So I was recently approached by the people at Typhur about reviewing their Typhur Sous Vide Station. I decided I was going to break this down over four different reviews – the first three to discuss how I went about preparing three different food items, and the fourth as an overall review of the product.
One of the really cool features of this sous vide station is the 12 inch, Wi-Fi capable touch screen. It allows you to search for different foods and then gives you step-by-step instructions on how to make it. For the maiden voyage I wanted to find something that I have never made, but something that was fairly simple. I knew that we as a family were going to be watching a Christmas movie that evening, and when I saw there was an eggnog recipe, I knew that was the one! The ingredients were simple to obtain (most of which I already had on hand):
Eggs
Whole milk
Heavy whipping cream
Powdered sugar
Vanilla extract
Dark rum
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Essentially you mix all the ingredients in a bowl, then split them between two 16-ounce ball jars that are dropped into the water bath.
When you first click on the recipe it gives you a list of everything that you need to prepare the eggnog, including ingredients, tools (bowls, whisk, ball jars, etc.) and the time required to make it. From there you click the “Start Recipe” button on the screen – and then it goes step-by-step through everything you need to do.
The first step is "Prepare the circulator and water bath." This step is essentially just filling the tank with water. When you click “Next” it brings you to step two, which is “Start preheating the water bath.” This is exactly what it sounds like. It prompts you to set it to the default time and temperature for the recipe. In this case that was 142F for 1 hour, but you can edit those numbers if you desire to – I went with the defaults because I’m willing to trust someone else on something I’ve never done before. When you click “Start preheating” it does exactly that. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the temperature rose here. I admittedly didn’t time it, but my tap water is about 127 degrees, and I would guess it got to 142 in about 3 minutes, which is drastically faster than the old no-name (at least that I can find on it) circulator I’ve been using for years.
The next step is to “Prepare the eggnog.” This is the page that caused me some problems. I’m not sure if my system got a glitch, or if this is just wrong in the app. I have not tried running through the eggnog recipe again to see if I get different results, but for starters (and I actually just caught this now as I’m writing this and looking over my picture to refresh my memory), the caption at the top of the page says “Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and whisky until all the ingredients are well combined.” A simple typo, but I’m guessing that should be “whisk” and not “whisky.” The bigger problem came when I was adding the ingredients to the bowl. I was looking to the screen on the unit to make sure I had the correct measurements, and according to the screen I should have:
Whole Milk – ¾ cup
Heavy Whipping Cream – ½ cup
Powdered Sugar – 1 tbsp
Vanilla Extract – ¼ cup
Dark Rum – ½ tbsp
Nutmeg Powder – 1tsp
Cinnamon Powder – 7
Whole Eggs – 7
I didn’t question any of this as I started going down the list, but when I got to the vanilla I started to think that ¼ cup of vanilla was more vanilla than I ever remember adding to anything, but hey, I’ve never made eggnog before… Then I got to the cinnamon and realized I had a problem. The measurement for cinnamon just said “7” which didn’t make sense. Before I started, I made sure I had enough of each ingredient, and that “7” would have stuck out to me before. Typhur does have a really sweet app that can connect to the sous vide station and also allows you to look up the same recipes, so I decided to look the same recipe up there – as that’s what I used for my shopping list at the store. The recipe there called for:
Large Egg – 7
Whole Milk – 14.8oz
Heavy Whipping Cream – ¾ cup
Powdered Sugar – ½ cup
Vanilla Extract – 1tbsp
Dark Rum – ¼ cup
Nutmeg Powder – ½ tbsp
Cinnamon Powder – 1 tsp
It seemed like the recipe on the machine had duplicated the egg quantity for the cinnamon quantity and moved every other measurement up one – so I had the wrong amount of everything in except cinnamon and eggs. I was able to double the recipe to try to save it, but I still ended up with twice as much vanilla as I would need for a double batch.
The next step was to “Portion the eggnog.” For this, I poured the contents from my bowl into a pitcher, and then dumped it from the pitcher into the 16-ounce ball jars. After that, the next step was to “Place the eggnog in the sous vide container.” This proved a bit difficult as I didn’t have tongs that would wrap well around the jars. I had to press them against the edge of the tank and essentially clamp the jars between the tongs and the edge of the tank to lower them in, but once I got them in, I went to the 6th step which was “Sous vide the eggnog.”
The eggnog sat in the water for one hour and this is where I had a bit of a problem of my own doing… My son was at an event and I was thinking he needed to be picked up two hours later than he actually needed to be picked up. Unfortunately, I had to rush out and knew I wasn’t going to make it back in time before the timer stopped. This is where I really fell in love with the mobile app. I had my phone on the mount in my car and I was able to watch the sous vide timer as I drove. When it finished I was able to have my wife remove them so they didn’t stay in any longer than they needed to. I know for most meat it wouldn’t have been an issue, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried to sous vide a milk and egg combination so I wasn’t sure what the ramifications would be if I left it in. Anyhow, I think she had a much less exciting time trying to get the jars out of the water than I did putting them in (which was entirely due to my lack of proper tools and had nothing to do with the Typhur Sous Vide Station). She put them in the refrigerator, and we let them chill for the afternoon.
That evening it was time to watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” as a family, all with a glass of eggnog. I’m admittedly used to store bought eggnog without rum – as is my family. I’m not sure if it was too much vanilla, the rum my family was not used to, or a combination of both, but my family didn’t care for the eggnog. It grew on me and I did enjoy it. I just had another glass this morning while writing this. I think I would like to try making the recipe again and making sure I have all the ingredients correct the second time because it seemed it was almost there, just slightly off.
In the end, the maiden voyage with the Typhur Sous Vide Station was a good one. The features on it are great, it heats up quickly, and the baby step instructions are so basic I would have no problem with my ten year old son making something with it. I will have to keep an eye on the ingredients page when using the app to see if there are any other that are wrong, but now that I know to watch for that, I will.
by 2PhatCC