Meh, I love circulators. There was a period after I got my chamber vacuum where everything semi-aspirational I cooked was in a bag. It's fantastic for some things, not for others. The depressing thing is going to places like Reddit's sous vide section and it's just a bunch of dude bros cooking steaks poorly. The standout things for me are egg yolks and the 48 to 72 hour cooks on tough cuts.
People who say they prefer a braised short rib to a 72 hour one are comparing two different things. If you're cooking between 130 and 140F, the results will be tender yet not falling apart. You can compare a braised short rib and a pressure cooked short rib and the results can be very similar (though there's no reduction in the sauce, so you have to adjust technique). I don't know anyone who really likes doing traditional braises in bags besides Chipotle (who do all of their shredded pork and beef products sous vide in a single factory near Chicago, if memory serves). Anyway, the 72 hour 130F short rib is pretty awesome. I like to chill and press it flat, then cut it into smallish cubes and finish by giving them an epic hard fry in copious beef/bacon fat. Use that to garnish risotto. Or whatever. Anyway, I like being able to cook tender, medium rare face meat or shank or belly or sinewy whatever and then finish it in whatever spectacular way seems appropriate.
Here's some from my "everything in a bag" series circa 2015 or so. This is a Japanese inspired grilled hangar steak dish with dashi-braised daikon, spicy sesame bok choy, enoki mushrooms infused with Benton's bacon fat and smoked shoyu. The sauce on the side was onion water collected from onions cooked sous vide with 1% salt at 90C for 100 hours. That was seasoned and then set into a fluid gel so it had the consistency of ketchup. It tasted like French onion soup. The only thing not cooked in a bag at any point are the toasted sesame seeds.
This is my take on pork and beans. I cured and cold smoked a pork belly, which got the 48 hour 140F treatment. Then it was chilled, portioned, and deep fried in lard. It got a nice glaze post fry. Served with Rancho Gordo beans cooked in a bag with demi glace, some ChefSteps sous vide kale, and some vacuum-pickled summer squash. The only things that didn't go in a bag were the mustard seeds I pickled and the Benton's bacon lardon garnishing the pickles.
The Modernist Cuisine recipe for the short ribs with the tamarind demiglace is ****ing bananas. I've done the full thing before with the dehydrated flank steak salad, and that was awesome but a pain in the ass and the microwaved fish sauce made the kitchen smell like death. Here are some 72 hour short ribs that are about to get deep fried in beef fat.
And here they are all coated in that tamarind demi served with lime infused cucumber planks and a macadamia chive and cilantro oil.
That sauce is the truth. Nappes like chocolate.
