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Thanks for the video! I think I'll be experimenting with this one! A toasted sesame oil / soy sauce seasoned mayo will probably be first on the list. ;-)

Boy, do I know what you mean about context being important...

I go camping in the desert out in the middle of Nevada every year, and several years back a friend of mine brought a bunch of Jamaican Jerk marinated boneless chicken thighs, which we BBQ'd on a plain ol' gas grill. That chicken tasted SO GOOD. It was downright euphoric. As soon as I got home, I re-created it, and it was good, but nothing incredible. That's when I learned a lesson: Everything tastes better in the desert. Since then I've tried to cook really good food out there every year, and it's always a big hit. This year, it was Chris Lilly's competition-winning smoked pork shoulder roast, and was INCREDIBLE. Of course, it's incredible at home too... ;-)

Context is almost as important as ingredients and preparation, as you've proven here as well.

I never could figure out what made the difference between cheap pizza and great pizza. I think you've nailed it here! I noticed last time I ate at a local pizza joint near my office that the dough was very "bready" with small bubbles and almost no chewyness. BLAH!!! I'm gonna have to try this on some pizza at home, and then cook it in my Weber. ;-)

Thanks!!!!

I recently decided to move beyond the beer cooler and build a sous-vide PID controller setup to operate a rice cooker or crock pot (~$85 parts cost):
Here's a drawing - Here's a picture of the finished product
and it works VERY well. Gonna have try some burgers next!

As for pan searing, I've found that the side burner on my gas grill works well. It's a bit short on heat, but not too bad. Plus, for clean-up, I can just shoot the whole area down with Simple Green and get out the hose! Can't do that in the kitchen. ;-)

@Emily - It seems to me that the crusty, grilled surface would end up soaked with juices and would lose much of its texture.

@Kenji. Good to know! So, based on that, maybe I'll do my next tri-tip (~2 lbs) in my 6-pack cooler. It'd be much easier to deal with than filling up a large cooler with hot water.

@snyderico
You could play around with my spreadsheet and see what you discover:
http://www.rsparks.com/sous-vide_calc.xls
It makes sense that the bigger the water-to-meat ratio you have, the cooler the water can be and still get the meat to the right final temperature.

For example, according to the spreadsheet, if you had 2 pounds of ribeye at 37 F and put them in a 5-gallon water bath to reach a final temperature of 130 F, you'd need a water bath that starts out at 136 F (assuming 3 degrees of drop due to heat leaving the ice chest). If you only used 1 gallon of water, it'd have to start out at 148 degrees in order to end up at 130 when the meat warmed completely. I would think that the 148 F water would cook the outer layer of meat beyond what you'd want it to. Kenji, does this sound correct to you?

Ooooh... An omelet (or a "scramble", actually)... That sounds interesting, especially while camping! I'm a big fan of not making dirty dishes. ;-p

For calculating the required water bath temperature to compensate for a given amount of thawed *or frozen* meat in a given amount of heated water, I've put together a spreadsheet that people can try if they'd like to:
http://www.rsparks.com/sous-vide_calc.xls (Excel '97 format)

Probably the most valuable aspect of this that I found is that you can play with the numbers and see whether or not you need to bother with a huge ice chest full of water if all you're doing is a steak, or if you're trying to work with so much meat that you need a larger ice chest than you currently have. It should be reasonably accurate, especially on thawed meat.

Kenji, if you find this to be useful and accurate enough, do with it as you please. No credit needed. If anyone has any questions or comments for me, I'm at bbq@rsparks.com. (I do not sell anything, I'm just a hobbyist)

For those techie enough to be inclined to do some calculations, here's a useful link that goes into the specific heat capacities of various foods:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-food-d_295.html
For reference, water is 1 Kcal/(kg*degC). This variable is normally referred to as "c".

Using this equation:
mass(meat) * c(meat) * delta T(meat) = mass(H2O) * c(H2O) * delta T(H2O)

Mass of meat: known
c of meat: look at the link above
delta T of meat: Final desired temp minus cold temp
mass of water: Measure it on a bathroom scale when you fill the ice chest
c of water: 1.0
delta T of water: This is the unknown, and is how much hotter the initial water temp must be in order to settle on the final desired bath temperature. You'll want to overshoot by the ~2-3 degrees of drop that Kenji has observed

I've done ribeyes with this method, but my cooler was a crappy styrofoam one (which insulates FAR worse than your plastic one evidently does!) As soon as I get some spare time, I'll be trying chicken breasts in my plastic ice chest. I'm gonna go one further though... I'll be tossing individually-frozen chicken breasts, frozen, in some marinade in the bag. They'll get trimmed before they get grilled. ;-) I'll be prepared to add some boiling water to the ice chest after about 20 minutes in order to make up for the frozen meat, if need be.

I did a couple of 1.25" bone-in ribeyes this way on Saturday night, and it worked like a charm. I used a cheap styrofoam ice chest and kept taking the lid off, so I had to add boiling water a few times. I was kind of in a hurry, so here's what I did: I have a dual probe digital thermometer and I stuck a temperature probe into one of the steaks and the other probe into the water. I kept the water at about 140, and pulled the steaks when they hit 135 (which took about 40 minutes). I then seared them and they turned out medium. I think the main reason for this is that I used the broiler in my oven (top rack position), and it just isn't very hot.

I'll definitely do this again! Next time I'll use my much better quality plastic cooler, I'll maintain the water temp at 130 and let the meat sit for a solid hour (where they should reach 130 internal without a problem), and I'll then sear the steaks over a fresh, red-hot chimney of lump charcoal on my grill, instead of using my wimpy broiler. ;-) Don't get me wrong, the steaks were awesome, aside from a) not quite enough crust/char, and b) just a touch too done for me. They were the best steaks I've ever cooked, but that's not saying much. I would, however, have happily paid at least $18 for this 1.5 lb. ribeye in a restaurant.

By the way, I added some of this rub:
http://www.amazon.com/McCormick-Grill-Mates-Steak-3-78/dp/B0009PCOQY
before putting them in the bag, and it served to marinate the steaks while they were in there.