- And hopefully magic happens.
Magic is not happening.
What did I do wrong?
Okay. (beeps)
Hey, guys, it's Alvin.
Today I'm gonna be comparing this $50 sous vide machine
to this $300 sous vide machine.
The good news is we'll be testing them
by making one of my favorite foods in the world, steak.
We're gonna see how well each machine works,
how good the food tastes, but most importantly,
we're gonna compare to see
if the difference in price changes the difference in taste.
As a bonus, we'll also be sharing a nice side dish
to go along with the steak.
Without further ado, let's open these boxes.
All right, we can have our first gadget,
the Keenstone Sous Vide Cooker.
We paid about 50 bucks for this on Amazon.
How this gadget is supposed to work,
you put this machine in a large container of water,
and this will circulate the water
and heat it to a certain temperature.
Sous vide cooking, from my understanding,
is about cooking things like meat or protein
in a controlled-temperature water bath
to achieve even doneness all the way through.
It should guarantee very even results
versus cooking in a pan or an oven.
I think this looks very sleek.
I think this would fit very well in the kitchen.
There's an on and off button.
It says there's adjustments for temperature
and there's a time selection.
So I like that this is very self-explanatory,
that there isn't a lot.
Pretty much plug and play.
All right, the first gadget's looking pretty good.
Now it's time for the big boy,
the Anova Culinary Precision Cooker with Vacuum Sealer.
So we paid around $300 for this on Amazon.
Anova is a really well known brand in the industry.
Kind of like unboxing an Apple product.
Take me to your eater.
Okay. That's me.
Weight-wise, it feels very similar.
It's black, which means it's probably all digital
instead of manual, physical buttons.
I like the design of this too.
The $300 we paid for this
not only includes the sous vide machine,
but a whole another vacuum sealer.
It looks like a hole puncher.
Vacuum sealing the food into the bags
is what helps the food cook more evenly.
And also, it comes with vacuum bags, so that's nice
that you don't have to go and find these yourself.
What it's telling you to do is put your meat, like steak,
in the bag, put your aromatics into the bag, seal it,
and then it's ready to cook.
This also takes up quite a lot of space.
It's more like, we can give you more.
You just have to do more, and you'll get better food.
So we'll see if that works.
All right, here's how the experiment is going to work.
I've got two cuts of the same exact steak.
I chose a thick New York strip
because it's a very even cut of beef.
So any differences we'll be able to see immediately.
We're going to be using the same aromatics in each one.
We're going to be using the same vessels to cook it in.
I think it's a pretty fair test.
The only variable here are the gadgets.
Just gonna season them with salt and pepper.
The steak for the cheaper sous vide machine
is going to go into a Ziploc
because it doesn't come with the vacuum sealer,
so if you were to sous vide with that machine,
you would do it in a Ziploc.
In this Ziploc bag,
we're also going to put some aromatics.
We have thyme, we have some shallots, and some garlic.
Because it's not vacuum-sealed,
there might be some air bubbles here and there,
but I will try to squeeze as much air as I can.
This guy gets to go into a fancy vacuum bag.
For this one, we're doing the same exact aromatics.
Right, so instead of trying to squeeze the air out
for this one, we're going to use the vacuum sealer
that was provided with the $300 machine,
and hopefully magic happens.
Magic is not happening.
What did I do wrong?
Okay. (beeps)
What did I do wrong? (beeps)
Maybe I should have read the instructions.
I think I forgot to take out one of the foam pieces.
Apparently, I looked online,
you're not supposed to actually take these rubber pieces out
because it produces a seal.
So I'm just going to try that again and pressed harder.
(machine whirring)
Ah, yes. Here we go.
And then I'm going to hit Seal to seal it.
Oh, wow. Look at that.
It's a sealed vacuum bag steak.
Just to recap, this is the Ziploc one we did.
Low-tech, pretty easy.
You just throw it in the bag.
This is the high-tech, vacuum-sealed one.
So let's go cook these.
We have two Cambros filled with water.
The $50 machine has a clip-on, so it's pretty sturdy.
The Anova is more of a screw-on.
The Anova is nicer because it actually allows you to adjust
how deep or how high the machine goes based on your pot,
so I do like that.
I'm going to set these to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oh yeah,
you can see the water's already starting to circulate.
Oh wow.
This one is significantly louder.
That's so loud.
Jesus Christ.
Okay, that quieted it down a little bit,
now there's a stake to block all the water circulation.
This is another benefit of the vacuum seal
is because it takes out 100% of the air,
it sinks and floats all the way under the water,
which makes it a lot more easy to cook.
So these are gonna take about an hour and a half
to do their thing.
We're going to check on the steaks periodically.
In the meantime,
I'm gonna show you guys a great side dish
that'll go well with any steak,
and the side dish is gonna be a great creamed spinach.
We're going to put some butter.
Creamed spinach is really good
and goes really well with steak.
We'll go in with shallots.
Time to add all of this spinach.
Salt.
And we're going to drain it in a strainer,
so all the excess water come out.
We'll make cream sauce.
We're gonna make like a brew.
That'll turn into more of like this creamy, milky sauce.
This is just some half and half instead of milk
to get a little bit more creamy.
A little bit of nutmeg, Parmesan cheese,
and then, the spinach.
Okay, so it's looking pretty good.
I'll put this aside for now and check on the steaks.
So we are about one hour in.
The color of the steaks
have definitely gotten a little darker.
They look very similar in color.
As someone who has done sous vide before,
they're both looking very good, very similar,
and well on their way to being fully medium rare
all the way through.
So we still have some time
before the steaks finish cooking.
In the meantime, I want to show you guys
how to make a compound butter,
that'll take your steaks to the next level.
We have a stick of butter.
We're gonna throw in the garlic, thyme leaves,
add some parsley and some lemon zest.
And I think it'll go really well with steak.
Put this Saran Wrap.
There's a lot of possibilities with compound butter.
You can use it on different meats, different vegetables.
All right, now we gotta do the fun part,
where you roll it into a log.
Ta da, compound butter log.
And I'll put this in the freezer for about 30 minutes,
and see you guys in a bit.
All right, the compound butter is setting and chilling.
I think the steaks are getting pretty close,
so let's check them out.
Okay, we are one hour and 30 minutes in.
They're like this deep red gray.
There's a lot of juices that have a lot of flavor in them.
All right, these look good.
I'm going to take these out now.
So this is the Anova cooked steak,
and this is the Keenstone cooked steak.
The one cooked in the Anova vacuum seal
smells significantly more aromatic and flavorful
than this one.
Right now, the whole thing is rare to medium rare.
The best way to make this really taste like a legit steak
is to throw it in a hot pan, give it a nice sear,
render the fat on the outside,
and that'll add a ton of flavor
to the finished steak.
All right, so now we're going to throw it
into the pan and sear it.
The oil is starting to shimmer and smoke.
So first one I'm putting on is the Keenstone.
It's going to be on the right side,
and I'm gonna put Anova one on the left side.
All right, I'm gonna give these a flip.
It's been about a minute or so.
We're gonna render the fat cap on the side a little bit
because that's important.
Okay, and they're done.
All right, so first we are going to slice
the one from the Keenstone sous vide.
(peaceful music)
Very, very, very well cooked in the middle.
Perfect medium rare.
Hard to beat.
This looks wonderful. Wow.
All right, now we're going to cut Anova
(gentle music)
Visually, they look extremely similar.
The donenesses look pretty much exactly the same.
But looks can be deceiving, so we do have to taste them.
So to begin, we have the creamed spinach already done,
and we are going to plate up to $50 sous vide steak.
To top this off,
we also have some of our compound butter
that'll slowly melt through the steak's heat.
And this will be the $300 sous vide machine steak.
I'm gonna top it with the beautiful butter we made.
All right, the steaks are all done.
I am super excited to eat.
I'm very hungry, so let's just eat these things.
All right, time to eat.
So I want to start with a $50 one.
Yeah, that's a solid steak.
Cooked through.
I'm gonna eat it with the creamed spinach.
Get a little bit of this butter.
That's really good, too.
This creamed spinach goes really well with that steak.
Okay, now we're going to taste the $300 Anova.
Instantly. I get a lot more of the aromas
from the garlic and the thyme and the shallot
that we put it in the sous vide bag,
so that is a big difference.
These could both be served easily at a restaurant,
and no one would blink an eye.
This is what I would personally enjoy more,
although I'm very surprised and happy
with what the $50 one produced.
Okay, here are my thoughts.
The $50 Keenstone sous vide machine
was all around a great value.
It sous vided like how it should.
Very simple interface, very simple UI,
very easy to navigate temperature.
The only downside I would say is that it's a little noisy,
but overall, very, very, very good value
for what you're getting.
The $300 Anova Precision Culinary Cooker,
very sleek, very modern.
I really liked the touchpad.
It was very easy to start setting the temperature
and start going.
It did come with a little more bells and whistles,
there was wifi capabilities, and did the job extremely well.
There was no noise as it circulated the water,
and with the vacuum sealer,
it wasn't as intuitive to set up,
and that kind of made things slow down a little bit.
It's one of those things
where you put a little bit more effort
but you get a little bit more out of it.
To compare the final results of the dish,
the $300 Anova Precision Cooker
with the vacuum sealer bundle produced a steak
that was more aromatic and more fragrant
than the $50 Keenstone machine,
but I think that is because of the vacuum sealer.
Is it worth an extra $250 to get the Anova?
Not sure.
I don't know how much the vacuum sealer is worth on its own,
but if you're willing to pay a premium
for a better just sous vide experience,
whether it's just less noise, ability to use the app,
I think that is something that is for you,
but if you had never sous vided before,
and want to just try it out,
I think the Kingstone gives you great value
for what you're paying for it.
One other cool thing you could probably do
is get the $50 Keenstone sous vide machine
and then find or buy another vacuum sealer separately
or the bags,
so that way you can kind of get the best of both worlds
without necessarily having to spend $300.