The Joule Sous Vide from ChefSteps is one of the best immersion circulators in the market. It looks great with a sleek modern design, cooks food with precision and efficiency, connects to your phone, and offers lots of great innovative features for an amazing cooking experience.
Specs At A Glance
- Small and sleek, it is 11 inches long and weighs 1.1 pounds making it the smallest sous vide tool available.
- It’s small enough to slip into a top drawer being about half the size of other sous vide machines.
- Super-fast water heating with 1100 watts of power.
- Visual Doneness™ please use the proper symbol feature in the Joule app shows exactly how your food turns out.
- Works with iPhone or Android and connects with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
- Heating is precise to 0.2 F
- 120 V AC mains source only. Voltage transformers and converters can damage your Joule due to the precise heating technology. Use outside of North America voids the warranty.
Features
- Compact space-saving design: The Joule is easily the smallest sous vide machine available.It is almost half as small as the smallest sous vide device in the market. This slim design feature conveniently allows you to slip it into a silverware drawer or any other tiny storage space in your kitchen. It also makes it convenient to pack for a trip.
- Super-fast heating: The ChefSteps Joule has an impressive 1100- watt heater which heats water faster than most sous vide machines. In tests, it heated 6 liters of water at 75 degrees F to 135 degrees F in 12 minutes. Even higher wattage sous vide machine like the Gourmia GSV140 with 1200-watt heater didn’t heat up as fast. This is impressive considering the small size of the Joule. The Joule heating is precise to 0.2 F which lets you get the cooking done just the way you want it.
- Bluetooth and Wi-Fi ready: Joule connects to your phone through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. We are excited about this feature because you can control your Joule with Wi-Fi while at the office or use the Bluetooth connection while at home.
- Joule App for Android and iPhone: The Joule sous vide can only be controlled by the Joule app. This might not sit well with a lot of people, but the good thing about this is that the app is the best sous vide app we have tried, hands on. It has easy to use standard controls for operating your Joule as well as hundreds of step by step recipes. You can also submit support requests from the app and monitor the status too. There are also training videos to get you started. The intuitive Joule app will let a complete newbie turn out great dishes like a pro!
- Visual Doneness™: The joule app comes with the proprietary and innovative Visual Doneness which lets you see exactly how your cooking will turn out, even before you get started.
- Joule with Amazon Alexa: It even gets better. Joule can now work with Amazon Alexa to enable you to control the device with your voice. This awesome feature makes cooking more convenient and eliminates the need to handle your expensive phone with slimy sticky hands. How well thought out is this. The setup is easy too.
- Powerful Circulator: Joule has a powerful circulator which can effectively circulate over 10 gallons of water! This is good for large cooks and helps maintain an even water temperature even for small amounts of food. The Joule is designed to draw in water from its base and pump it out of a hole above. This innovation allows it to operate in just 1.5 inches of water, far lower than other sous vide machines. This means that it can be used with just about any container.
- Magnetic Base: This is a brilliant piece of innovation. The Joule Sous vide features a strong magnet at its foot. Just stick it into any steel or cast-iron vessel or pot and the Joule will clamp down firmly with 6 pounds of force. This provides a sturdy support for the operation of the device and conveniently eliminates the need for securing it to the sides of the container with the inbuilt clamp like the other sous vide devices. Besides, the clip on the joule doesn’t easily fit on any vessel wider that a pot.
- Precision Cooking: The Joule sous vide heats food to the exact temperature that corresponds to the doneness that you want. This ensures your food is never under-cooked or overcooked.
Pros
- Small and sleek
- Powerful 1100-watt super-fast heater
- Very quiet operation
- Easy to use
- Magnetic base that eliminates the need for fussy clips
- Powerful circulator
- Intuitive easy to use app with hundreds of recipes and training videos
- Easily connects to your phone through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi
- Voice control capability with Amazon Alexa
Cons
- No temperature display on the body of the device
- No manual controls on the device
- Can only be controlled with a smart phone
Recommendation
The Joule Sous Vide from ChefSteps is an impressive device, no doubt. It’s also beautifully made with a sleek and compact design that saves space. Functionally, it sets the bar for sous vide machines with its loads of helpful and advanced features. It cooks faster, more efficiently and more precisely to give you the perfect dinner every time. All a sous vide machine is required to do and more.
Joule Sous Vide App
While the lack of manual controls on the joule Sous Vide might be a downer for an otherwise perfect machine, we are of the opinion, along with thousands of customers, that the outstanding Joule app more than makes up for this.
We think there is no better sous vide device out there and strongly recommend the Joule Sous Vide if you are in the market for an excellent machine.
