Commercial Sous Vides

Cooking in a pot on the stove or in the oven means food dries out if it sits too long. In a sous vide the food is sealed in a pouch, so moisture stays in and marinades, herbs and the natural juices stay with it.

The water around the pouch sits at the temperature you set, so the same dish comes out the same plate after plate. That is what makes it useful when several chefs cook the same recipe, or when a group runs the same dish across more than one venue.

Work it out from the menu: how many dishes go through the bath, and how many portions you put out in a shift. If you cook fresh every day you need a bigger bath. If you have the refrigeration to hold cooked stock, a middle size usually does the job.

Caterers, hotels and big restaurants are normally at the larger end. Size it on your busiest batch rather than an average one, and leave room for the water to move around the pouches. If you are not sure, contact the team at REO and we will recommend a size.

An immersion circulator clamps onto a container you already own, so you can change the tank to suit the batch and store the unit in a drawer between jobs. That suits a kitchen short on bench space, or one whose batch sizes move around.

A water bath has the heater, the circulator and an insulated tank built into one appliance, so there is nothing to set up and nothing to source a container for, and many have a low water alarm. The trade-off is the other way round: the tank size is fixed, and it takes up its bench position whether you are using it that day or not.

Sous vides are built for long cooks, and many will run up to 99 hours. The water is kept moving and the temperature is checked and corrected as it goes, so it stays where you set it rather than drifting over a long session. Most have a low water alarm to tell you when the bath needs topping up.

Moving the water is the part that matters for the result: still water forms warm and cool pockets, and a pouch sitting in a cool pocket does not cook the way the rest of the batch does. You set the temperature on the front panel and leave it.

Yes. The food has to be sealed in a pouch before it goes in the bath, both to keep the moisture in and to stop water getting at it. A pouch that has lost its seal also floats, and anything floating is not cooking.

Kitchens use vacuum sealers and bags rated for the job, because the seal has to hold through a long cook with marinade or juice in the bag. If you are packing anything wet, say so when you choose the sealer, because that decides which type you need.

Chill it fast. Take the pouch out of the bath, straight into a blast chiller to get it down through the danger zone, then into the fridge, or into a freezer for larger portions where that suits what you have cooked.

Label and date everything and work first in, first out. The chilling step is the one most often skipped and the one your food safety plan will be judged on.

You will see commercial sous vide machine, commercial sous vide cooker, commercial sous vide equipment and commercial kitchen sous vide used for the same kind of equipment. The name changes with the supplier and the region, not the job it does. Compare models on capacity, construction and the specification on each product page, and check the full commercial sous vides range to see every option side by side.