Try One of These Top-Rated Sous Vide Machines for Easy, Hands-Off Cooking
Try One of These Top-Rated Sous Vide Machines for Easy, Hands-Off Cooking
For the past decade, sous vide machines have spread from the fine-dining restaurants and into the home cook’s kitchen. Sous vide cookers heat a water bath to a desired temperature and then maintains that temperature so the water bath can gently cook the food to reach your ideal doneness, which means a it easier to avoid over- or under-cooking food. Great news for those splurge cuts of steak. Plus, it's also great for the cheaper cuts because the low and slow cooking gives the toucher cuts a chance to break down and get gorgeously tender and delicious.
All of our top picks are immersion circulators, which means that these units clip to the side of the pot and work to keep the water at a consistent temperature. These are different than the tub-style of sous vide machines that resemble slow cookers, with a lid to help prevent the wanter from evaporating. While we haven't tested any tub styles (yet!), they use a slow and gentle cooking method that can take anywhere from 2o minutes for fish filets to all day for spare ribs. The best part? You can walk away after dropping your food in the water bath — in either a vaccum sealed bag or a reusable zip-top — and let your food hang out in the hot tub without constant babysitting, similar to your slow cooker or InstantPot.
At the Good Housekeeping Institute, we've been testing all manner of smart kitchen appliances, including sous vides cookers, for years. We tested 13 of the top brands of sous vide cookers by evaluating how well they maintained the set temperature and how easy they were to use while cooking a variety of foods — you can read more about how we tested at the end of this article.
Our top picks:
Immersion circulators are easy to store and simple to use - if you’re interested in how to use a sous vide cooker or what to look for when shopping, read our guides at the end of this article. Looking for more cooking content? Check out our guides on the best dutch ovens or best immersion blenders.
The best sous vide machines to help you cook like a professional, as tested by Good Housekeeping, from the ChefSteps Joule to the Anova Precision Cooker Nano.
