This, along with the comments about cooking a steak (where you are simply wrong), seem to assume that when you put a cooler item in a hotter substance, boom, it's the temperature of the hotter substance. It turns out that reality doesn't quite work this way.
An egg, for instance, happens to not only have an insulative shell, it's a liquid with a very high level of heat conductivity. When you put an egg in boiling water, the inside heats at a relatively uniform rate, which is exactly how we have concepts like the 6 minute egg. It incidentally turns out that the yolk sets at a higher temperature than the whites, which is how people who want firm whites and a liquidy yolk can achieve their goals, traditionally by timing (boiling water at a given altitude is fairly consistent).
The similar concept applies to the steak. A quick sear at high heat (500F+) does almost nothing to cook the inside of the steak -- the heat differential is far too high for it to migrate far through the thick protein layers, but when put in the 200F oven the differential is so low that in that case it does have time to essentially "even out" slowly. You sear first primarily because a room temperature, salted steak sears far better and more quickly than a heated, steaming piece of meat.
No, you don't wait until the item is 200F. That is absurdity. Personally I use a remote meat thermometer but other people simply go by wisdom and time. Any notion that I have to have the external temperature match what I want the internal temperature to be is...well...it's just scientifically ignorant.
Exactly as you said, it is all science and chemistry. And you seem to be coming at this as if the steak is a piece of copper. Indeed, I think this whole "cooking better" infatuation of the tech community is an attempt to (much like with NoSQL and a desire not to bother with that old DB knowledge) essentially try to skip the whole learning the basics thing, and then to paradoxically try to pretend that one's knowledge is a step above. I've seen several comically wrong comments along this line now.
You were the one who claimed that someone would have to rush out of bed before their sous-vide eggs overcook. My point is that just does not, can not happen with sous-vide because unlike hot boiling water (or an oven, with steaks) the environment of the eggs is exactly at the target temperature.
Now about your claims of uniformity and "evening out", I haven't cooked enough steaks in ovens to claim this from experience. But you can easily see on photo's of steaks the transition layer between the seared outside of a steak and the target-temperature cooked inside, it's the grey-ish part between the point and the red/pink. It's the chewy part. And it's way thinner if you look at sous-vide pics versus traditionally cooked steaks (suggesting it doesn't even out as much as you say, which to me isn't that surprising because there's no convection--same happens to pretty much every other food you put in the oven). Whether this is desirable is another question, I could agree I like that layer slightly bigger than in some of the sous-vide pics I've seen, because chewiness is yet another part of the experience. However, you can't uncook part of a steak, but you can always cook it a bit further.
With eggs, I can assure you, they are not cooked uniformly. I'm not talking about the yolk either. For the duration of soft-boiled eggs we're talking about here, I've seen big variations.
BTW I might not cook steaks sous-vide all the time (if I ate steak more often, which I don't, for reasons irrelevant here). That's in the first place because I don't have a machine and my DIY solution is kind of cumbersome. If I had one, then yes, for steaks or other cuts of meat (which are special occasion to me), I'd probably go sous-vide. Not because it's strictly better than the traditional way of cooking (from your posts I'm quite confident you can cook a delicious steak), but because I would be more confident that my steaks would come out perfectly if I did it that way. Because it's repeatable, straight-forward, not something you have to do mediocre a bunch of times before you can do it perfectly. It's not for lack of skill, either, but over the years my oven's changed, my pans changed, my gas stove, I'd have to recalibrate for all of that.
Regarding the steak, the comparison made for steaks are often medium heat, pan cooked steaks. In that case the heat differential is high enough that it doesn't have time to somewhat equalize through the meat, but it is also low enough that it takes so long that you do end up with those really large layers. By quick searing at a high heat, and then cooking at a low heat, this layer is much smaller. Although personally I greatly prefer to have some of this layer (the disparity of textures is a big feature of it). Some people suggest doing the high heat searing on a frozen steak, of all things, and then moving to the over, but that's just unnecessary extra work in my opinion.
I appreciate where people want to pursue the science of food, but honestly it does very much seem like the nosql thing all over again -- skipping knowledge one doesn't have to do something perceived to be better.
But they won't overcook. That's the point of sous vide. It heats the water temperature to a very specific point. The food will heat throughout until it's uniformly at that temperature. A few minutes extra won't make any difference because it's the temperature that determines the texture of the food (for most dishes), not how long it's been at that temperature[0].
Boiling water is 100 degrees Celsius and egg-white denatures at what, 40-45C? So your eggs will overcook, the sous-vide ones won't.
(edit: turns out it's more like 60-67C, before anyone runs out to try it based on my post, I'd have looked this up before trying)
> in your busy morning you're going to vacuum pack a steak? Seriously?
I never quite understood why it needs to be vacuum packed, actually. If you drop it in a plastic baggie, submerging into water will push the airbubbles out nicely.
> Or you can turn your oven to 200F. Toss a cast iron pan on your grilltop and sear at high heat, then move the whole thing to the oven. You'll quickly have a perfect steak without blowtorches or extended water bath time.
Ummmyeah... that would work. If you had gotten it right :) Steak goes into the oven first, cast iron skillet after (and then of course rest for five minutes before cutting it), and 200F is way too hot, that's like 93C, firmly beyond "well done" and into "shoe" territory. You can take it out before that happens obviously, but your steak won't be heated uniformly, in particular if you seared it before, you'll get an unnecessarily large transition layer (which the tough layer on the outside of a non-perfect steak) between the perfectly rare or medium inside (which is the part you want most of) and the brown crust outside (which you also want, but just for extra flavour and appearance).
It's just chemistry and physics.
> As with the soylent thing, it's like basic skills are now lacking so people looking for a lot of menial work to replace trivial undertakings.
I can accept the cynicism about the Soylent thing, but sous vide cooking is not just for "basic" cooking skills or to replace "trivial undertakings". Hey if you just want to cook a pretty good steak, go ahead and do that oven/skillet thing, mess it up like in your description if you like, because if you practice enough you'll get the timing just right and probably end up with a pretty damn good steak nearly all the time nonetheless. If you want a perfect steak, you want sous vide + blowtorch.
And in fairness, I do want to point out that a "pretty good" steak made from good quality meat will totally blow away a "perfect" (not) steak made from shitty meat (e.g. cheap frozen steaks). I tried and sous vide doesn't help at all. In fact overcooking it the traditional way might even help to cover up the shittyness. I do feel for the cow, whose life destiny was to end up as mere shitty frozen steak .. :-/
Anyway, in addition, the workflow of sous vide has a few benefits with regards to attention and timing. However I grant that certain traditional ways cooking can have other benefits. You may probably also take comfort in the assumption that people that invest in a sous vide machine really love cooking, and that for that reason they will probably invest in a good cast iron skillet first. Because if you love cooking you simply need one.
Finally, and I get a hunch you were thinking this but not saying it, I think the hacker / geek-factor of applying chemistry and physics concepts to the kitchen should not be dismissed either. It's a gadget with a thermostat and you even get to use a blowtorch after! You can quite easily build your own from basic electronic components (also check tropical fish aquarium supplies) and learn stuff about feedback control systems! You can experiment with crazy weird ways of preparing food! (what happens to cubes of marinated pork belly after 24 hours at ~55C for 24 hours is not just amazingly heavenly, but also impossible to achieve without sous vide) (try and find it at a restaurant if you don't care for the DIY, worth it).
[0] Now if you keep it at that temperature for more than a few hours, some "interesting" things may happen. Certain meats will become unnaturally tender (which may or may not be desirable), I dunno what happens to eggs though. This is presumably why he wants to set it to "refrigerate" for the large part of the night.