When you first dip into the world of sous vide cooking, you'll often find people recommending that you use a restaurant-grade polycarbonate container just for the purpose. While you can use pretty much use any container you have around, assuming it's large enough and you have a place to clip the cooker onto — you could even use a sink if you wanted, but ugh — polycarbonate ones are popular because they're 1) light yet sturdy, 2) see-through, 3) fairly well-insulated, and 4) relatively affordable.

A note on BPA: Polycarbonate containers, by their nature, do contain trace amounts of BPA. You needn't worry too much about that; the amount is extremely low, to the point of being negligible, and your food shouldn't be coming into contact with the plastic or water anyway if you've sealed it well enough. Just be sure to use BPA-free bags if you're that worried.

What makes the Lipavi sous vide container a particularly great choice is that they also offer a range of lids specially made for a variety of sous vide circulators, so you don't have to cut a notch of your own to make one fit right:

• Here's the lid for the Anova cooker.
• Here's the lid for the ChefSteps Joule cooker.
• Here's the lid for the Sansaire cooker.
• Here's the lid for the Nomiku WiFi cooker.
• ...and they have more options where those came from.

For times when you're cooking multiple items at once, you can also employ one of Lipavi's sous vide racks to keep the pouches far apart enough to ensure they all have proper circulation.

The rack fits perfectly alongside an immersion circulator.

The Lipavi container is available on Amazon in two sizes:

• 12-quart ($25) — Recommended option for most use-cases.
• 26-quart ($32) — Useful for parties and such.