these differences before they made their comment.

Sous vide is fundamentally about sealing food and cooking it in water. I wouldn't say the precision temperature control is the central part of the concept.

The precision and temperature control are what separate sous vide from retort pouches in my mind, which are often heated up with just boiling.

While the literal translation means "under vacuum", it is generally considered to refer to precise temperature control because that is the benefit of sous vide.

It is possible to sous vide without a vacuum bag in a steam oven, or in certain ovens with temperature probes.

I second this. Precise temperature (with good conduction between the heat source and the food) and time.

I've cooked 'sous vide' under a running hot tap in a backpacker, which worked great. The water temp happened to be close to perfect (I have a method of measuring temperatures > 40c based on how long I can hold my hand under the running water before pulling out from the pain - surprisingly accurate).

The article says cooking in the dishwasher primarily happens in the drying stage, so it's not really cooking in water. It's closer to defrosting in a pot of water then throwing it in the oven.

> Sous vide is fundamentally about sealing food and cooking it in water. I wouldn’t say the precision temperature control is the central part of the concept.

Its about temperature control and efficient thermal transfer; vacuum sealing and using a circulating, temperature controlled water bath are mechanisms of achieving that.

Seal up the food tightly, then circulate a hot fluid (water, steam, or air, usually) around the food to evenly transfer heat into it. Afterwards, remove the food and optionally sauce or sear it.

En Papillote and via Dutch Oven are other similar techniques utilizing the same concept. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing?

Look into combi-ovens.

No bags, humidity control, replaces everything. Immersion circulators, therma-pens, toaster ovens, microwaves, dishwashers - it won't wash your dishes after you make the salmon in it but it will self clean. :)

Do you have a recommendation? I've never heard of a combi-oven before.

Combi-ovens are predominantly equipment that belongs in commercial kitchens, but nowadays, there are a few options (still not very many though) that can actually fit on a home kitchen countertop. The two notable ones are the Cuisinart steam oven (~$250-300) and the Anova Precision Oven (~$700); these are the low and high ends of the price range.

Correct. Although I am incredibly tempted to order a full sized shitty commercial one from China and hack on it.

All that goes on there is an evaporating tray of water and wet bulb temperature sensors (finicky to measure accurately). Imagine an environment similar to a dishwasher or rather, a sauna, where you play not just with the temperature but also the humidity by controlling the steam bath.

The Chinese commercial ones I am referring to use a fill valve with a float (not dissimilar to a toilet tank) to replenish the water from the evaporating tray found at the bottom of the oven. So might get away with an analog circuit.. I digress..

Instead of keeping your food in a plastic bag and recirculating the water through a heating element to keep the temperature you are just constantly boiling water and releasing steam so the entire oven cavity settles at an exact temperature AND humidity level. Hope I didn't bungle that explanation too much.

Anyway GM probably has super fancy home ovens of this nature for $10,000 a premium home gamer version of the sort of thing restaurants/fancy-hotels use. The pros simply front load food trays into them like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cfll7tUcuA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJb9cYXo-4g

The Anova thing is basically a tiny toy version of that.

Did you miss a zero? Because all home combi-ovens I've seen in Germany are nearly 10x that price range. Granted, those aren't countertop but regular home oven form factor devices. They're explicitly for domestic kitchens though.

These are not full-sized ovens. They are made to fit on your countertop.

Warming drawer, too!

Consistent and excellent results don't necessarily require any tools.

If you've made the same thing a million times, you probably stopped measuring after the 10th time or so, and if you had arrived at the same exact steps without the tools through trial and error there's literally no difference in the results.

Why do you group kitchen scale anywhere near the other gadgets, that is a super basic and essential equipment everyone has already.

Except for the lunatics writing recipes with imperial volume measurements for dry goods of course.