Potato salad sous vide

I was sitting around last week, wondering what simple recipe I could unnecessarily complicate while at the same time making use of my new (old) immersion circulator.  Then it hit me!  And after I woke up and was unable to find out who had thrown the brick I decided to make potato salad sous vide!

My normal potato salad recipe (or potatoe salad if you are an ex-vice president) involves boiling the potatoes, draining them and dressing the still hot spuds with a mixture of mustard and pickle juice.  The potatoes are cooled and mixed with a mayonnaise based dressing.  For the sous vide version, I made a similar vinaigrette with the mustard and pickle juice and added some salt, pepper, dill and garlic.  The red potatoes were diced, tossed with the vinaigrette and sealed in a vacuum bag.  I did this a few days before Memorial Day, so the sealed potatoes were put in the fridge until the next day.

On cooking day, the cooler was filled with water and the immersion circulator was set to 83.9 degrees Celsius (183 degrees Fahrenheit).  This is there I ran in to a problem, the surface area of the water pool is so large that the evaporative cooling was preventing the bath from reaching the set temperature.  To remedy this I just took some aluminum foil and covered the cooler as well as possible.  For the next time, I'm cutting some Styrofoam cooler lids to fit the top of the Igloo cooler with the circulator in place.  Once the desired temperature was reached the bag of potatoes was added and the foil replaced.  Three hours later, the potatoes were removed and put in the refrigerator to cool until the next day.

A few hours before dinner, I mixed mayonnaise, sambal, diced onion, diced celery, diced gherkins, dill, salt, pepper and a little pickle juice for the dressing.  The sous vide potatoes were added and everything mixed together.  The final results were OK, the texture and flavor of the potatoes were excellent but because no moisture was lost from the potatoes during the cooking process the dressing ended up a little on the loose side.  The next time I try this I'm going to remove the potatoes from the bag as soon as they come out of the bath and spread them out on a sheet pan to allow some of the water to evaporate.  We also had filet mignon steaks (cooked at 57.2 degrees celcius/135 degrees Fahrenheit) for 90 minutes and seared in a cast iron skillet for a few minutes a side for a crust (it was storming outside, so no grill), roasted beets, a bleu cheese with caramelized onion facaccia and a peach and blueberry cobbler for dessert.  All in all, a successful holiday dinner.  Now what to do for July 4th?