I'm looking for something that can roughly do the job of a commercial
or laboratory bain marie -- maintain food at a fairly precise set
temperature in the range from room temperature to boiling. Most slow
cookers I've seen offer choices like high/low/warm. The ones that
bill themselves as "programmable" are mostly talking about a
programmable timer, so that you can, for example, cook at "high" for 6
hours then switch to warm. I don't care about the timer, I want to
program the temperature, and I don't want to be limited to a selection
of 3-6 different temperatures either -- I want to be able to select
any temperature up to boiling to a precision of +/-2F or so.
Something with a probe that can be inserted into the food to determine
food temperature would be an added bonus.

I have considered getting a cheap countertop roaster oven, but the
temperature controls on those things (a simple knob) are not precise
enough, nor do they have the right range (most seem to start at
"warm", which looks like about 160F to me). I have electronics
experience, so I could rip the thing apart and replace the thermostat
with my own digital controls, but that sounds like a Project, and if I
can just buy something reasonably priced I'd rather do that.
(Commercial/lab bain maries that can do what I want are in the $600+
range, maybe less on ebay. I'm thinking <$100 for my purposes.)

Anybody know of such a thing? I keep searching online, but it's often
impossible to tell exactly what the capabilities of a slow cooker are
from reading the descriptions. "Programmable" always refers to the
timer AFAICT. I've seen at least one model at Target that had a
temperature probe, but I couldn't tell from the outside of the box
what your options for temperature control were, and I didn't feel like
getting permission to open the box and get the manual just then.

TIA,

--
Randall

In article et>,
says...
> I'm looking for something that can roughly do the job of a commercial
> or laboratory bain marie -- maintain food at a fairly precise set
> temperature in the range from room temperature to boiling. Most slow
> cookers I've seen offer choices like high/low/warm. The ones that
> bill themselves as "programmable" are mostly talking about a
> programmable timer, so that you can, for example, cook at "high" for 6
> hours then switch to warm. I don't care about the timer, I want to
> program the temperature, and I don't want to be limited to a selection
> of 3-6 different temperatures either -- I want to be able to select
> any temperature up to boiling to a precision of +/-2F or so.
> Something with a probe that can be inserted into the food to determine
> food temperature would be an added bonus.
>
> I have considered getting a cheap countertop roaster oven, but the
> temperature controls on those things (a simple knob) are not precise
> enough, nor do they have the right range (most seem to start at
> "warm", which looks like about 160F to me). I have electronics
> experience, so I could rip the thing apart and replace the thermostat
> with my own digital controls, but that sounds like a Project, and if I
> can just buy something reasonably priced I'd rather do that.
> (Commercial/lab bain maries that can do what I want are in the $600+
> range, maybe less on ebay. I'm thinking <$100 for my purposes.)
>
> Anybody know of such a thing? I keep searching online, but it's often
> impossible to tell exactly what the capabilities of a slow cooker are
> from reading the descriptions. "Programmable" always refers to the
> timer AFAICT. I've seen at least one model at Target that had a
> temperature probe, but I couldn't tell from the outside of the box
> what your options for temperature control were, and I didn't feel like
> getting permission to open the box and get the manual just then.
>
> TIA,
>
>

I have seen laboratory water baths with precise temperature control but
none that go above 80C. I think you are asking for a lot for <$100.

--
Peter Aitken

On 2007-03-05, Peter A > wrote:
> In article et>,
> says...
>> I'm looking for something that can roughly do the job of a commercial
>> or laboratory bain marie -- maintain food at a fairly precise set
>> temperature in the range from room temperature to boiling.
[...]
> I have seen laboratory water baths with precise temperature control but
> none that go above 80C. I think you are asking for a lot for <$100.

80C is probably good enough, actually. It would serve my current
purposes. But I'm betting that I can't find even a used lab water
bath for a reasonable price, and the ones I might find are probably
going to be too small.

As to whether or not $100 is too little for what I'm asking -- your
typical slow cooker with a programmable timer is 95% of the way there.
They already have a microcontroller and LED display. They just need
to add a button to the user interface ($1) and replace the thermostat
(which I assume is a standard mechanical sort) with a thermistor or
two ($5). Add a 200% markup and you're at $18. Programmable slow
cookers start at around $50 right now, so we're talking $70 for the
sort of thing I'm after.

So it is certainly *possible*. It seems that nobody is building it
(low demand, I guess), but since it seems possible, I thought I'd ask
if anybody had seen something like it. I can build one myself for
<$100. It just won't look very pretty sitting on the countertop.

--
Randall