Sous Vide Spotlight: Valerie Trask, Sansaire Co-Founder

We are very excited to bring you this one on one interview with Co-Founder and COO of Sansaire, Valerie Trask. As many of you know from our detailed review, the Sansaire sous vide machine creatively outperforms competition while ensuring innovative and functional designs. To take it a step further, Sansaire recently announced Delta, a new and improved sous vide immersion circulator with WiFi capability. With their recent successful Kickstarter campaign and research and development in full swing for their new sous vide machine, we figured now is a great time to hear more about Sansaire. Check out our interview below for some insight into the company and Co-Founder.

Interview with Sansaire’s Valerie Trask

SVG: What’s Sansaire’s story? What was the vision?

Valerie: Sansaire began grassroots with a 2013 Kickstarter campaign that broke records in our category. We have carried that ‘small but mighty’ mentality forward as we’ve grown. Fundamentally we still have the same goal that drove us several years ago: to make culinary heroes of home chefs.

SVG: Congratulations on your recent announcement of the Sansaire Delta! You received 100% funding on Kickstarter within 24 hours – this says a lot about the product. What was the vision for this model?

Valerie: We’re idealists. We take joy in delighting our customers. It’s this mindset that inspired our evolution to the Delta. We have made practical improvements like making the device smaller, easier to clean, quieter, more durable, and requiring less effort to maintain water levels. But we also put a great deal of love into creating a design that people could get excited about, having a gorgeous companion app, and making it possible for home chefs to make their own choices about the way they interact with the device (via app or by device interface).

SVG: There are a few main products in the sous vide immersion circulators market including Anova, Nomiku, and soon-to-be-released Joule. What’s your opinion on the current market and do you think Sansaire Delta is the answer to these?

Valerie: There are a lot good devices on the market and we’re really excited about where the whole space is going, but, naturally we think ours is the best. From a technical perspective, our engineers put a lot of care into making the device as precise, quiet, and powerful as possible. From a design perspective, we’ve been insistent on having the most beautiful sous vide cooker on the market, with a truly unique aesthetic. And in building our app, we’ve aimed to have our content span a wide breadth of dishes, with meals simple enough to easily tackle as a beginner, but also interesting enough for an advanced sous vide cook.

SVG: We absolutely love how unique and modern each of your products are. Where does your creative inspiration come from in regards to engineering and design?

Valerie: Thanks! Ultimately, our inspiration often comes from very simple shapes and figures. In the case of this product, we looked to the Greek letter Delta ∆, meaning change, for inspiration. If you turn our device to its profile, this becomes obvious.

SVG: What’s your passion?

Valerie: I was drawn to the Sansaire team as the company was being formed because I’m passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation, and bringing cool ideas to market. In recent years as I’ve spent some time in the startup world, I’ve also become passionate about meeting other female founders, hearing their stories, and helping build a network of role models of young would-be entrepreneurial women.

SVG: What’s something many people don’t know about you?

Valerie: I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years, which in the sous vide world is an anomaly to say the least. I’m the biggest champion for sous vide veggies. It’s silly to say that carrots are somehow more ‘carroty,’ but they are.

Rapid Fire Questions

Favorite food? I like healthy comfort foods – stuffed bell peppers, spaghetti squash, avocado toast
Favorite book? My favorite book is Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. He’s a beautiful writer.
Favorite movie? Big, because I identify with Tom Hanks’ character
Favorite quote? “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain. I carried that quote with me to all seven continents.
Favorite sous vide meal? Eggs are still my favorite sous vide dish because it’s impossible to get that velvety yolk any other way. Topping asparagus with a sous vide egg at a dinner party is such an easy win.

Valerie’s Sous Vide Honey-Glazed Carrots Recipe

1. Preheat your water bath to 85°C / 185°F.
2. Combine the carrots, butter, honey and cinnamon in a vacuum bag* and seal.
3. Cook for 45 minutes.
4. To serve, spread a thin layer of greek yogurt or crème fraîche onto your serving plates. Using tongs, carefully remove the carrots from the Ziploc bag and place atop the yogurt. Drizzle the liquid contents of the bag over the carrots. Finish with a sprinkle of chopped, roasted hazelnuts and flaky sea salt.