If you’re planning to plunge into sous vide cooking, we’ve got the best tool for the job.
Last Updated Oct. 3, 2022.
Our favorite sous vide machine was recently discontinued. The model that replaced it, the Breville Joule Turbo Sous Vide, is our new favorite. (Note: If you own the older Breville Joule Sous Vide, you can trade it in and receive a $75 credit toward the new Turbo model.)
We also tested and recommend the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0.
Sous vide cooking is easy, if you have the right immersion circulator. We compared the speed, accuracy, ease of use, and cooking results of several new models. The Breville Joule Sous Vide-White Polycarbonate is still our top pick, priced at about $200. Simple to set and easy to clip on a variety of vessels, it heated water rapidly and kept the temperature right on target, whether we were cooking for 12 minutes or 20 hours. Everything from eggs to asparagus to steak to pulled pork emerged perfectly cooked. The smallest, most compact model in our lineup, it’s easy to store, and its app is very user-friendly. Our Best Buy is the Yedi Houseware Infinity Sous Vide, priced at about $100. While it’s bigger and bulkier to store and a bit less efficient to read with its high, flat display, it heated accurately and circulated water powerfully, with excellent results.
A sous vide immersion circulator is a sticklike appliance that heats water in a vessel to a desired temperature and then maintains that temperature to cook food immersed in the water bath. The food, which is first sealed in plastic (though not always; you can cook sous vide in glass jars, and eggs can be cooked right in their shells), eventually reaches the same temperature as the water, so it can’t overcook. With meat, poultry, and fish, you usually follow up with a quick sear in a skillet for surface browning.
The benefits of sous vide cooking are perfectly and uniformly cooked food and a process that’s quiet, neat, and mostly hands-off. Cleanup is minimal, because you’re cooking your food in water. And because they’re not cooked directly in the water, vegetables such as carrots and asparagus come out intensely flavorful and stay brightly colored. Sous vide cooking can also be long, slow, and gentle, turning tough cuts of meat fork-tender.
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.