TimJim
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2022
- Threads
- 6
- Messages
- 63
- Reaction score
- 124
- Location
- California
- Vehicles
- 2016 Subaru Outback 3.6
- Thread starter
- #1
Update 2025: This year I decided to try a new setup because I was so tired of dealing the old one with duck tape and then taking all the duck tape off after my 3 hour drive. So, this year’s setup includes an all new custom built containment device. I used a full size clear cambro food box with matching water tight cambro griplid. I used a hole saw and cut a hole in the top of the lid which was just wider than the new sous vide (more on that later). Next I bought some industrial high temperature resistant rubber bands to work as a seal for the hole. This was the general setup, but it took 3 tries to get it dialed in.
Setup 1: I bought my dream sous vide, the Breville HydroPro Plus. It set me back a pretty penny but it was necessary to have a sous vide with no clamp in order to fit in the hole with no leaks. The tube was slightly flared so I had to make the hole in the lid extra wide. The rubber bands did a pretty good job of sealing though. However, the sous vide itself has too many safety features to work. It has a tilt safety and would automatically shut off when it would tilt on a windy road.
Setup 2: Happily there is a much cheaper alternative to the HydroPro that also has a removable clamp… the famous Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 (I think the Anova Pro would work exactly the same way). I had to get a new lid because the tube was much more narrow. That also required a new hole saw bit. Test drive number 2 began great especially since the Anova has an app which hooks up to WiFi (and eventually hooked up to the Rivian hotspot). As I was driving up the mountain, the sous vide increased temperature nicely. However, it was defective and on the way down the app began showing an error. I pulled over and the sous vide did not stop when it hit my target temperature. The water was now boiling inside the container in the back of my truck. I had to unplug the sous vide and return home in shame. Once home I took the sous vide container out of the containment box for leaks and placed it on my quartz countertop. 30 minutes later it sounded like a gun went off. I wasn’t thinking about thermal shock… boiling hot container on a cold counter. The result was 2 large cracks in my counter.
Setup 3: I sent the Anova back to Amazon and got a replacement assuming I just originally bought a defective one. Happily the replacement worked like a dream. This past Saturday it worked great on my 3 hour drive to visit family and delivered 2 perfectly cooked whole beef tenderloins. New pictures below:
Update 12/21/2024: I did it again. Last year there were no pictures of the meat… so here you go.
Yesterday I pulled off cooking the main course for an early Christmas Dinner while driving for 3 hours to visit my family. The main course: 2 USDA Prime whole beef tenderloins. The method: sous vide. For those who may not know, sous vide is a cooking method where you place vacuum sealed food into a water bath which is precisely controlled by a pump which heats up the water and circulates it in the tub. The object is to have the water the same temperature as the desired temperature of your food. Want a roast done to medium? Set the water to 135 degrees. You really can’t overcook it, and the entire roast is the exact same doneness. Just get a cast iron pan screaming hot to put a sear on the outside and you’re done. I expected some challenges driving with a big tub of water sloshing around, and as a result last weekend I ran a couple of tests.
The setup: 1 Polyscience Create Series Sous Vide, 1 polycarbonate clear box-style container with a precut lid to accommodate this specific sous vide (yes you can buy them with a custom lid). I originally thought this might be enough. Bath + sous vide + custom fit lid = done. All I had to do was to tape the lid on. However, I had visions of water still spilling out all over my R1T truck bed. So I bought a 20 gallon storage box to place the sous vide into. This one worked perfectly and still fit under the manual tonneau cover…
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-2...ner-with-Hinged-Lid-in-Black-246841/312898941
I placed the setup sous vide into the box, placed towels around the sous vide sides to stop it from sliding around inside the box, and then strapped the box to the side of the bed with a ratchet strap.
Also going with me would be my Iceco Go20 in the gear tunnel. Both the fridge and the sous vide would be running off the 110v outlets. I was planning to cook 2 prime roasts costing a total of $340. Maybe I should test this out.
Test Track: I live in California’s Central Valley. My folks live in the Bay Area and we would be meeting my sister and her family there. The drive is mostly freeways and is pretty flat but there would be some hills. I live at an elevation of about 350 feet. In 45 minutes I could be at 5,000 feet with windy foothill roads and a steep mountain grade. If this setup could work on this drive with me pushing my R1T, it would make it to the Bay Area no problem.
Test 1: Saturday 12/16/23. I filled the container to the maximum level on the sous vide which was about an inch from the top of the clear container. I put the lid on, taped the lid down, placed it in the containment bucket, plugged it in to the outlet in the bed, strapped it down, set the temperature to 135 degrees, and off I went.
Result: A successful failure. I didn’t even make it to the mountain grade. I pulled over at the bottom of the mountain after the windy foothills just to see how things were going. The sous vide had faulted out and shut off. Enough water had sloshed out that the water went below the minimum level for the circulator to push water. The inside of the containment vessel had about an inch of water and the towels were now soaked. However, my containment vessel worked perfectly. There was not a drop of water anywhere in the bed of the truck. When I got back home I took a longer look at the cutout lid. There were large gaps where the sous vide attached. I could think of only one thing that could close those gaps: duck tape.
Test 2: Sunday 12/17/23. After sealing the lid to the container all the way around and doing our best to seal up every gap, it was time to try again. This setup survived many tip tests and shake tests which only resulted in a few drips. I had placed a cheap beef eye roast (from the eye round, and not the eyeball) in the sous vide. I had enough confidence that it would work well enough to make some French dip sandwiches for dinner that night.
Result: I pulled over in the same spot as the day before. The sous vide was still running. I put my hand down and the towels were either completely dry or had just a few damp spots. Up the mountain we went. My son, wife and I had a quick lunch we packed at a scenic overlook at just over 5,000 feet. The sous vide was still working. Now it just had to survive the trip home. I pulled into the garage and the sous vide was still running. We had lost just a little bit of water from inside the container, but we were still much closer to the max fill line than we were the minimum. Success.
Catering Day: Saturday 12/23/23. We left at 7:00 a.m. The roasts were seasoned and vacuum sealed the night before. The Iceco fridge had the Yorkshire pudding batter (for popovers), two prime head roasts (for my folks) and some other cooking essentials. I kept the chain meat from both tenderloins for myself. We stopped 3 times on the trip to check to make sure we were still running (and for my wife and/or my 7 year old to go the bathroom). No problems at all. The tenderloins were cooked perfectly, they were seared in clarified butter/ghee with fresh thyme and garlic basting, the popovers popped perfectly (make batter the night before to get maximum pop), and the beef juices from the vacuum bag made the perfect addition to the au poivre sauce. Now if Rivian could start making the camp kitchen so I can start making my Rivian cookbook.
Pictures were from Test 2… needed to get out the door yesterday morning. Before you ask, yes that is my wife’s limestone R1S in the background. Running the fridge and the sous vide for the whole trip may have cost me a bit of efficiency but I put the R1T into conserve mode to compensate. I really wanted to make it to the Bay Area and back to the RAN in Manteca on one charge which I did. It made a great spot to pick up some fudge from Bass Pro Shops to put out for Santa tonight. Have a great and safe holidays everyone.
Setup 1: I bought my dream sous vide, the Breville HydroPro Plus. It set me back a pretty penny but it was necessary to have a sous vide with no clamp in order to fit in the hole with no leaks. The tube was slightly flared so I had to make the hole in the lid extra wide. The rubber bands did a pretty good job of sealing though. However, the sous vide itself has too many safety features to work. It has a tilt safety and would automatically shut off when it would tilt on a windy road.
Setup 2: Happily there is a much cheaper alternative to the HydroPro that also has a removable clamp… the famous Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 (I think the Anova Pro would work exactly the same way). I had to get a new lid because the tube was much more narrow. That also required a new hole saw bit. Test drive number 2 began great especially since the Anova has an app which hooks up to WiFi (and eventually hooked up to the Rivian hotspot). As I was driving up the mountain, the sous vide increased temperature nicely. However, it was defective and on the way down the app began showing an error. I pulled over and the sous vide did not stop when it hit my target temperature. The water was now boiling inside the container in the back of my truck. I had to unplug the sous vide and return home in shame. Once home I took the sous vide container out of the containment box for leaks and placed it on my quartz countertop. 30 minutes later it sounded like a gun went off. I wasn’t thinking about thermal shock… boiling hot container on a cold counter. The result was 2 large cracks in my counter.
Setup 3: I sent the Anova back to Amazon and got a replacement assuming I just originally bought a defective one. Happily the replacement worked like a dream. This past Saturday it worked great on my 3 hour drive to visit family and delivered 2 perfectly cooked whole beef tenderloins. New pictures below:
Update 12/21/2024: I did it again. Last year there were no pictures of the meat… so here you go.
Yesterday I pulled off cooking the main course for an early Christmas Dinner while driving for 3 hours to visit my family. The main course: 2 USDA Prime whole beef tenderloins. The method: sous vide. For those who may not know, sous vide is a cooking method where you place vacuum sealed food into a water bath which is precisely controlled by a pump which heats up the water and circulates it in the tub. The object is to have the water the same temperature as the desired temperature of your food. Want a roast done to medium? Set the water to 135 degrees. You really can’t overcook it, and the entire roast is the exact same doneness. Just get a cast iron pan screaming hot to put a sear on the outside and you’re done. I expected some challenges driving with a big tub of water sloshing around, and as a result last weekend I ran a couple of tests.
The setup: 1 Polyscience Create Series Sous Vide, 1 polycarbonate clear box-style container with a precut lid to accommodate this specific sous vide (yes you can buy them with a custom lid). I originally thought this might be enough. Bath + sous vide + custom fit lid = done. All I had to do was to tape the lid on. However, I had visions of water still spilling out all over my R1T truck bed. So I bought a 20 gallon storage box to place the sous vide into. This one worked perfectly and still fit under the manual tonneau cover…
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-2...ner-with-Hinged-Lid-in-Black-246841/312898941
I placed the setup sous vide into the box, placed towels around the sous vide sides to stop it from sliding around inside the box, and then strapped the box to the side of the bed with a ratchet strap.
Also going with me would be my Iceco Go20 in the gear tunnel. Both the fridge and the sous vide would be running off the 110v outlets. I was planning to cook 2 prime roasts costing a total of $340. Maybe I should test this out.
Test Track: I live in California’s Central Valley. My folks live in the Bay Area and we would be meeting my sister and her family there. The drive is mostly freeways and is pretty flat but there would be some hills. I live at an elevation of about 350 feet. In 45 minutes I could be at 5,000 feet with windy foothill roads and a steep mountain grade. If this setup could work on this drive with me pushing my R1T, it would make it to the Bay Area no problem.
Test 1: Saturday 12/16/23. I filled the container to the maximum level on the sous vide which was about an inch from the top of the clear container. I put the lid on, taped the lid down, placed it in the containment bucket, plugged it in to the outlet in the bed, strapped it down, set the temperature to 135 degrees, and off I went.
Result: A successful failure. I didn’t even make it to the mountain grade. I pulled over at the bottom of the mountain after the windy foothills just to see how things were going. The sous vide had faulted out and shut off. Enough water had sloshed out that the water went below the minimum level for the circulator to push water. The inside of the containment vessel had about an inch of water and the towels were now soaked. However, my containment vessel worked perfectly. There was not a drop of water anywhere in the bed of the truck. When I got back home I took a longer look at the cutout lid. There were large gaps where the sous vide attached. I could think of only one thing that could close those gaps: duck tape.
Test 2: Sunday 12/17/23. After sealing the lid to the container all the way around and doing our best to seal up every gap, it was time to try again. This setup survived many tip tests and shake tests which only resulted in a few drips. I had placed a cheap beef eye roast (from the eye round, and not the eyeball) in the sous vide. I had enough confidence that it would work well enough to make some French dip sandwiches for dinner that night.
Result: I pulled over in the same spot as the day before. The sous vide was still running. I put my hand down and the towels were either completely dry or had just a few damp spots. Up the mountain we went. My son, wife and I had a quick lunch we packed at a scenic overlook at just over 5,000 feet. The sous vide was still working. Now it just had to survive the trip home. I pulled into the garage and the sous vide was still running. We had lost just a little bit of water from inside the container, but we were still much closer to the max fill line than we were the minimum. Success.
Catering Day: Saturday 12/23/23. We left at 7:00 a.m. The roasts were seasoned and vacuum sealed the night before. The Iceco fridge had the Yorkshire pudding batter (for popovers), two prime head roasts (for my folks) and some other cooking essentials. I kept the chain meat from both tenderloins for myself. We stopped 3 times on the trip to check to make sure we were still running (and for my wife and/or my 7 year old to go the bathroom). No problems at all. The tenderloins were cooked perfectly, they were seared in clarified butter/ghee with fresh thyme and garlic basting, the popovers popped perfectly (make batter the night before to get maximum pop), and the beef juices from the vacuum bag made the perfect addition to the au poivre sauce. Now if Rivian could start making the camp kitchen so I can start making my Rivian cookbook.
Pictures were from Test 2… needed to get out the door yesterday morning. Before you ask, yes that is my wife’s limestone R1S in the background. Running the fridge and the sous vide for the whole trip may have cost me a bit of efficiency but I put the R1T into conserve mode to compensate. I really wanted to make it to the Bay Area and back to the RAN in Manteca on one charge which I did. It made a great spot to pick up some fudge from Bass Pro Shops to put out for Santa tonight. Have a great and safe holidays everyone.
Sponsored
Last edited:
