ChefSteps Debuts Joule, the Smallest, Most Powerful Sous Vide Tool on the Market
Seattle-based startup ChefSteps® announced its expansion into kitchen hardware with Joule™, the world’s smallest and most powerful sous vide immersion circulator. Designed from the ground up by the ChefSteps team of chefs, artists, engineers and scientists, Joule is a sleek, app-controlled tool that combines the precision, ease and reliability of sous vide cooking with the intelligence, creativity and fun of ChefSteps.
“From day one, our goal at ChefSteps has been to help passionate cooks be creative and confident in the kitchen,” said Chris Young, CEO and Co-founder of ChefSteps. “Sous vide is a big part of what we do in our kitchen, but we were frustrated by the existing sous vide gadgets, which are confusing and awkward for the home cook to use. So we decided to take the lead on creating a better sous vide experience for our community of cooks. Joule is a culinary tool that was designed and built to help cooks of every skill level and to make sous vide a real part of today’s kitchen—a tool that can help you make amazing meals on busy days or wow guests with special-occasion feasts.”
A Tool for Today’s Kitchen
Housed in a sleek cylinder that’s only 11 inches tall, 1.85 inches in diameter, and just over a pound in weight, Joule is less than half the weight of even the smallest consumer sous vide device available today, small enough to easily fit in a top kitchen drawer and be used with almost any standard pot or pan you already have. Joule’s design features forged 316L stainless steel and impact-resistant, seamless food-grade plastic housing for a lifetime of durability. Unlike all other immersion circulators, Joule is entirely waterproof (because, hey, accidents happen).
Joule delivers 1100 watts of heating power from a unique, compact heater invented by ChefSteps using thick film technology that operates at 99.8 percent energy efficiency for the fastest preheating times on the market. A powerful rare-earth magnetic base easily mounts Joule to any magnetic steel pot or induction-ready cookware, while the optional clip system can be used to mount Joule to just about any cooking vessel.
At the heart of Joule is its companion cooking app, so you can control your experience with the device you use the most — your smartphone. The meticulously designed iOS and Android app features intuitive circulator controls connected via both Bluetooth and WiFi to hundreds of proven ChefSteps recipes and dozens of step-by-step guides and sous vide tips to help cooks of all skill levels get more creative and more confident. The Joule app reimagines recipes as a sensory experience, incorporating vibrant full-screen images and videos from the James Beard Award–winning ChefSteps kitchen team, all integrated seamlessly with your circulator. And intelligent, patent-pending features like Visual Doneness help take the guesswork out of cooking: Select from beautiful images and videos of finished dishes, and Joule will automatically adjust time and temperature settings based on how you want your food to turn out.
“For the last three years, ChefSteps videos have inspired our community and showed them the hows and whys of cooking, from traditional to more modern cooking techniques,” said Grant Crilly, Co-founder and Chief Content Officer at ChefSteps. “Sous vide is one of the techniques we find a lot of value in, and with Joule we wanted to create a tool that continued that mission of guiding and educating, this time through hardware and the app that powers it, so that anyone can have a great sous vide experience. That means more than just making the best sous vide hardware; it means offering a catalog of original, easy-to-understand, integrated content for Joule that will grow based on what our community wants to learn.”
Pricing and Availability
Joule is available for immediate preorder online at ChefSteps.com for the discounted price of $199 through January 15, 2016. ChefSteps Premium is included with your purchase of Joule, giving Joule users unlimited access to the full library of ChefSteps classes, recipes, and Joule cooking guides, now and in the future. Preorders will begin shipping in May 2016. Joule will retail for $299.
