Cook Your Meat in a Beer Cooler: The World’s Best (and Cheapest) Sous-Vide Hack
In an effort to help those who’d like to experiment with sous-vide cookery without having to put in the capital, a couple weeks ago I devised a novel solution to the problem: Cook your food in a beer cooler.
But … how does the cooler know you’re cooking?!? [wink]
Here’s how it works: A beer cooler is designed to keep things cool. It accomplishes this with a two-walled plastic chamber with an air space in between. This airspace acts as an insulator, preventing thermal energy (a.k.a. heat) from outside to reach the cold food inside. Of course, insulators work both ways. Once you realize that a beer cooler is just as good at keeping hot things hot as it is at keeping cold things cold, then the rest is easy
I haven’t tried this, but there’s quite a bit of interesting discussion in the comments.