A DIY sous vide cooker for making the perfect steak
Sous vide (which means “under vacuum” in French) is a cooking technique in which food is sealed in a plastic bag (or another container) and immersed in warm water for a long period of time. It is great for meat, like steak, because it ensures the food is an even temperature throughout. For a steak, you would then quickly sear the outside for beefy perfection. If that intrigues you, Rob Cai has a guide that will walk you through the construction of a sous vide cooker.
You can, of course, purchase a sous vide cooker and they’re quite affordable these days. But building your own is a fun project and it gives you complete control over the cooker’s functionality.
Closed-loop feedback is critical for sous vide cooking. The cooker needs to keep the water at a precise temperature, which means it needs to monitor the temperature while heating.
In this case, an Arduino Nano oversees that process. An LCD screen and pair of potentiometers let the user set the temperature and cook time. All of those components go in a basic enclosure for protection. The Arduino then toggles AC power to an immersion heater via a relay and monitors the water with a DS18B20 temperature sensor.
This doesn’t require any kind of tricky PID control that would need tuning, because water is relatively slow to change temperature. Therefore, the provided Arduino sketch is easy to understand and modify to get the exact performance you want.
