This device may (or may not) change the way I cook. I’ll know more soon. Well … in about 55 hours.

The dishes I’ve eaten at restaurants over the years which were prepared via the sous vide method have been among the most mind-blowing.

Dishes such as the cardamom-infused sous-vide duck breast at The Rumor Mill …

… the 36-hour veal cheek at Momofuku Shoto …

… and the 36-hour sous vide beef shin at Range.

But cooking via sous vide at home seemed an impossibility for the amateur chef, unless you had the big bucks to drop on an expensive professional immersion circulator, or knew a friend who’d build you one on the cheap. Until Sansaire launched a Kickstarter campaign which got the blessing of David Shaw, whose cooking opinions I trust implicitly. So I backed the project immediately, and Friday, I received the device above.

David recommended I begin with short ribs, and so yesterday morning I bought three pounds of them, which I then vacuum sealed.

Late yesterday afternoon, I set my Sansaire to 144 degrees, and once that the water reached that temperature, dropped those short ribs into the pot to begin their 72-hour warm bath.

I got a little panicky at first, because the gauge, after rising steadily the way it was supposed to once the goal temperature was set, began delivering random readouts, jumping from 85 to 32 to 98 to 32 to 153 in the course of a minute. But powering down the device and hitting the reset button fixed that issue, and my short ribs have now been bathing at 144 degrees for nearly 17 hours. Only 55 hours to go!

Will the Sansaire Immersion Circulator turn those short ribs into a food of the gods? And will I then move on to steaks, chicken, and eggs?

Check back Tuesday night to find out!