What I was after

Inspired by my recent love of cooking elaborate meals, I bought a sous vide (here’s a good description of why someone might want to do that and what it is, if you’re interested). After cooking my first meal using a regular pot, I thought surely someone had thought of a more manageable way to cook with this instrument and I was right.

The result(s)

Anova, popular sous vide manufacturer, had published a helpful guide in their blog called Making the Most of Your Sous Vide Container or Vessel – Part 1 by Chef Nicole.

The important bits

After sifting through all of the information and comparing Amazon reviews, here’s the long story short version of where I netted out with my setup:

  • The best things to cook in are the large Rubbermaid tubs (or Rubbermaid Commercial Space Saving Food Storage Container, for long).
    • I recommend the 12 quart or the 18, the Anova can handle a maximum of 20 quarts of water
    • The 18 quart requires a lot of water (maybe obvious), which is excessive for a lot of meals, so I prefer the 12 (I bought both)
    • Always cook with the container on a trivet
    • For our purposes, we won’t worry about the type of plastic Amazon reviewers are concerned Rubbermaid is using for these tubs as our food will never come in direct contact with them
  • Get the Rubbermaid lid too (this one fits both the 12 quart and 18) and cut a hole in it for your sous vide to poke out; this’ll help retain heat.
  • Get this rack (Seville Classics SHE14050 Kitchen Pantry Organizer) to go in the tub to clip your food to, it’s prevents your food from floating around.
  • Buy some clips to clip your ziplock or heat-sealed bags to the rack.

This is what my setup looks like in both the 18 quart and 12 quart varieties – totally worth the investment in the extra gear for me:

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Note: This post is not sponsored, it falls under the same “I researched this, so maybe other people might be interested too” stream of thought as the rest of this site. I did use affiliate links for the Amazon products because, why the heck not? But these are the actual items I bought and use.