The Swid by Addélice Review
I’m starting a review of the different appliances one can use to get started with sous vide cooking. I’m pretty confident now that I will be able to try out all of the major equipment available very soon. In the meantime I’m going to start with the SWID by Addélice, a young German company who created an impressive machine.
So get ready to delve into the meanders of sous vide cooking equipment..
At first sous vide cooking appears to the non-aficionados as a bad way of cooking things. It’s often associated with the dreaded supermarket ready meals and is not synonyme of great cuisine. I tried to remember what propelled me into the sous vide way and I can’t pin point the exact moment when I decided that I had to try. Cuisine always been for me a passion and a hobby. I think that I stumbled upon it more than anything. But when I was interested enough to want to get into it seriously I wind up looking everywhere for information about equipment and recipes.
For recipes, it was easy enough. Mostly, when you type “sous vide” and the name of an ingredient you end up with tens or hundreds of link to various websites and blogs. Equipment on the other hand is a bit more complex, in the sense that pretty much everybody is using a different way of cooking sous vide.
So now, you have to choose between unstirred water baths, stirred water baths, immersion circulators, PID controllers and other home made apparatus. All of them as foreign to the home cook as the next one. That’s where you start asking questions and that’s when you start getting too many answers.
Sous vide shouldn’t be something you choose to get into on a whim. except if you’re loaded and don’t mind burning hundreds or thousands of your inherited currencies. You need to be pretty sure that this is something for you, that you would enjoy and keep enjoying for a while. After reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on about the subject I realised that it was for me, that it was something I would enjoy and I would enjoy for a while so I decided that it was time for me to get into the hardware side of things. I already had a vacuum sealer for other domestic uses but I needed a way of cooking.
My first attempt at sous vide was quite miserable and yielded a disgusting result. I didn’t fully comprehend that the control of temperature was the crucial key to success. And though I could get away with using my Maginix deep fryer as a water bath. I stupidly assumed that given the fact that it could go as low as 60°C I could just fill it with water instead of the usual oil and drop a seasoned and vacuum packed sirloin steak into it and wait for an hour or so. The temperature variation on my deep fryer was about +/- 10°, mostly towards “+”. Let me tell you that the steak was the worse piece of meat I had for a while.
After that pathetic attempt, my determination wasn’t shaken up but it was clear that I was in dire need of a proper equipment. Yes, but which one?
Here’s the first installment of reviews, that I hope will help you make the right choice for yourself.
Review #1 – SWID by Addélice
“The Swid is the world’s first immersion circulator dedicated for sous vide cooking”“Le Swid est le premier thermoplongeur au monde à être dédier à la cuisson sous vide”This sentence is what you’ll read on the Addélice website. It come from the fact that most of the other immersion circulator on the market were designed for the scientific community as lab tools which were later hijacked by chefs to be used as kitchen equipment. Swid was designed with cooking in mind, for amateur or professional. The first thing that surprised me in a good way, was the size of the swid, it’s pretty reasonable and confirms the fact that the appliance was designed for the kitchen. It can be easily stored in a cupboard or a drawer.
It’s composed of two parts, the top part is the controller, where the precision electronics reside, the lower part is the immersed portion of the machine, where you have the heating element, the thermometer and the circulation pump that stirs the water. The head of the Swid has a nice finish and feels like it’s pretty well insulated, I wouldn’t recommend splashing the water around though. The heating element separated from the food by a protection cage, which is part of the body.
On that top part that you’ll find everything you’ll need to set temperature and cooking time, Addélice went with the “less is more” concept on that front and it’s not automatically a bad thing, after all the best food processors have only three buttons, ON, OFF and PULSE. It the same idea with the Swid, you have two displays, the top one indicates the temperature you want to cook at in Celsius, the lower one the time the machine will run for in Hours and Minute. Under these two displays you have the Up and Down buttons. they control both the temp and the time. Left of those the “mode” button which helps you move between temp and time, start the heating process and kick off the timer. On the back of the machine you’ll find the power attachment socket and the ON/OFF switch.
Here’s how it works. You decide to cook a piece of chicken breast. After prepping and vacuum packing it. You turn on the swid, the word addélice appears, split between the two displays and disappears to show the last temp selected. Using the up and down buttons you set the temperature. for your chicken let’s say 63.5°C then you press the “mode” button, the focus changes to the bottom display. You set the time you desire, once again you hit the “mode” button and the machine start to heat and stir the water. Depending on the original temperature of the liquid, it takes more or less time to get to the selected temp. Generally I thought it was quite fast, even when I used cold water from the tap. It is of course recommended to start with a water temperature as close as possible to the one you want. ie: My hot water tap is around 50°C . The Swid will let you know with a “bip!” that the target temp is reached, this is when you’ll drop your pouches into whatever container you attached the machine to and press and hold for a couple of second the “Mode” button a last time which will start the timer, then you walk away and leave the machine alone to do what it does best.
The Swid can be attached to pretty much any container you wish, I use it with a couple 5L stock pot and a 20L hotel pan as well as a 20L polycarbonate container. The bigger the container, the faster the temperature stabilizes, which makes kinda sense, a large volume of water changes temperature very slowly.
Weirdly the size of the Swid was a good surprise and a worry at the very same time. Yes it is small and that’s cool, but what does it mean in term of power and reliability? I decided to put it through several tests, including letting it run non stop for 72 hours and every time it performed beautifully, having to leave the machine running all day while I was at work was a bit scary and the first day I came back at lunch time to check on it, but then I got used to it. I also, and this is very sad, watched it for more than an hour straight to see if there was temperature fluctuations, (Told you it was sad) there was none, it stuck to 63.5°C all the way. The temperature can drop when adding food, but it gets back on target at a remarkable speed. The Swid has a fail safe that stops the machine if the water level drops to low, which will happen by evaporation.
I wanted to check the temperature of the water to make sure that the Swid wasn’t lying to me. I used two of my kitchen digital thermometers, that time I noticed that the temperature the Swid indicated was different than the one displayed by my two thermometers. I was a bit disappointed, actually I was downright pissed off and I actually contacted the guys at Addélice to share my concerns, they assured me that the Swid was calibrated with state of the art precision probes. I still had two thermometers telling me that the temperature in the water wasn’t the one the Swid was claiming it was, so I decided to continue investigate and tested again, this time using a thermocouple, I was happy I get the same temp on the swid and on the thermocouple. Now I know that I shouldn’t trust my kitchen thermometers, a thermocouple is way more accurate.
If I had to say something bad about this equipment it will be about the setting of the time. I would have maybe liked two buttons, one for the hours, one for the minutes, it would make setting time for 48 or 72 hours a bit faster. Another thing would be to be able to remove the protection cage to make the cleaning easier.
- PROS
- Reaches temperature quickly.
- Price €449 Shipping included
- Good size for the home kitchen
- Noiseless, it is very silent.
- Very stable.
- CONS
- Setting long cooking time could be faster
- Not being able to remove the protection grid.
Conclusion
The Swid is a very good product, it is not a gadget, but a powerful, efficient cooking tool. Its price of €449 makes it an affordable appliance for the kitchen, It’s very easy to use and can easily be stored. I really felt that I had a complete sous vide experience with this machine, and if you pair it with a good vacuum sealer, there’s nothing you can’t achieve. There is a new website dedicated to the Swid, Check it out
Bellow is a video from Jean-François at sousvidecooking.org showing the Swid in action, it’s in french, but the images are self explanatory,
English
French
The average K type thermocouple has an error of 2.2 degrees C or 0.75% of the read value, and operates from -200 to 1250 C. Special K types have 1.1C or 0.4% error.
If you want to check the accuracy of your thermometers I suggest you get an NIST traceable thermometer. These are certified for their (stated) accuracy for up to one year from purchase. (Typically). You should then test your thermocouples and thermometers using an ice point test http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mc-mc.nsf/eng/lm00557.html . Read carefully – note you _must_ use distilled water!
You should also test with a boiling water test, again distilled water is crucial, as well as noting your altitude http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/thermotest.html
You can use these tests to ascertain exactly which, if any of your thermometers are inaccurate. I wouldn’t just “assume” that thermocouples are more accurate. If not properly calibrated, and recalibrated – they’re usually less stable than normal thermometers
Cheers!
I bought two months ago the swid, but it is not working now. When I turn on the machine , it doesn´t respond. The light is of. I checked the fuse and is alright.
Anybody can tell me what it shoud be?
Finally got in touch with them.
I’m also not able to get in touch with Addelice after the water pump in my Swid stopped working. The contact form on their web site gives me an error and attempts to contact them using email address I got mail from when I ordered. They are also silent on Twitter.
If you have any contact information that works, I would really like to get in touch with them to learn how I should go about fixing (or replacing) the pump.
Please be careful with Addelice, Immersion circulator swid bought from them stopped working properly, but they didn’t reply to my emails.
I’m very surprised, I’ve never had any problems with their services, they are pretty quick to react to a problem. Actually to be honest I’m late in sending them back my machine after they sent me a replacement one. There must be a reason why they didn’t come back to you. If they reading this they will certainly comment.
@Gay Battisoni : and a degree of inaccuracy of + or – 10F is not critical
I beg to differ. The collagen contracts at a precise temperature, and the impact on cooking is quite dramatic. For example cooking a piece of cod at 51°C gives a nice firm and juicy result, and at 53.5°c the piece has shrung by 25% and release a lot of liquid, and is flakier.
Personally I use a Clifton FL4CA, which has the same specs as a polyscience but is at a fraction of the price (and more expensive than the SWID), and can heat up to 55 litres of water
[...] Evaluación en Fifty Four Degrees [...]
hey, i really like your articles and all of your blog! keep
on going this way, its great to read! there is one question i have
in terms of the swid compared to the sous vide supreme. i am really
interested in getting one of the two devices and would love to know
from someone who actually used both which you would recommend. on
the one hand i love the idea of a fixed and fancy machine but i am
not sure about the sous vide supreme since it has no water
circulater. which perfoms best in you opinion? thanks a
lot!
Personnellement j’irais vers le Swid. C’est très précis, tu peux l’attacher a n’importe quel contenant jusqu’à 18 litres et il se range dans un tiroir sans problème. Le service chez addelice est egalement impeccable.
Le sous vide suprême est très bien aussi, mais il est plus encombrant et le volume de cuisson est limité par la taille de la machine.
N.
You will most likely find that it’s not accurate enough and is regulated over too high a temperature range. Cooking takes place over a range of 100-250F and a degree of inaccuracy of + or – 10F is not critical. Cooking thermometers will reflect this.
Addelice did get back to me and they now have some limited numbers in stock and I will hopefully be getting mine in the post next week. All I need richer now is the vacuum sealer, With a limited budget Ivwaa looking at the Andrew James professional sealer has any one uses one and are they any good or does any ones have any good suggestions for around the £60 mark?
Cheers
Hi, I used the Andrew James Pro. It’s working. It’s a good starter product and the service is great. I remember I needed some bag, because I had people for dinner the next day and he went out of his way to make sure that I receive them on time. You’ll later maybe need to upgrade to somethng a bit more robust if you
Sorry…
If you start vacuuming intensively.
Oui, même remarque que Dan. Le site de vente en ligne de Swid indique que le stock produit est “épuisé”.
Qu’en est-il exactement?
Does anyone know if Addelice are goimg to be getting any more Swids? As they have been out of stock for a long time?
I contacted the guys at Addélice but didn’t get an answer. For the moment I’m going to assume that the fact that they are out of stock is just a credit to the success of the SWID and that they sold out. We will hopefully hear from them soon.
N.
[...] Quelques liens où le Swid est testé, & pour aller plus loin. http://www.fiftyfourdegrees.com/lang/fr/archives/756 http://www.sousvidecooking.org/fr/le-swid-par-addelice-un-thermoplongeur-dedie-a-la-cuisson-sous-vide-mes-premieres-photos-et-impressions/ http://chefsimon.com/thermoplongeur-swid.html http://www.swid.eu/fr/ [...]
swid d’addelice ou polyscience circulator ? nicolas
Je finis d’écrire l’article aujourd’hui, pour un restaurant, je recommande le Polyscience 7306. Je recommande également de demander a tester les machines avant de les acheter.
Ce soir mon test du 7306 sera en ligne.
ЎUf, me gustу! Tan clara y positiva.
Ilias
Casquette,
Excellent article! Les gens ne se rendent pas compte mais c’est du travail que de délivrer un article comme celui là (tes autres articles sont également très bien fait)…et ce ce moment j’ai moi même un peu la flemme.
Je partage complètement ton avis sur le SWID. Un contrôleur de température PID du type Sousvidemagic est moins chère mais la place qu’il prend avec l’autocuiseur de riz est enquiquinant. La stabilité de la température du swid est impressionnante et je n’avais jamais précisément vérifié comme toi la précision du swid avant de m’être acheté dernièrement un thermocouple de Thermoworks. Je confirme que la précision de la sonde du swid est très proche de celle de mon thermocouple (0,1 à 0,2°C maxi).
Au fait pourquoi parles-tu de la “pompe à air” du swid? Le pompe est totalement immergée dans l’eau, que vient faire l’air là dedant?
Jean-François
Merci Jean-François, en effet ça prend du temps. Le pire c’est de répéter le tout en français pour la traduction. Surtout que je suis meilleur en orthographe en anglais qu’en français.
Tu as raison pour la pompe, je voulais écrire “circulation pump” Je corrige maintenant. Le Swid est vraiment un bon outil. Précis et depuis que je l’ai, je n’ai pas cuit un seul truc, traditionellemern
Je me demandais aussi, ce que tu devenais, j’attends tes articles également avec impatience. Allez hop! au boulot. Vas nous écrire un truc.
N,
I’m really sorry to hear that and am shocked. I hope the guys at Addelice will drop a line here to explain what might have happened. I genuinely had a great experience with these guys and I hope it wasn’t just because of the blog.