10 ms·

Dishwasher Cooking: Make Your Dinner While Cleaning The Plates

84 points by nkzednan 13y ago

loupeabody 13y ago
Could this be considered a derivative of Sous-vide[0]? That is, the mason jar technique is cooking in an air-tight container and temperature is at least somewhat regulated by the dishwasher. Have I had access to a cheap sous-vide machine this whole time!? [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Sort of, but the temperature to a large extent depends on your water supply. Also, sous-vide often means cooking at low temperature for much longer than a dishwasher cycle. If you want to get into it on the cheap and are willing to experiment, a slow cooker is another option.
  - hartror 13y ago
    Modern dishwashers have a heating element, they don't depend on an external source of heat for water. Some can use a more efficient external source to reduce heating costs, but dishwashers run a lot hotter than what comes out of the tap.
    - andrewaylett 13y ago
      Not all of them -- my dishwasher is typically set to wash (on eco mode) at a significantly colder temperature than the taps (which are set quite hot at the boiler).
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    My dishwasher runs too quickly and my water is too hot to make this technique usable. I've had great success with a $20 crockpot and the Dorkfood DSV, a no-frills PID controller that you can get on Amazon right now for $99. Much cheaper and easier than the other Kickstarter projects or making your own with an Arduino or something. And I didn't think about the energy angle until now, but I'd think the crockpot transfers heat much more efficiently than a dishwasher, where most of the joules are going down the drain in a short period of time.
    - VLM 13y ago
      "And I didn't think about the energy angle until now" It doesn't matter except for greenwashing / guilt tripping purposes. Engineering analysis below or you can just trust me. The embedded energy in food is very high, enough to cremate the food quite easily. Actually enough to cremate the food and vaporize the ashes. Takes an astounding amount of diesel to make a can of corn and deliver it to your table, for example. WRT dishwasher salmon from the 70s (rediscovered periodically in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, just like acid, but I digress) I googled around and found a "Kentucky State University" presentation claiming farmed salmon takes 11 MJ per portion to create and deliver to your kitchen before it gets cooked. To about one sig fig 1 MJ = 1 KWh so for a family of 4 you're looking at an embedded energy of "forty" KWh to provide the salmon. Its hard to envision a cooking technique requiring more than "forty" hours at a KW or 40 KW for an hour unless you get ridiculous like using a literal rocket engine or thousands (millions?) of green eco friendly watch batteries. Maybe if you burned organically grown truffle oil in a camp stove, or made charcoal out of beef instead of hardwood and grilled on it. Its not physically possible for my dishwasher to approach even 4 KWh... I did the wiring, I know you can't draw that much current over as short of a time as one cycle... The article also fixated on running the washer with soap on a normal load so you're really only "wasting" a fraction of its capacity, and most people don't run a washer at full capacity anyway, therefore the "waste" is typically zero. The amortized medical costs are much higher. So one time in a thousand the package un-noticably leaks all over and everyone in the family gets horribly food poisoned when using the contaminated dishes, leading to multiple days lost labor, and little billy needs an ER visit for IV rehydration at $2K blah blah and suddenly using a crock pot or buying a real sous vide cooker starts looking like the cheapest alternative by far.
  - Tarrosion 13y ago
    Also, proper equipment is falling in price rapidly. You can buy an Anova immersion circulator for $200 (used to be $300 until the Sansaire kickstarter showed up). I see no reason to believe that the market has bottomed out; the components are just not that expensive.
    - VLM 13y ago
      The bottom is about $30. That's about what my tropical fish tank aquarium heater cost and it'll hold any fishy-temp within a degree, permanently underwater, for years. If you demand a digital dial, or a timer, or perhaps higher wattage to heat up quicker, you might be looking at as much as $50, maybe as much as $100. A hackerspace project (or startup?) to convert aquarium heaters into perfect hard boiled egg sous vide devices would be interesting and theoretically cheap. There's people who think nothing of $500 for a coffee maker, so they'd probably go $50 for a dedicated egg hard boiler or something like that, which would be well over 100% markup on wholesale prices for aquarium heaters.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Do you not have a drink cooler? It'll do a better job of this than a dishwasher. http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-... The dishwasher cooking trick is old, by the way; here's a reference to an article in Salon about it, from the '90s: http://www.salon.com/2000/03/03/cookbooks_4/ http://www.salon.com/2000/03/03/cookbooks_4/
  - loupeabody 13y ago
    This'll be the next thing I try, definitely. Thanks for letting me know!
  - torstesu 13y ago
    Hook the drink cooler up with an arduino, temp sensor, power switch and an heating element and you'd be able to maintain that temperature as long as you'd like. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/07/16/back-in-stock-sous-vide-powered-by-arduino-kit-pack-the-sousviduino/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/07/16/back-in-stock-sous-v... http://lowereastkitchen.com/wp/?q=node/3 http://lowereastkitchen.com/wp/?q=node/3
- evilduck 13y ago
  If you don't want to do anything with a loooong slow cook time (like beyond 4 or 5 hours), you can just use ziplock bags, hot water and a medium beverage cooler. I "backyard sous-vide" steaks and pork chops like this all the time. Ziplocks don't leach any nasties at 130ºF and you don't sous-vide grilling meat long enough for the heat loss of the cooler to really matter. Fish is cooked at lower temperatures than beef/pork, so it should work even better.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
    Some added points: Ziplock bags should be good to around ~170F. I use a large cooler, a probe thermometer for the water temps, and a boiling kettle of water to bring the temp back up when it goes down. If you are concerned with bacteria in your meat (steaks have it mostly on the surface), you can follow the USDA:FSIS rules on time-temperature: steaks are safe after 121 minutes at 130F -- i go 3-4 hours to make sure the middle is that temp [1]. To reverse sear your meat I've used the following two options: torch and a charcoal starter chimney with a grate on top. I've found that you really need a reverse sear, because while the meats are extremely juicy, they have a bad external texture without a crust and you miss out on all of the good taste the maillard reaction gives you. [1] http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_Tables.pdf http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_...
gilgoomesh 13y ago
Did anyone watch the Mythbusters episode where Alton Brown cooked a lasagne in the dishwasher? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IaT90jhuB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IaT90jhuB0
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  Damn, I need to watch more Alton Brown. And more Mythbusters.
kqr2 13y ago
Also consider cooking with your car: http://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Food-on-Your-Car%27s-Engine http://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Food-on-Your-Car%27s-Engine http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/dp/1416596232/ http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/...
- Hinrik 13y ago
  Mythbusters also tried it (with the help of Alton Brown) in their "Surreal Gourmet Hour" episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqABijWMlxA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqABijWMlxA). Incidentally, that episode also had a bit on cooking with a dishwasher but it was cut (http://mentalfloss.com/article/13132/mythbustersalton-brown-experiment-you-didnt-see http://mentalfloss.com/article/13132/mythbustersalton-brown-...).
  - DanWaterworth 13y ago
    Interesting, I watched that episode in the UK and both the cooking on the car and cooking with the dishwasher parts were in there.
    - tobbel 13y ago
      They cut the episodes shorter in the US to fit more ads. I haven't seen the episode in question, but the amount of cut time might be enough to remove a small segment.
- nakedrobot2 13y ago
  I cooked a few burgers on the engine block of my 1983 Toyota Tercel back in the day. On my current car it's got so many plastic enclosures all over it that I can't find a hot area for my burger action. A real shame. This skill seems to be almost magical when I tell people about it :)
emtfan 13y ago
Also a recent EMT episode of dishwasher lasagne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08S9AmtH19o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08S9AmtH19o
- cheeyoonlee 13y ago
  Been a fan since the beginning
jcampbell1 13y ago
This is gross. Cooking salmon is all about the crispy skin. Without that, you should just eat canned salmon. Salmon is the easiest fish to cook. Put the oven on broil, burn the shit out of the fish on the skin side with a bit of oil in a pan, then put it in the oven. The top and bottom will be crusty, and it will be perfect. If you want the canned salmon taste, put it is the dishwasher. Then again, you could just eat warmed canned salmon.
- cfqycwz 13y ago
  Salmon isn't always all about the crispy skin. Ever had sous vide?
  - jcampbell1 13y ago
    Yes. In general, I think it sucks. Sous vide salmon taste like canned salmon mixed with sushi salmon. Sous vide eggs are interesting, thus I have no problem with the technique of partially denaturing proteins. Wood plank cooked salmon is very good. You get a nice smokey taste, but with soft skin. I agree, that it is not all about the crispy skin. Of course, a plank cooked salmon could be improved with a torch.
- gurraman 13y ago
  Salmon is about a lot of things. It can be eaten raw, cold- or hot smoked, cured, grilled, lightly salted etc. I prefer cured, raw, lightly salted or cold smoked. I don't think you'll find that your particular preparation mrthod is used with salmon in very many three star restaurants.
- Jack000 13y ago
  This is gross. Salmon is wasted if not eaten raw. Or you know, it's possible that different people have different tastes.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    Not all salmon is of same grade. Only highest grade can be eaten raw. Unless you buy "sushi-ready" salmon I'd not advise raw salmon.
robomartin 13y ago
Be very careful when cooking with plastics, there are dangers in the sous vide technique if the wrong kind of bag is used. http://www.yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/12/sous-vide-and-plastics/ http://www.yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/12/sous-vide-and-plast...
traughber 13y ago
As a fan of cooking without fire, I like this.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  More or less than cooking with an electric stove, which is basically the exact same type of device?
  - ygra 13y ago
    Except it uses air instead of water for conveying the heat.
kentwistle 13y ago
Title is misleading. The article clearly states that you cannot add any washing solution. So you cannot clean your plates, at the same time.
- petercooper 13y ago
  If you continue to read, though: Instead of using aluminum foil, as many websites recommend, you should put the food into airtight canning jars or food vacuum bags. Then the hot water doesn't touch the food. So you can add soap to the cycle and really clean your dishes while poaching dinner.
pessimizer 13y ago
I worked in two different restaurants in the early 90s where this was the method used to bake potatoes. I have no idea if it was ever common.
- Ntrails 13y ago
  Every kitchen I've ever worked in has a commercial dishwasher. These run for 2 minutes a cycle and would be completely unsuitable to baking potatoes (or anything else for that matter). I have seen them used to wash potatoes though, to save time. I can't say I thought it was a great idea but it never seemed to kill anyone...
andrelaszlo 13y ago
There's a swedish blog (and book) about alternative cooking devices such as hair-straighteners, dishwashers and coffee makers. http://kaffekokarkokboken.blogg.se/2013/july/alternative-cooking-devices.html http://kaffekokarkokboken.blogg.se/2013/july/alternative-coo...
philstephenson 13y ago
Good chefs will always tell you: Use the right knife for the right job. Can we not simply use our kitchen appliances and tools for what they were designed for? The author suggests (and I'm inclined to agree) that using a dishwasher to poach salmon is a fairly wasteful use of electricity and water. If you want poached salmon, get out a pot and some water. If you're really particular you could buy a cheap thermometer to poach at whatever temperature you choose, and I'd be willing to bet you'd get more consistent results than using a large machine designed to clean plates. I'm all for new techniques and ideas in the kitchen, but this is a fad that should not and will not stick around for long.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > Good chefs will always tell you: Use the right knife for the right job. Can we not simply use our kitchen appliances and tools for what they were designed for? I guess you never used a torch to reverse sear meat? The right knife for the job is the one that gets the best results. I do agree that there are probably better ways to get the same results, but if you dishwasher gets you the exact temps you need, go for it. I do a lot of sous vide steaks in a large cooler.

84 points by nkzednan 13y ago

Could this be considered a derivative of Sous-vide[0]? That is, the mason jar technique is cooking in an air-tight container and temperature is at least somewhat regulated by the dishwasher. Have I had access to a cheap sous-vide machine this whole time!? [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide

anigbrowl 13y ago
Sort of, but the temperature to a large extent depends on your water supply. Also, sous-vide often means cooking at low temperature for much longer than a dishwasher cycle. If you want to get into it on the cheap and are willing to experiment, a slow cooker is another option.
- hartror 13y ago
  Modern dishwashers have a heating element, they don't depend on an external source of heat for water. Some can use a more efficient external source to reduce heating costs, but dishwashers run a lot hotter than what comes out of the tap.
  - andrewaylett 13y ago
    Not all of them -- my dishwasher is typically set to wash (on eco mode) at a significantly colder temperature than the taps (which are set quite hot at the boiler).
- joezydeco 13y ago
  My dishwasher runs too quickly and my water is too hot to make this technique usable. I've had great success with a $20 crockpot and the Dorkfood DSV, a no-frills PID controller that you can get on Amazon right now for $99. Much cheaper and easier than the other Kickstarter projects or making your own with an Arduino or something. And I didn't think about the energy angle until now, but I'd think the crockpot transfers heat much more efficiently than a dishwasher, where most of the joules are going down the drain in a short period of time.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "And I didn't think about the energy angle until now" It doesn't matter except for greenwashing / guilt tripping purposes. Engineering analysis below or you can just trust me. The embedded energy in food is very high, enough to cremate the food quite easily. Actually enough to cremate the food and vaporize the ashes. Takes an astounding amount of diesel to make a can of corn and deliver it to your table, for example. WRT dishwasher salmon from the 70s (rediscovered periodically in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, just like acid, but I digress) I googled around and found a "Kentucky State University" presentation claiming farmed salmon takes 11 MJ per portion to create and deliver to your kitchen before it gets cooked. To about one sig fig 1 MJ = 1 KWh so for a family of 4 you're looking at an embedded energy of "forty" KWh to provide the salmon. Its hard to envision a cooking technique requiring more than "forty" hours at a KW or 40 KW for an hour unless you get ridiculous like using a literal rocket engine or thousands (millions?) of green eco friendly watch batteries. Maybe if you burned organically grown truffle oil in a camp stove, or made charcoal out of beef instead of hardwood and grilled on it. Its not physically possible for my dishwasher to approach even 4 KWh... I did the wiring, I know you can't draw that much current over as short of a time as one cycle... The article also fixated on running the washer with soap on a normal load so you're really only "wasting" a fraction of its capacity, and most people don't run a washer at full capacity anyway, therefore the "waste" is typically zero. The amortized medical costs are much higher. So one time in a thousand the package un-noticably leaks all over and everyone in the family gets horribly food poisoned when using the contaminated dishes, leading to multiple days lost labor, and little billy needs an ER visit for IV rehydration at $2K blah blah and suddenly using a crock pot or buying a real sous vide cooker starts looking like the cheapest alternative by far.
- Tarrosion 13y ago
  Also, proper equipment is falling in price rapidly. You can buy an Anova immersion circulator for $200 (used to be $300 until the Sansaire kickstarter showed up). I see no reason to believe that the market has bottomed out; the components are just not that expensive.
  - VLM 13y ago
    The bottom is about $30. That's about what my tropical fish tank aquarium heater cost and it'll hold any fishy-temp within a degree, permanently underwater, for years. If you demand a digital dial, or a timer, or perhaps higher wattage to heat up quicker, you might be looking at as much as $50, maybe as much as $100. A hackerspace project (or startup?) to convert aquarium heaters into perfect hard boiled egg sous vide devices would be interesting and theoretically cheap. There's people who think nothing of $500 for a coffee maker, so they'd probably go $50 for a dedicated egg hard boiler or something like that, which would be well over 100% markup on wholesale prices for aquarium heaters.
tptacek 13y ago
Do you not have a drink cooler? It'll do a better job of this than a dishwasher. http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-... The dishwasher cooking trick is old, by the way; here's a reference to an article in Salon about it, from the '90s: http://www.salon.com/2000/03/03/cookbooks_4/ http://www.salon.com/2000/03/03/cookbooks_4/
- loupeabody 13y ago
  This'll be the next thing I try, definitely. Thanks for letting me know!
- torstesu 13y ago
  Hook the drink cooler up with an arduino, temp sensor, power switch and an heating element and you'd be able to maintain that temperature as long as you'd like. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/07/16/back-in-stock-sous-vide-powered-by-arduino-kit-pack-the-sousviduino/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/07/16/back-in-stock-sous-v... http://lowereastkitchen.com/wp/?q=node/3 http://lowereastkitchen.com/wp/?q=node/3
evilduck 13y ago
If you don't want to do anything with a loooong slow cook time (like beyond 4 or 5 hours), you can just use ziplock bags, hot water and a medium beverage cooler. I "backyard sous-vide" steaks and pork chops like this all the time. Ziplocks don't leach any nasties at 130ºF and you don't sous-vide grilling meat long enough for the heat loss of the cooler to really matter. Fish is cooked at lower temperatures than beef/pork, so it should work even better.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  Some added points: Ziplock bags should be good to around ~170F. I use a large cooler, a probe thermometer for the water temps, and a boiling kettle of water to bring the temp back up when it goes down. If you are concerned with bacteria in your meat (steaks have it mostly on the surface), you can follow the USDA:FSIS rules on time-temperature: steaks are safe after 121 minutes at 130F -- i go 3-4 hours to make sure the middle is that temp [1]. To reverse sear your meat I've used the following two options: torch and a charcoal starter chimney with a grate on top. I've found that you really need a reverse sear, because while the meats are extremely juicy, they have a bad external texture without a crust and you miss out on all of the good taste the maillard reaction gives you. [1] http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_Tables.pdf http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_...

gilgoomesh 13y ago

Did anyone watch the Mythbusters episode where Alton Brown cooked a lasagne in the dishwasher? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IaT90jhuB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IaT90jhuB0

PhasmaFelis 13y ago
Damn, I need to watch more Alton Brown. And more Mythbusters.

kqr2 13y ago

Also consider cooking with your car: http://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Food-on-Your-Car%27s-Engine http://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Food-on-Your-Car%27s-Engine http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/dp/1416596232/ http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/...

Hinrik 13y ago
Mythbusters also tried it (with the help of Alton Brown) in their "Surreal Gourmet Hour" episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqABijWMlxA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqABijWMlxA). Incidentally, that episode also had a bit on cooking with a dishwasher but it was cut (http://mentalfloss.com/article/13132/mythbustersalton-brown-experiment-you-didnt-see http://mentalfloss.com/article/13132/mythbustersalton-brown-...).
- DanWaterworth 13y ago
  Interesting, I watched that episode in the UK and both the cooking on the car and cooking with the dishwasher parts were in there.
  - tobbel 13y ago
    They cut the episodes shorter in the US to fit more ads. I haven't seen the episode in question, but the amount of cut time might be enough to remove a small segment.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
I cooked a few burgers on the engine block of my 1983 Toyota Tercel back in the day. On my current car it's got so many plastic enclosures all over it that I can't find a hot area for my burger action. A real shame. This skill seems to be almost magical when I tell people about it :)

emtfan 13y ago

Also a recent EMT episode of dishwasher lasagne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08S9AmtH19o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08S9AmtH19o

cheeyoonlee 13y ago
Been a fan since the beginning

jcampbell1 13y ago

This is gross. Cooking salmon is all about the crispy skin. Without that, you should just eat canned salmon. Salmon is the easiest fish to cook. Put the oven on broil, burn the shit out of the fish on the skin side with a bit of oil in a pan, then put it in the oven. The top and bottom will be crusty, and it will be perfect. If you want the canned salmon taste, put it is the dishwasher. Then again, you could just eat warmed canned salmon.

cfqycwz 13y ago
Salmon isn't always all about the crispy skin. Ever had sous vide?
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  Yes. In general, I think it sucks. Sous vide salmon taste like canned salmon mixed with sushi salmon. Sous vide eggs are interesting, thus I have no problem with the technique of partially denaturing proteins. Wood plank cooked salmon is very good. You get a nice smokey taste, but with soft skin. I agree, that it is not all about the crispy skin. Of course, a plank cooked salmon could be improved with a torch.
gurraman 13y ago
Salmon is about a lot of things. It can be eaten raw, cold- or hot smoked, cured, grilled, lightly salted etc. I prefer cured, raw, lightly salted or cold smoked. I don't think you'll find that your particular preparation mrthod is used with salmon in very many three star restaurants.
Jack000 13y ago
This is gross. Salmon is wasted if not eaten raw. Or you know, it's possible that different people have different tastes.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Not all salmon is of same grade. Only highest grade can be eaten raw. Unless you buy "sushi-ready" salmon I'd not advise raw salmon.

robomartin 13y ago

Be very careful when cooking with plastics, there are dangers in the sous vide technique if the wrong kind of bag is used. http://www.yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/12/sous-vide-and-plastics/ http://www.yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/12/sous-vide-and-plast...

traughber 13y ago

As a fan of cooking without fire, I like this.

sliverstorm 13y ago
More or less than cooking with an electric stove, which is basically the exact same type of device?
- ygra 13y ago
  Except it uses air instead of water for conveying the heat.

kentwistle 13y ago

Title is misleading. The article clearly states that you cannot add any washing solution. So you cannot clean your plates, at the same time.

petercooper 13y ago
If you continue to read, though: Instead of using aluminum foil, as many websites recommend, you should put the food into airtight canning jars or food vacuum bags. Then the hot water doesn't touch the food. So you can add soap to the cycle and really clean your dishes while poaching dinner.

pessimizer 13y ago

I worked in two different restaurants in the early 90s where this was the method used to bake potatoes. I have no idea if it was ever common.

Ntrails 13y ago
Every kitchen I've ever worked in has a commercial dishwasher. These run for 2 minutes a cycle and would be completely unsuitable to baking potatoes (or anything else for that matter). I have seen them used to wash potatoes though, to save time. I can't say I thought it was a great idea but it never seemed to kill anyone...

andrelaszlo 13y ago

There's a swedish blog (and book) about alternative cooking devices such as hair-straighteners, dishwashers and coffee makers. http://kaffekokarkokboken.blogg.se/2013/july/alternative-cooking-devices.html http://kaffekokarkokboken.blogg.se/2013/july/alternative-coo...

philstephenson 13y ago

Good chefs will always tell you: Use the right knife for the right job. Can we not simply use our kitchen appliances and tools for what they were designed for? The author suggests (and I'm inclined to agree) that using a dishwasher to poach salmon is a fairly wasteful use of electricity and water. If you want poached salmon, get out a pot and some water. If you're really particular you could buy a cheap thermometer to poach at whatever temperature you choose, and I'd be willing to bet you'd get more consistent results than using a large machine designed to clean plates. I'm all for new techniques and ideas in the kitchen, but this is a fad that should not and will not stick around for long.

darkarmani 13y ago
> Good chefs will always tell you: Use the right knife for the right job. Can we not simply use our kitchen appliances and tools for what they were designed for? I guess you never used a torch to reverse sear meat? The right knife for the job is the one that gets the best results. I do agree that there are probably better ways to get the same results, but if you dishwasher gets you the exact temps you need, go for it. I do a lot of sous vide steaks in a large cooler.