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The long and skinny shape of the Joule Turbo makes it easy to store in a kitchen drawer.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The Joule\u2019s strong clip keeps it in place while it cooks.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
The good news is that everything that was good about the original hasn\u2019t changed with the Turbo. Despite its diminutive size, water still heats up faster than any other sous vide I\u2019ve tested. It\u2019s also capable of heating a bath as large as 10 gallons, which is truly massive, but its water inlet is low, so it can also run in just a few inches of water (the magnetic foot helps stabilize it in a pot, and the robust metal clip on the side will hold it in place, too).\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The bad news is that there are still no manual controls on the device itself. A simple knob and display would go a long way here, as sometimes you just want to put the thing in some water, set it, and walk away. Instead, using the smartphone app is mandatory, which connects to it via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That inconvenience aside, the app is generally excellent. Once you\u2019re plugged in and connected, you just choose a recipe, like a salmon steak, for example. The app walks you through everything you need to do and has \u201cvisual doneness\u201d videos, which show you what your food will look like depending on which temperature you choose. With the salmon example, set it to 104F (40C) for \u201csoft and buttery,\u201d 113F (45C) for \u201cdelicate and juicy,\u201d 122F (50C) for \u201ctender and flaky\u201d (which gets Breville\u2019s \u201cour fave\u201d designation), or 131F (55C) for \u201cpiecey and firm.\u201d For each of those options, there\u2019s a short video of a fork pulling apart a salmon steak cooked to that corresponding temp, showing you what the texture will be like. It\u2019s very simple but incredibly effective, as it eliminates a lot of the guesswork if you\u2019re cooking something new. The various meats actually did turn out like the videos suggested in my tests, which is to say pretty incredible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Breville\u2019s app allows you to choose a recipe and then walks you through the process of cooking your food.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Turbo mode is the new model\u2019s namesake and the only obvious upgrade from the original. As I mentioned, sous vide cooking is generally very slow, but using Turbo mode can actually cut the cook time in half and still make it almost impossible to screw up. The way it does this is by making the water bath a higher temperature than you ultimately want your food to be, but lowering it again just before it reaches the target temp, and then keeping it right there until you\u2019re ready to pull it out and sear it. The idea is that as the temperature differential between the food and the water bath gets smaller and smaller, it takes longer and longer for the food to get up to temp, so those last couple of degrees can seemingly take ages. By increasing the temp of the water bath, the food gets up to the target temperature much faster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Doing this, however, takes some rather intense calculations. After all, if the machine overshoots, then your food could come out tough and overcooked, which defeats the whole purpose of sous vide cooking. (I can overcook things just fine on my own, thank you very much.) So, the Joule app will ask you for the thickness of the cut of meat, how many separate pieces, and the total weight. With that knowledge, it will estimate the cook time, and you\u2019re off to the races. It will even be able to figure out how much water is in the bath based on how fast it heats up, so it will know how much time it needs to cool it off again.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That was a lot of words to tell you how<\/em> the thing works, but you\u2019re probably wanting to know how well it works. The short answer is incredibly well. It\u2019s effectively the same device as the original Joule, which was very good, but with the added Turbo trick. In the regular sous vide mode, I made an incredible 2-inch, soy and ginger glazed mahi mahi that was incredibly moist and flaky, and I made a bag of pre-marinated pollo asado from Trader Joe\u2019s that was so nice and tender. All that was to be expected, but it was the Turbo mode I was really curious about.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Sous vide cooking allows you to evenly cook your meats without overcooking any part of it.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The Joule Turbo can reliably bring meat to the exact temp you specify.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
For my first foray, I bought a top sirloin steak from the store before I realized that the Joule app didn\u2019t have a sirloin recipe. Oh well, I figured I\u2019d just fudge it and use the fillet mignon settings. This was a mistake. Sirloin is a much leaner cut, and it takes time for the connective tissue to break down and melt, so it turned out okay, but it was a bit chewy. That was my fault, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The next week I bought a proper 1.5-inch filet mignon tenderloin (on sale at Costco, no less) and used the Turbo mode for medium rare (131F \/ 55C). A cut like that could easily take two hours, but with Turbo, it was ready to be seared in just 50 minutes. I slapped it on a blazing hot cast iron pan for 30 seconds on each side and\u2026 it was absolute perfection. Better than nearly every fancy steakhouse steak I\u2019ve ever had. Honestly, I can\u2019t stop thinking about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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When I made a pair of 1.5-inch-thick chicken breasts using the Turbo mode, I set it to 161 degrees. At one point, the water bath got as high as 175 degrees before dropping down again just in time. It took just 55 minutes, and they turned out tender and juicy, with just a bit of variation in the texture throughout. Without Turbo mode, that cook would have normally taken around 100 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Now, there are some Turbo caveats. For starters, Turbo mode only works with certain cuts of meat, and these are pretty exclusively tender cuts. They do turn out great, but if you\u2019re wanting to experience the magic of making a cheap cut taste like an expensive one, you\u2019re still going to want to use the slower, non-turbo method. The Breville team has expanded the Turbo recipes in just the last few weeks, but at the time of writing, there are no fish settings, much to my surprise. I asked the team at Breville about this, and they said that fish is surprisingly tricky. For example, farmed salmon in the US cooks differently than farmed salmon in Australia, and wild salmon cooks differently than either of those. There are no Turbo veggie recipes yet, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Turbo mode is limited to certain cuts of meat and only fresh cuts, nothing frozen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Lastly, Turbo mode currently only works with fresh cuts, not frozen. This is because the temperature differential is just too great, so by the time the core gets up to the target temp, the outside would be overdone. You can sous vide from frozen, but the problem is Breville seems to have removed the non-Turbo recipes where there might have been both, so you\u2019ll be winging it. When I wanted to cook a fillet from frozen, I had to search around until I found the Basic Steak recipe and follow that. Hopefully, Breville adds those recipes back or at least makes Turbo something you can toggle on and off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That being said, you don\u2019t have<\/em> to use any of Breville\u2019s recipes at all if you don\u2019t want. You can always follow a recipe you find online and manually set the time and temperature within the app. You can also use Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to set the water temp with your voice, but frankly, that\u2019s probably more trouble than it\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Aside from the lack of physical controls, really my only other gripe is the app could be better about helping you find analogs for things. For example, when I searched for mahi mahi in the app, it turned up no results. I had to ask Google for fish that were similar. It suggested halibut, which also wasn\u2019t in the app. Eventually, I got to cod, which there was a Joule recipe for, and which did indeed work extremely well, but it took too much work to find it. There are a few points where instructions could be a bit clearer, too. With regular sous vide cooking, you preheat the bath and then add the food. With the Turbo, you add the food while the water is still cool and let it all heat up together. I did eventually figure that out, but more explicit directions would be helpful.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n