Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Sophisticated temperature-controlling immersion circulators are helpful tools to have if you frequently cook sous vide, but once they’ve done the job of heating the water to your desired cooking temperature, nearly all of the energy they continue to add goes into combating heat loss through the side of the bath and, especially, through evaporation.This may come as a surprise, but as long as the mass of the cooking water is much greater than the mass of the food being cooked, only a modest amount of extra energy is needed to raise the food to the desired temperature. This is a consequence of water having a very high specific heat, which in lay terms means that there is an enormous amount of heat energy stored in the cooking water.A sous vide tool—like <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/joule">Joule</a>, the tool we developed here at ChefSteps—can provide this extra energy over time, of course, but you can also provide the extra energy in advance by simply increasing the temperature of the surrounding water by a few degrees. By the time the food reaches your desired cooking temperature, the water will have cooled slightly due to the extra heat energy flowing from the water into the food.The key to this technique, however, is ensuring that you use a well-insulated container to hold the hot water and the food being cooked. An <a href="http://amzn.to/QJUQSI">inexpensive cooler</a>—complete with an insulated lid—is perfect for the task. You&#39;ll also need an <a href="http://thermoworks.com/products/low_cost/rt600c.html?tw=chefsteps">instant read thermometer</a> to check your temperatures.WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

Cooler

Digital instant-read thermometer

1-gallon Ziplock-style freezer bag(s)

Cook Sous Vide Tonight: Insulated Cooler Method