New BBQ Product = Awesome

Squeeze wrote:

I know I have not been around much due to a very heavy work load but I have been cooking away on my egg. I have been playing with a new product that I got at the Eggtoberfest this past October and feel like I have to share this. There are a few of us eggheads that have one and can attest to how awesome it is. It is called the Culinary Prep. It is a commercial quality vaccuum tumbler that takes tumbling a step further and actually kills 99.5% of harmful bacteria and other nasty creatures in both your food and vegi's. I know that the Mother Ship is carrying them now and are worth checking out. It pulls a vaccuum so hard that it gets the marinade all the way to the bone on a pork butt. The health benifits are pretty cool too, especially when you see what the water looks like after you do chicken. BobbyQ has one and I am sure he can tell you how nice they are. Just thought I would share this find with you all.

-Kevin

if you are interested

kevin, if you will, please post the ingredient amounts and/or percentages of the cleaning solution. they should be on the label. thanks.
bill

http://www.culinaryprep.com/ googled it it looks pretty cool!

thanks

It is a very cool product indeed. I love mine and have been using the heck out of it at home. We're selling them in the store.

We had a class last night and the gentleman from the company was there and did a demo of it for us on some chicken. Everyone that was there could tell the difference between the straight chicken and the cleaned chicken.

There are 3 prominent EGGheads other than myself and Squeeze that are using them now and I'll let them tell you how they like them if they want folks to know they have them.

Give me a call if you'd like to hear more about it. 770-934-5300. I'm even thinkng of running a forum members only special on them.

ok so i went to the c-prep website and am still confused. how exactly does the thing kill 99.5% of the bacteria? it would appear that you are brining all food with a vaccuum as a more efficient delivery system for adding salt. please help me understand this thing.

My Foodsaver came with a container that I use for marinading. I add marinade, meat, close and then use the vacuum to remove air and cause the marinade to be absorbed quicker. This device adds a tumbler. I don't see a reason to spend $400 to get one.

When I was a meat manager for Winn-Dixie years ago we used a very large ss commercial version of this. We would use different cuts of beef, pork, chicken, lamb and different marinates in seperate bags and place them all in the drum together and pull the vacuum, them place the drum on the unit and rotate it for 20-30 minutes. We cooked samples up and sales quickly went through the roof. Customers were hooked. They loved the different types of marinates that we used said meat cooked quicker and was much more tender. Then the company got rid of them when they found out that many unscrupulous managers were taking old meat meant to be reduced for quick sale and was taking this meat and marinating it and now charging more for it (when you take a brown piece of meat and pull the vacuum with the marinate penetrating the muscle it would bloom bright red looking fresh for a short time).

Good questions Gwen. I am wondering the same thing. I don't understand how a vacuum alone would remove or clean anything. Seems like it just adds the salt, citric acid, and dextrose solution and the vacuum helps this get into the meat much better, which I am sure is good for marinating, but I don't see how this alone will kill or remove all the harmful contaminants. Also, I don't see how the solution can be tasteless when it contains those ingredients. At a minimum you will significantly raise the level of salt, sugars, and carbs in your meals, which might be a bad thing once you also add your normal marinades. If there is some special science behind it then I am definitely interested in a unit, otherwise I will pass. Either way this is a good thread and thanks for sharing.

Sorry for the triple post but I wanted to share this. I did some more research on the Reveo MariVac Food Tumbler and found overwhelming information that it is indeed a great product for marinating food in 20 minutes or less. There are lots of excellent reviews and even a few videos on the net:
Stock, Lock & Roll, Instructions & Marinade Recipes, Demo

As far as I can tell the only difference between the Culinary Prep unit and the Reveo is the price and the solution. If the CP unit has some special solution for cleaning then you can just order it and use it with the Reveo unit. So I had pretty much decided on getting a Reveo unit for the marinating purpose alone, and then I found another site that had it on sale for $149.95 with free shipping and they include a free set of 4 Chicago Cutlery steak knives! This was a clincher for me, my unit is on the way. I will let you know how it works.

Not that I use it every day, but when I do it makes an amazing difference.....You can't even begin to imagine what it pulls out of raw shrimp..... So far I have absolutely no complaints...

The marivac and or a foodsaver do not pull as deep of a vacuum as the culinary prep...I'm not trying to convince you to buy one...but if your going to throw comparison products out here, you should at least point out the differences....I sold my marivac when I bought the culinary prep, and am very pleased with it...one other point would be the optional "large drum" with the prep machine...I got a 20# turkey in mine...you're not going to do that with the marivac...

The plastic inserts are not there to seperate foods, they are part of the grovac process....the food is repeatedly dunked in the solution then exposed to the vacuum...dunked, exposed, dunked, exposed...you get the idea...
CP claims 27" of vacuum...I don't remeber what reveo claims...
And yes my initial interest was based mainly on the larger drum...but the grovac process pushed me over the edge on the decision..
Hopefully the prep's will come down in price once they get more popular...

Update on the Reveo Marivac unit:

It arrived earlier this week but I was too busy with work to mess with it. I finally opened it recently and it was packed better than any other product I have ever ordered through the mail. There was a cardboard shipping carton, thick cardboard product carton, very solid foam mold about 4-6" thick on the exterior in most places, plastic liner bags, then finally the unit itself. My first impressions on unpacking and setting it up:
[ol]
[li]The tumbler jar is bigger than I had expected and much thicker / heavier as well. Feels like it will take years of abuse and keep working fine.[/li]
[li]The jar lid has an excellent quality double-rubber seal and a nice stainless valve. Obviously they designed this thing the right way without scrimping on cost.[/li]
[li]The base unit was pretty bulky and a little heavy. Made me wonder why since I figured it just needed a small vacuum pump and a motor to turn the tumbler wheels. I have limited counter space so I won't be able to leave this out all the time but I might be able to find a home for it in a low cupboard.[/li]
[li]The control panel is very simple: Power, Marivac, and Tumble are the only buttons.[/li]
[/ol]

So I described the product to the wife and she was not impressed. She basically ignored it like it was another one of my computer or tool gadgets which she has absolutely no interest in. I had some boneless chicken breasts in the refrigerator which we had marinated for a few hours in a ziploc baggie just like we have done so many times before. I dumped the contents of the baggie into the Reveo jar along with 3 cups of warm water and some of the Fresh Start powder mentioned above to clean and tenderize the meat. I put the lid on, connected the vacuum line, and pressed the Marivac button. The vacuum pump has a very deep powerful sound like a compressor in a garage, not the shrill whine of a smaller cheap pump, so now I know why the base unit is so large and heavy. It took maybe 5 minutes to complete the vacuum seal in the jar and during this process I could see air bubbles and gunk coming out of the chicken and foaming on the surface of the meat. This was kind of gross but I was glad it was coming out and not going the other way.

After the vacuum seal was completed I closed the valve in the lid, removed the vacuum hose, and tumbled for 20 minutes per the chart in the Reveo book. At first the chicken was the usual raw pink color and the marinade solution was frothy, but after 10 minutes of tumbling the chicken was mostly white and the solution was flat. At the end of the 20 minutes there seemed to be almost half of the solution missing - I was amazed how much had been forced into the chicken. Took the meat out and dumped the solution then went out to the grill. I was out of lump so I had to go back to the old Weber gas grill tonight. Normally chicken comes out a bit dry and a little rubbery on this grill so I was curious to see if the Reveo would make a difference. I sprinkiled it with a touch of rub and cooked it on the highest heat setting for 12 minutes per side and then pulled it off. I could tell right away that something was different since little pockets of juice had formed on top of the chicken and it was so tender that it would flake apart when I tried to lift it off the grill with tongs. Took it inside and let it cool for 5 minutes then we dug into it. I was pretty impressed. Lots of juice, in fact so much so that the chicken literally glistened in the light at any angle, and a small puddle of juice formed on the plate while I was eating. There was a good bit more flavor too and you could see how the chicken was slightly colored all the way through from the marinade, not just on the outside like it would normally be. The wife doesn't like to eat a lot of meat but after tasting this chicken her first question was "so what does that thingie do to the food again?" She was as impressed as I was and she cleaned her plate.

So my verdict is that the Reveo unit is an awesome product indeed, especially for BGE users that cook a lot of meat. It is high quality, quick and easy to use, and it makes a big difference in moisture levels, flavor, and tenderness. I think my wife would agree as well since her next question was "can you make my scallops with that thingie tomorrow night?" Even the dog liked it, but then again I don't think he is too picky when it comes to chicken fresh off the grill. I can hardly wait to get more lump and taste Reveo-prepared meat cooked on the egg...