[kjs3]

Yeah...what a weird derail. My sous vide has a small maybe 3"x0.5" plastic cap at the end and rest is stainless steel. I could have gotten a different one without the plastic I'm sure (maybe more expensive?), but I can read the science and be reasonably sure I'm not going to die horribly from that much exposure. Stainless steel or aluminum[1] pot and you're blissfully plastic-death free.

[1] I shouldn't have said that...the 'aluminum pots give you Alzheimers' crowd could descend at any moment.

[Wistar]

It’s not the SV circulator but the plastic vacuum bags folks are most worried about.

[kjs3]

Which you don't have to use either, but that makes more sense.

[Wistar]

It is hard to not use plastic vacuum bags for sous vide. Although there are re-usable silicon bags, such as stasher, they are — personal experience here — not very good for sous vide.

[kjs3]

Yes, I too have used a couple of different silicon bags as alternates. The stashers are barely usable, and the cheaper but more sous vide friendly are ok but are hard to clean if you're trying to reuse them. But is it about the heat transfer and stable temp, so anything that keeps what your cooking completely in liquid and can tolerate thermal expansion should work, right?