Sorry that happened. Can you share how that occurs? A Sous Vide temperatures are around 140 ish. How does that crack a counter? What type of counter was this?
Hey Mitch,
Well, it's a bit of a complicated story. My countertops are quartz. I use a stainless steel stockpot with an aluminum bottom. I put on a batch of flank steak and set it to 134 for 24 hours. After the meal, I happened to notice a crack in the countertop exactly where the stockpot with sous vide was at. In a couple hours, after the countertop cooled down, the crack closed back up and was almost unnoticeable. A couple days later though, I happened to look under the countertop and I could tell where an attempt to repair the crack previously had been done. (my countertops had just been installed a month prior). So, I then figured out in this case, the sous vide only exposed an existing crack. The manufacturer agreed that they had delivered a countertop that was already cracked and replaced it for free.
However, I did some research and found that this had happened to others, so I staged a test. The company had provided a couple smaller pieces of the quartz to use as "cheese boards", so I set the stock pot with sous vide on it. About two hours later, I heard a loud "pop" and went over and sure enough, the stone had cracked.
So, you would think that 135 degrees would be no big deal. But, what happens is you are heating up a very specific area of the countertop while the surrounding area remains cool over a long period of time. Eventually, the stress from the small, warm area trying to expand will force a crack. Plus, the steel stock pot with the flat aluminum bottom is an extremely efficient conductor of heat to the countertop.
From now on, I always put my sous vide set up on the stove or on top of a cutting board or trivet. I looked up my warranty and it did exclude "cooking" on the countertop and specifically mentioned certain types of crock pots.