$400 is relatively expensive. You can get a 1100 watt Polyscience circulator for that much.
No circulator or water bath I know of requires vacuum sealers; all of them work fine with zips.
Also, not to nitpick, but duck confit only takes 8 hours or so; it's one of the easiest things to do with a water bath.
It looks neat, though. It'll be interesting to see if the cooling feature is useful, or more of a gimmick. That cooling system doesn't look powerful enough to chill down a low-temp cook (you're supposed to ice down anything you don't serve immediately); I assume you use it to delay the start of cooking?
A lot of our copy is directed at people who're not that familiar with sous-vide and might have very basic questions when browsing. Let me clarify further:
-$400 is expensive, you're right. And we're not making that much of a margin on these right now. That's because Mellow does so much more than just warming water. Whether those features are valuable is another question.
-On the bags, we're probably the only device out there that can routinely cook using open, unsealed bags. Due to the tall, skinny geometric, you can plop food in non-ziploc bags and use those to cook you Mellow. Huge cost saving in the long run, no floating bags, and a much quicker operation all-in-all.
-You're right on the confit (though I like mine cook at 70c@24h), it's just an easy example. A chicken breast or large fillet steak would be a better example of something you wouldn't be able to cook for 8-12 hours with regular sous-vide.
-Well-supposed on the cooling.
Ultimately, Mellow's the product of almost a decade of frustration with sous-vide non-pragmatism. It won't be optimal for everyone, some people will do better with their Polysci's, but for busy home cooks like us, I think it's a hell of a help. Thank you for the chance to debate.
It specifically says in the FAQ that it can't do cook-chill. I was debating trying to work on one that could awhile back but man is it hard to get that kinda cooling power economically, at least given my cursory exploration.
Also, I've never done duck confit sous vide. Maybe I'll try that next. I made some the good old fashioned way a couple months ago and wow.
10 years ago Whirlpool introduced the Polara, a range that could also refrigerate the oven cavity until a timer expired or it was commanded to cook over the internet. It was a huge flop.
Obviously a refrigerated oven is a pretty complicated device - more than a cooled/heated water bath. The Polara had it's share of technical problems, but Whirlpool thought they were on to a new trend with this "smart" oven.
I'm a sous-vide enthusiast myself (Dorkfood DSV FTW), but by no means do I consider SV cooking a time saver. It's not going to make my day any more easy by kicking off a cook cycle from the office before I head home. In fact, part of the point of SV prep is that you can hold the cooked food for hours before finishing. Why do I need to precisely time the start if the end doesn't matter? Okay, perhaps eggs ready when I wake would be nice. But I could also kick it off before I go to bed and they would still be at a creamy 144F when morning comes.
The other problem is that you still need to prep ahead of time. Is a busy family going to handle breakfast and dinner prep before going off to work and school? American families barely make it through breakfast as it is.
It's a nice looking product and I wish them well. But the use cases escape me a little.
I'd debate that "the end doesn't matter"; I've eaten a lot of drastically overcooked sous-vide over the past years. But still, overcooking is not the point, peace of mind is the point.
Take 10 seconds to put something in a bag and plop it inside Mellow. Act on the notification when you want to, tell Mellow to have it ready whenever's convenient, and you're sure to com back to very well cooked ingredients. It's not prep, it's 10 seconds.
It's a shift from the regular way you cook dinner, and it's not ready for middle america yet. But we're getting there. We need the help of guys like you to try it out and call out the bullshit, and help us make it better.
Being able to come home from work with a protein ready to sear (Polyscience and hopefully soon Searzall represent) is definitely helpful. Also, have you held an egg overnight at 144f? That works well?
I just wanted to point out on the prep part and American families.
The time invested in prep for a device like this is hardly different that prepping a meal and throwing it in a crock pot before work. Crock pots are fantastically popular cooking devices found in almost every American's (middle america especially) kitchen and used on a regular basis.
Personally I have no experience with sous-vide nor am I very familiar to it. Watching he video I was intrigued but a little confused at what and how I could use a sous-vide cooker.
However connecting it and the process of using it to the very familiar crock pot I use at home instantly helped me to recognize the potential use of a device like this.
All: For some reason, more than one user went through this thread downvoting everything. Abuses like that cause accounts to lose voting privileges.
When you notice substantive and civil comments which have been unfairly faded out by downvotes, please give them a corrective upvote. This doesn't mean you agree with the comment, only that it didn't deserve to be faded. Usually, one or two upvotes is all it takes to get back to par, so each user can make a big difference here. For example, all of the abusively downvoted comments in this thread have now been restored by corrective upvotes. (I just contributed a few, but most were already there.)
HN has long had this self-correcting mechanism, but it's more important since we recently made some downvotes more powerful (cf. sama's recent post about this), so we're asking everyone to do it consciously when they see a need.
SC Johnson (Ziplock manufacturer) themselves do not recommend cooking w/ their bags. Note their bags are made w/ the supposedly safe (per the links in the previous bullet) polyethylene (PE)
Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.
The bottom line: No one knows how safe HDPE sous-vide is in the long run. There's nothing conclusive out there, though what little evidence there is points to it being safe. Nathan seems so think so, too: http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/01/why-cook-sous-vide/
In the end you have to make a personal call. For me, the risk of undiscovered effects is vastly outweighed by the awesome food I serve.
I respect your concern, even if I don't share it, and I'm hoping to solve it soon enough, too. Be on the look out for a new product from us in the coming year.
Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.
FYI, immersion circulators are fairly common in restaurant kitchens, since it's so much easier to get predictable results with them compared to traditional means of cooking meat. So if you dine out, it wouldn't be surprising if you're already unwittingly exposing yourself to the plastics risk.
Awesome dinner out tonight with a great sous vide duck breast or a 1 in a billion chance I will die from the plastic in the bag in which it was cooked? I choose duck.
I've been debating trying to make a sous vide machine that can chill and uses a smartphone/tablet for control for two years. I ultimately decided it just wasn't worth it because the only application I could think of for the chilling was egg poaching, and even sous vide I prefer to gradient poach rather than equilibrium. (75C for 12 mins gets a firmer white with a runny yolk than I could at equilibrium).
But I can't wait to see what they and their community come up with. The UI on a smartphone at least has to be better than the current state of the art. And I'd love to hear how they're cooling the water.
I knew other smart people out there had the same idea, great to meet you. Mellow comes out of the frustrations of having the knowledge and equipment to cook great food, and never using it because of lack of energy. We started with the problem and ended up with this technology.
Feel free to reach out to [email protected], or even preorder a unit and join the gang. (shameless)
Your payment form is not secure, even though it makes a submission over SSL, the fact that it is hosted on a non-SSL page exposes it to Man in the Middle attacks. An attacker may, for example, change the iframe URL to something controlled by the attacker but looks like the payment form on your site, and trick users into giving them their credit card details.
The fix is simple, make your whole site https and redirect all http traffic over to https. There are cheap SSL certificates out there (as low as $99 a year) and its pretty easy to setup.
Happy to say we should be fully secure now, all the traffic is going through SSL-hosted pages. I can't thank you enough for bringing this to our attention.
Could I ask you one more favor? Would you check to see if we're as safe as possible now?
The water bath's double-walled, so that power consumption isn't heinous. We're looking at nonofficial steady-state heat losses/gains of 15-30 Watt at the most common temperatures.
Founder/designer/actor here, glad to see HN pick Mellow up! I tried to post it myself to little success earlier. Let me know if I can clarify anything.
As an owner of a $2k+ Thermomix (which can do sous-vide in a very confined and limited fashion) this interests me and $400 doesn't seem outrageous if it can become a regular tool in the kitchen. I do wonder how much is covered by a slow-cooker though.
Going on the TM, my concerns would be cleaning (doesn't seem like a big issue) and how much of a meal it can actually do.
With the Thermomix, we found it went from gimmick to regularly used device quickly enough - marinades, sauces, pureed baby food, mashed potato, etc. Besides weigh, heat, blend, etc it can also work to a set temperature (though with broader increments) and I eventually tried some steak sous-vide. Vacuum sealed bag, into the basket (to prevent the blades from rupturing the bag) and away it went. It worked OK though the steak obviously needed to be seared at the end. That left me rinsing the TM and still having to wash the pan/griddle, etc.
If you still need to prepare/cook your sides, I wonder how much time has truly been saved? I've had reasonable success with the slow-cooker too: one-pot dish so cleaning is easy, sides aren't much of an issue, etc.
I imagine that the value in Mellow will come once the community strengthens and people work out a set of go-to recipes that minimise other mess and prep.
It fits! I think defining robot as an anthropomorphic thing that moves around is too constricting. Mellow is an electromechanical machine that performs complex actions, based on natural language requests, taking into account its environment and context.
I think that's pretty robotic, but I welcome the debate. Didn't mean to be at all misleading, sorry if it seemed so.
So, I notice that it's quite possible to set on autopilot, but is there an option to have more control, in the case of recipes we find separately?
Is there some sort of way to know if the power went off? If so, does it check the temperature to see if it was just a surge or if it went into the danger zone?
I'm trying to reduce the amount of meat in my diet, personally, and most applications seem to be for meats. Are there significant advantages to getting one for anything short of slow carmelized onions and a few soups?
Yes, yes, and yes. It's worth it for what it does to fish and seafood alone.
You're right though, meats have traditionally been the main focus in sous-vide, but it's by no means limited to them. Pears are amazing, eggs too. Risotto, potatoes, and carrots are insane.
Surprised not to see any positive comments here – this is exciting stuff. The IoT should be changing the kitchen faster than any other room in the house (it's the room with the most gadgets to begin with, with the potential for the most time savings / life improvements). There's not a lot of serious projects in the kitchen yet, and there should be so many more!
Thank you dftf. I blame twitter-fridge and the stupidity of most kitchen gadgets for numbing people to the power of well-designed products in the kitchen.
Most of the groundbreaking stuff has been with us so long that it's become invisible. Who really appreciates have access to cold storage these days?
There's a reason why most kitchen appliances aren't rectangular and don't sport a lot of grilles, if any. And it will have to be cleaned at some point, like anything in a kitchen (or closed rooms, for that matter). Rectangular fluid containers are the worst.
We're expecting cleanup to be very easy; mostly a wipe-down every once in a while. But you're right of course, kitchens are messy places and we certainly took that into consideration. The grille is entirely necessary for Mellow to function.
I've been interested in getting into sous-vide for a while, but I'm not sure where to start. Could anyone point me to some introductory resources? (websites, maybe cookbooks?)
I'm interested in learning the difference between different equipment setups, and also understanding what works well for sous-vide and what doesn't.
I have to say, this product sounds pretty cool, but for myself, I got really excited about sous vide, even made my own immersion circulator from Scott Heimendinger's plans a few months ago, but when I fried two aquarium pumps due to long times at high temps, I knew I had to get a commercial model. I ended up ordering an Anova, and at $200, it's just at the high end of what I feel I can afford. A $400 machine could easily be twice as good, and I'm still not sure I could convince myself to part with that much.
In addition, the new crop of immersion circulators (Anova, Sansaire, etc.) don't need very much space- they just clamp to an existing pot or whatever. It seems to me the Mellow has a very hard fight for precious counter space on top of the price.
We're designing Mellow to be used every single day, and optimising for that means a constant presence on your countertop.
Our idea is that instead of making sous-vide as cheap and simple as possible, we want to make it as useful and effortless as possible. I hope there's room for both types of product.
This is exciting - I think the fact that it has cooling built in easily puts it apart from crock pots for convenience - allowing you to go from the fridge to the stove is really cool.
Now I just have to resist getting a peltier module and making one of these before 2015...
Admittedly, I don't know much about state of the art sous-vide, but I'd be really interested to see a device with two reservoirs that can be held at different temperatures and fill/drain the main water bath.
Hypothetically, this would allow for cook->chill methods, though the overhead may not be worth it except for a small niche of customers.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
No circulator or water bath I know of requires vacuum sealers; all of them work fine with zips.
Also, not to nitpick, but duck confit only takes 8 hours or so; it's one of the easiest things to do with a water bath.
It looks neat, though. It'll be interesting to see if the cooling feature is useful, or more of a gimmick. That cooling system doesn't look powerful enough to chill down a low-temp cook (you're supposed to ice down anything you don't serve immediately); I assume you use it to delay the start of cooking?
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
A lot of our copy is directed at people who're not that familiar with sous-vide and might have very basic questions when browsing. Let me clarify further:
-$400 is expensive, you're right. And we're not making that much of a margin on these right now. That's because Mellow does so much more than just warming water. Whether those features are valuable is another question.
-On the bags, we're probably the only device out there that can routinely cook using open, unsealed bags. Due to the tall, skinny geometric, you can plop food in non-ziploc bags and use those to cook you Mellow. Huge cost saving in the long run, no floating bags, and a much quicker operation all-in-all.
-You're right on the confit (though I like mine cook at 70c@24h), it's just an easy example. A chicken breast or large fillet steak would be a better example of something you wouldn't be able to cook for 8-12 hours with regular sous-vide.
-Well-supposed on the cooling.
Ultimately, Mellow's the product of almost a decade of frustration with sous-vide non-pragmatism. It won't be optimal for everyone, some people will do better with their Polysci's, but for busy home cooks like us, I think it's a hell of a help. Thank you for the chance to debate.
[+] [-] mattmaroon|12 years ago|reply
Also, I've never done duck confit sous vide. Maybe I'll try that next. I made some the good old fashioned way a couple months ago and wow.
[+] [-] thenomad|12 years ago|reply
My Clifton dual bath cost nearly $1500 when I got it 5-6 years ago. I love that this stuff is becoming more mainstream.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joezydeco|12 years ago|reply
http://insights-2-ignite.com/2013/05/06/3-appliance-flops/
Obviously a refrigerated oven is a pretty complicated device - more than a cooled/heated water bath. The Polara had it's share of technical problems, but Whirlpool thought they were on to a new trend with this "smart" oven.
I'm a sous-vide enthusiast myself (Dorkfood DSV FTW), but by no means do I consider SV cooking a time saver. It's not going to make my day any more easy by kicking off a cook cycle from the office before I head home. In fact, part of the point of SV prep is that you can hold the cooked food for hours before finishing. Why do I need to precisely time the start if the end doesn't matter? Okay, perhaps eggs ready when I wake would be nice. But I could also kick it off before I go to bed and they would still be at a creamy 144F when morning comes.
The other problem is that you still need to prep ahead of time. Is a busy family going to handle breakfast and dinner prep before going off to work and school? American families barely make it through breakfast as it is.
It's a nice looking product and I wish them well. But the use cases escape me a little.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
I'm one of Mellow's founders/designers.
I'd debate that "the end doesn't matter"; I've eaten a lot of drastically overcooked sous-vide over the past years. But still, overcooking is not the point, peace of mind is the point.
Take 10 seconds to put something in a bag and plop it inside Mellow. Act on the notification when you want to, tell Mellow to have it ready whenever's convenient, and you're sure to com back to very well cooked ingredients. It's not prep, it's 10 seconds.
It's a shift from the regular way you cook dinner, and it's not ready for middle america yet. But we're getting there. We need the help of guys like you to try it out and call out the bullshit, and help us make it better.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bullfight|12 years ago|reply
The time invested in prep for a device like this is hardly different that prepping a meal and throwing it in a crock pot before work. Crock pots are fantastically popular cooking devices found in almost every American's (middle america especially) kitchen and used on a regular basis.
Personally I have no experience with sous-vide nor am I very familiar to it. Watching he video I was intrigued but a little confused at what and how I could use a sous-vide cooker.
However connecting it and the process of using it to the very familiar crock pot I use at home instantly helped me to recognize the potential use of a device like this.
[+] [-] dang|12 years ago|reply
When you notice substantive and civil comments which have been unfairly faded out by downvotes, please give them a corrective upvote. This doesn't mean you agree with the comment, only that it didn't deserve to be faded. Usually, one or two upvotes is all it takes to get back to par, so each user can make a big difference here. For example, all of the abusively downvoted comments in this thread have now been restored by corrective upvotes. (I just contributed a few, but most were already there.)
HN has long had this self-correcting mechanism, but it's more important since we recently made some downvotes more powerful (cf. sama's recent post about this), so we're asking everyone to do it consciously when they see a need.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jadence|12 years ago|reply
I did some digging into this a few months ago and couldn't find anything conclusive. All I found were blogs, quotes, etc by wannabe scientists.
Of note:
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/
Nearly all plastics (even the BPA-free ones) leach estrogenic activity chemicals
• http://pprc.org/index.php/2013/networking/p2-rapid/do-plasti...
Basically said that there is little evidence in either direction
• http://www.codlo.com/faq.html#.Ux5Ly-ddWlg and http://www.chow.com/food-news/107898/cooking-sous-vide-in-pl... and http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Author-says-use-of-plasti...
Says that bags made from polyethylene (PE) are safe while bags made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are not.
• http://www.beyondsalmon.com/2010/08/cooking-in-plastic-how-s...
SC Johnson (Ziplock manufacturer) themselves do not recommend cooking w/ their bags. Note their bags are made w/ the supposedly safe (per the links in the previous bullet) polyethylene (PE)
Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
The bottom line: No one knows how safe HDPE sous-vide is in the long run. There's nothing conclusive out there, though what little evidence there is points to it being safe. Nathan seems so think so, too: http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/01/why-cook-sous-vide/
In the end you have to make a personal call. For me, the risk of undiscovered effects is vastly outweighed by the awesome food I serve.
I respect your concern, even if I don't share it, and I'm hoping to solve it soon enough, too. Be on the look out for a new product from us in the coming year.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcl|12 years ago|reply
FYI, immersion circulators are fairly common in restaurant kitchens, since it's so much easier to get predictable results with them compared to traditional means of cooking meat. So if you dine out, it wouldn't be surprising if you're already unwittingly exposing yourself to the plastics risk.
[+] [-] kyleblarson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] budgi3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmaroon|12 years ago|reply
But I can't wait to see what they and their community come up with. The UI on a smartphone at least has to be better than the current state of the art. And I'd love to hear how they're cooling the water.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
I knew other smart people out there had the same idea, great to meet you. Mellow comes out of the frustrations of having the knowledge and equipment to cook great food, and never using it because of lack of energy. We started with the problem and ended up with this technology.
Feel free to reach out to [email protected], or even preorder a unit and join the gang. (shameless)
[+] [-] satiani|12 years ago|reply
The fix is simple, make your whole site https and redirect all http traffic over to https. There are cheap SSL certificates out there (as low as $99 a year) and its pretty easy to setup.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
Could I ask you one more favor? Would you check to see if we're as safe as possible now?
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mapt|12 years ago|reply
The thin clear container and large volume of water is going to be a bit rough on power consumption for that use-case though.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
The water bath's double-walled, so that power consumption isn't heinous. We're looking at nonofficial steady-state heat losses/gains of 15-30 Watt at the most common temperatures.
[+] [-] lupin_sansei|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|12 years ago|reply
Going on the TM, my concerns would be cleaning (doesn't seem like a big issue) and how much of a meal it can actually do.
With the Thermomix, we found it went from gimmick to regularly used device quickly enough - marinades, sauces, pureed baby food, mashed potato, etc. Besides weigh, heat, blend, etc it can also work to a set temperature (though with broader increments) and I eventually tried some steak sous-vide. Vacuum sealed bag, into the basket (to prevent the blades from rupturing the bag) and away it went. It worked OK though the steak obviously needed to be seared at the end. That left me rinsing the TM and still having to wash the pan/griddle, etc.
If you still need to prepare/cook your sides, I wonder how much time has truly been saved? I've had reasonable success with the slow-cooker too: one-pot dish so cleaning is easy, sides aren't much of an issue, etc.
I imagine that the value in Mellow will come once the community strengthens and people work out a set of go-to recipes that minimise other mess and prep.
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
It fits! I think defining robot as an anthropomorphic thing that moves around is too constricting. Mellow is an electromechanical machine that performs complex actions, based on natural language requests, taking into account its environment and context.
I think that's pretty robotic, but I welcome the debate. Didn't mean to be at all misleading, sorry if it seemed so.
[+] [-] utopkara|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsilvereagle|12 years ago|reply
tl;dr
- Uses the Electric Imp platform for wireless communication
- cannot be used without smartphone/tablet/computer/internet connection
- heats in about 10 minutes
- not to be used for cook -> chill
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bullfight|12 years ago|reply
I'm really impressed and while not having any prior experience with sous-vide I can really see making it part of my cooking process.
[+] [-] ebiester|12 years ago|reply
Is there some sort of way to know if the power went off? If so, does it check the temperature to see if it was just a surge or if it went into the danger zone?
I'm trying to reduce the amount of meat in my diet, personally, and most applications seem to be for meats. Are there significant advantages to getting one for anything short of slow carmelized onions and a few soups?
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
You're right though, meats have traditionally been the main focus in sous-vide, but it's by no means limited to them. Pears are amazing, eggs too. Risotto, potatoes, and carrots are insane.
[+] [-] dftf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
Most of the groundbreaking stuff has been with us so long that it's become invisible. Who really appreciates have access to cold storage these days?
[+] [-] roeme|12 years ago|reply
That thing will be a bloody mess to clean.
There's a reason why most kitchen appliances aren't rectangular and don't sport a lot of grilles, if any. And it will have to be cleaned at some point, like anything in a kitchen (or closed rooms, for that matter). Rectangular fluid containers are the worst.
(Other than that, seems to be a fine idea).
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexhutcheson|12 years ago|reply
I've been interested in getting into sous-vide for a while, but I'm not sure where to start. Could anyone point me to some introductory resources? (websites, maybe cookbooks?)
I'm interested in learning the difference between different equipment setups, and also understanding what works well for sous-vide and what doesn't.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tyr42|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric_the_read|12 years ago|reply
In addition, the new crop of immersion circulators (Anova, Sansaire, etc.) don't need very much space- they just clamp to an existing pot or whatever. It seems to me the Mellow has a very hard fight for precious counter space on top of the price.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
Our idea is that instead of making sous-vide as cheap and simple as possible, we want to make it as useful and effortless as possible. I hope there's room for both types of product.
[+] [-] alexnking|12 years ago|reply
Now I just have to resist getting a peltier module and making one of these before 2015...
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
I'd encourage you to! Can I help in any way? (Mellow's designer)
[+] [-] johnurbanik|12 years ago|reply
Hypothetically, this would allow for cook->chill methods, though the overhead may not be worth it except for a small niche of customers.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|12 years ago|reply
Result: wasted a week.