Come with me if you want to sear. The Cinder[1], which we first looked at two years ago[2], is now selling on Indiegogo and I had the unique opportunity to try this clever sous vide-style meat cooker.
Basically the Cinder cooks meat perfectly. You place a hunk on the internal platter, set the temperature, and close the heavy lid. The lid acts as a sort of vacuum seal that keeps in juices while a trough lets the fat drain off and into a little collector. Finally, when the meat is cooked through, it sears the meat completely. The Cinder costs $499 for early birds and ships in July.
So how does it work? I tested it with chicken and skirt steak and found it to be quite easy to use if a little bulky. The entire package is about 13″ x 17″ x 7″ inches with a large, heavy top plate. It doesn’t lend itself to storage in a small apartment but if you have lots of counter space it works well.
How does it cook? Pretty good. The chicken came out quite nicely and it was really juicy yet firm, especially after a good sear. I also ran some skirt steak through it and got back a well-seared if dry bit of meat that made for some good tacos.
To be clear I didn’t use a nice cut of meat. The skirt steak I cooked was tough as nails and the resulting meat was better than the slab I put into the machine. It took about 25 minutes – you can read a complete recipe here[3] – and although it looks pretty overdone the sear was great and the internal meat...