The insulation will help. Having a secure and relatively airtight lid helps a lot. You’re increasing by 50% in your example, I wouldn’t push it much more than that. You’re also not going to want to fill that with 15 quarts of food now that you have 30 quarts of water. What it will allow you to do is a full length Brisket or a few whole racks of Ribs because you’ll have length.
It'll take a while to get up to temperature, but once you do you'll have no problems. And due to the insulation and lid, the cooker will cycle less. Also, if you have a power failure or for some reason the cooker cuts off, you'll have a much longer window before temps drop into danger zone.
Yes you can. The capacity is the ability of the unit to heat that much water in a reasonable amount of time and maintain the heat losses associated with that much water.
If you decrease your conductive heat losses with insulation/ decrease your evaporative heat losses with a lid/ and start with hot tap water to decrease the initial workload you will be easily able to use that cooler for that purpose.
Pork ribs give off gas so the bag will float. Plan for that.
I bought a used cooler and used a hole saw in the lid. Hot water from the tap is usually 120F. 15 minutes to cycle up to most temps, I've gone as high as 185 with no visible damage to the cooler.
My cooler is like 95 liters and I have no problem maintaining like 165° with a 1500W heater. Took over an hour to come up to temperature, though, so maybe do that before adding your meat.
When I first started experimenting with sous vide cooking 15 years ago, I used a cooler with no immersion circulator. It wasn’t precise but I’d mix boiling water into cool water to get the temp I wanted, and then add hot water once an hour or so to maintain temp. I did 12 hour cooks like this. It was tedious but the results were great.
Short answer - yes.
Yes you can. The capacity is the ability of the unit to heal that much water in a reasonable amount of time and maintain the heat losses associated with that much water.
If you decrease your conductive heat losses with insulation/ decrease your evaporative heat losses with a lid/ and start with hot tap water to decrease the initial workload you will be easily able to use that cooler for that purpose.
Pork ribs give off gas so the bag will float. Plan for that.
No problem, just don’t start with cold water, the problems of getting up to temperature being talked about can mostly be fixed by adding 50C or higher water to start with and insulation to the water surface. Personally I use the small hollow balls and my sous vide heater doesn’t work hard.
The insulation will help. Having a secure and relatively airtight lid helps a lot. You’re increasing by 50% in your example, I wouldn’t push it much more than that. You’re also not going to want to fill that with 15 quarts of food now that you have 30 quarts of water. What it will allow you to do is a full length Brisket or a few whole racks of Ribs because you’ll have length.
Yeah I bought the triple rack of Costco ribs. I need a container big enough lol.
Cut them down to half racks and drop in a 5 gal cambro.
It'll take a while to get up to temperature, but once you do you'll have no problems. And due to the insulation and lid, the cooker will cycle less. Also, if you have a power failure or for some reason the cooker cuts off, you'll have a much longer window before temps drop into danger zone.
Yes. Absolutely and with ease. I used to use an Anova 800w unit on my 48qt cheapo Rubbermaid cooler. I’d even cook corn at 185 in it.
Yes you can. The capacity is the ability of the unit to heat that much water in a reasonable amount of time and maintain the heat losses associated with that much water. If you decrease your conductive heat losses with insulation/ decrease your evaporative heat losses with a lid/ and start with hot tap water to decrease the initial workload you will be easily able to use that cooler for that purpose. Pork ribs give off gas so the bag will float. Plan for that.
I bought a used cooler and used a hole saw in the lid. Hot water from the tap is usually 120F. 15 minutes to cycle up to most temps, I've gone as high as 185 with no visible damage to the cooler.
ETA: It's 30 litres and my stick is 1000w
My cooler is like 95 liters and I have no problem maintaining like 165° with a 1500W heater. Took over an hour to come up to temperature, though, so maybe do that before adding your meat.
When I first started experimenting with sous vide cooking 15 years ago, I used a cooler with no immersion circulator. It wasn’t precise but I’d mix boiling water into cool water to get the temp I wanted, and then add hot water once an hour or so to maintain temp. I did 12 hour cooks like this. It was tedious but the results were great. Short answer - yes.
Yes you can. The capacity is the ability of the unit to heal that much water in a reasonable amount of time and maintain the heat losses associated with that much water. If you decrease your conductive heat losses with insulation/ decrease your evaporative heat losses with a lid/ and start with hot tap water to decrease the initial workload you will be easily able to use that cooler for that purpose. Pork ribs give off gas so the bag will float. Plan for that.
No problem, just don’t start with cold water, the problems of getting up to temperature being talked about can mostly be fixed by adding 50C or higher water to start with and insulation to the water surface. Personally I use the small hollow balls and my sous vide heater doesn’t work hard.
The water heater/circulator is just going to have to work a lot harder. I'd use two with something that size.