I recently built a sous vide cooker from do it yourself instructions online (I have somewhere around $150 into it). I am very impressed with the results from cooking this way. Chuck roast can be cooked to medium rare for a period of 48 hours. The cooking time is long enough to tenderize the meat but it is still cooked medium rare. When it is done it is very close to the tenderness and doneness of prime rib. Chicken can be cooked at low temperatures (anything above 129 degrees Fahrenheit) but can be held there long enough to pasteurize the core. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are no longer dry and can easily be cut with a fork (I cook them at 140 degrees). Pork cooked to this temperature is excellent as well. Eggs are another option. They can be cooked right in the shell. A couple of degrees one way or the other can affect the final product by quite a bit so you can dial your eggs in to your taste. My son loves them at 142 degrees. I cook them then crack the shell and dump them out, they come out just about like poached eggs.
Meat is impossible to overcook as you are cooking it at the exact temperature that you want it to be in the end so if you are cooking a steak it could be done in 1 1\2 hours or it could stay there up to 4 hours and still be cooked the same although some online claim that after 4 hours the texture can begin to get mushy. The other benefit is that a steak or roast cooked this way will be medium rare (or whatever your desired doneness is) all the way through from edge to edge. The only thing is that cooking this way you get no browning of the outside of the meat so when it is done I sear it in a screaming hot cast iron skillet just long enough to get the outside done the way I want. Many people online will also brown their meat with a propane torch. I have done this a couple time with chicken and pork and it works ok.
There are alot of interesting things you can do with this. I am just trying to see if I am the only one on here cooking this way of if someone else on here might be interested in it.
