[zatara]

I have always been fascinated by "sous vide" cooking, but could simply not put up with the idea of eating food that has been in contact with plastics for hours in a hot environment.

Most plastics do leach some very nasty compounds, not to mention the whole estrogen controversy (which has been known by the FDA since the 30s). Besides, I am sure it is very eco-unfriendly to use them to routinely cook foods since all those plastic bags will end up somewhere in the ocean for the next hundred years...

Therefore, does anyone know of any hacks for cooking in low temps and vacuum WITHOUT the damned plastics bags?

[tptacek]

A combi oven does what you want: it creates a temperature-controlled humid environment, but uses steam instead of a circulating water bath. Unfortunately, they're extremely expensive.

You don't have to bag the food, for whatever it's worth. You don't even have to use water as your cooking medium; people have circulated butter for lobster. But the bag prevents the flavor from the product from leaching out into the cooking liquid and being diluted away.

[imglorp]

I wonder if you could take a stock rice cooker and fit a constantly running evacuation pump to the steam vent hole in the glass lid. It could partially evacuate the chamber and hold it there while you cooked. The pot and lid are obviously not designed for the stress of vacuum so you wouldn't want to go past, say, a quarter atmosphere.