In this video I show how I was able to make a simple sous vide cooker from a few parts. See the video for the process.
What is a Sous-Vide cooker you may ask, it is a method of cooking food in a hot water bath, the principle is it holds the food you want to cook at the temperature you want it to be when you finish cooking. So the food never becomes over cooked and stays moist. It is particularly good for cooking tough cuts of meat to break down the collagen connective tissue. Or if you want to cook a rare steak you can hold it at the temperature of rare (125-130 °F) and never have it over cooked but still above the temperature for bacteria to grow.
The parts you will need are:
Temperature Controller (ebay)
Slow cooker/crockpot (analog)
110v Wall Receptacle
Electrical Box and Cover
Common lamp wire
Handtools
For the slow cooker you want to make sure that you are using one that is analog, meaning when you unplug it it does not reset and turn itself off. Digital ones reset themselves when you unplug them, they do that with relays and timers, you want one that has manual knobs. Basically get a cheap one, you can find loads of them at the thrift shops.
Total investment around 20 dollars. Search on ebay for "Temperature controller" lots of them will come up in the search. This model is the 110V rated for 10A.
The build video:
In part 2 of the video I cooked a tough cut of flank steak, it came out great!