Danny, Glad to hear you're going to start messing with some Modern cooking techniques.
I agree with everybody's advise that the Kuhn Rikon is the way to go. As you know, I have the 5QT hotel style braiser but you can't go wrong with the 8 QT either. Justin’s bang on about an electric PC. A impractically cumbered designed by somebody with good intentions I’m sure. cough cough
I know you're gung ho to get cracking with Sous Vide, just remember that in everyday cooking, most of your VS cooking with be with proteins. Other than fish, meat-proteins need hours not minutes to cook, thus you don't need a fast or ultra-tenth-of-a-degree accurate SV cooker. I have both a PID controlled crock pot and the Poly Pro. Unquestionably the Poly has advantages, but for $700--$800, when I’m cooking pork, chicken, beef, lamb, duck, goat, jowls, belly’s.... I use the crock pot ($99 PID, $20 Crock). The Crock is quiet, well insulated, efficient and for long cooking times (>12hrs ), performs indistinguishably from the Poly.
http://www.amazon.com/DorkFood-DSV-T...ords=sous+vide
IMHO, your first purchase should be Chamber Vac. Remember, one of the best ways to cook vegetables is to put them in a vac bag with aromatics, salt and butter and then 3 min or so in the microwave-- perfect every time. Sure you could float them in a super hot water bath for 10 min. too, but why waste all that time and energy? You could get a clamp style, but then you won't be able to seal liquids... You’ll regret not getting the Chamber.
Other than cooking, you'll use the Chamber for packaging cooked and uncooked foods. In some cases cooked foods can go back into the SV to re thermolize. You can make infusions with fruit. Wait till you try watermelon compressions with dark coconut rum--very dramatic results. More so than the Rosemary infused vodka we did. Make Pickles in 60 sec. Remember oxygen is the enemy and you just can't evacuate a bag using Archimedes principle and a zip lock. Aging meat. Sealing mason jars, creating marinades under pressure. Sealing water, then freezing for customized ice packs. Packaging stocks, soups and graves for freezer storage. Making meat moulds, professionally packaging sausages, fish... Facilitate marinading of chicken and pork.
When I think of some others I’ll chime back in. ;-)
http://www.qualitymatters.com/VacMas...qmar-vp112.htm