Review: Nomiku Sousvide Cooker
The Nomiku is a sous vide cooking device. The company describes is as an immersion circulator – a good description of just what it is. It’s a simple enough device to use and produced consistent results for me easily.
The Nomiku is a tube that clamps to the side of your own cooking pot. It attaches to a standard wall outlet through some type of converter unit that then powers the unit. Once plugged into power the round face of the Nomiku lights up with the current temperature.
Ifilled my pot with water, being careful to bring the water level between the Min and Max indicators on the side of the heater tube. Once the water was in the pot I plugged in the unit and the display registered the current water temp. The only thing left to do was to set my desired water temp.
The initial setting displayed the temp in degrees centigrade, but since I’m not accustomed to converting, I wanted to change the display to Fahrenheit. Simple enough. The display screen is touch sensitive. I held my finger on the display and it switched to Fahrenheit. 
Adjusting the desired temp is done by rotating the green ring around the display. As soon as I started to rotate the ring the display changed from current water temp to desired water temp. For my lamb chops I set the temp to 130 degrees. The circulator started swirling the water around the pot and I waited about 10 minutes until the temp indicator read 130 before I put my prepared chops in the bath.
Prep for the meal followed the typical sousvide routine. I patted my chops dry, added salt and pepper, a sprig of rosemary, and a pat of butter, then did the same on the back side.
I used a vacuum sealed bag for this since my meal had very little liquid, which would have indicated using a standard zip closure bag and the water displacement method for removing the air.
Nomiku’s recipe book recommends cooking lamb at 130 degrees for 2 to 3 hours so I set my kitchen timer and went about my day. When I was ready for dinner about 4 hours later I took the bag out of the pot and removed the chops. If you’re familiar with any sousvide cooking you know what to expect at this point… sickly looking meat. 
The meat was perfectly cooked of course, but with that pale color that isn’t at all appetizing. About 2 minutes on each side in the frying pan took care of the color nicely and added both a nice brown (and appetizing) look as well as a tasty char, making the chops look delictable and ready to eat.
All that was left was to serve the chops with my giant lima beans and tomato salad. The lamb was tender and rare- just exactly what I was looking for. 
Cleanup amounts to washing the frying pan and emptying the water from the pot. If I had been using my grill to char the chops I would have had even less to clean up, but sometimes the pan is more appropriate.
The Nomiku proved to be simple to use and extremely accurate with regard to temperature. The Nomiku is a great option for anyone wanting to dive into sousvide cooking. It’s easy to store and doesn’t require any special equipment. You can find it along with pricing at their web site here.
Also know that Nomiku is taking orders for its next version of the cooker. The new one has a WiFi connection so you can control the device from your portable device.
