The practical way to run a whole meal with one machine is to use the temperature order to your advantage, because one direction is much easier than the other.
Vegetables first, high. Then drop the bath and do the meat. Getting a bath from 85 down to 55 is fast — add cold water and some ice and it is a couple of minutes. Going up takes much longer.
So the sequence:
- Vegetables at 85, an hour or so. Bag them with butter and salt; they are sitting in whatever you put in there and it goes straight into them.
- Pull them out and leave them in the bag. They hold heat well and they will be fine on the counter while you do the rest.
- Cool the bath, put the meat in.
- Sear the meat, and if the vegetables have cooled more than you want, they take thirty seconds in the same hot pan afterwards — which is an improvement rather than a rescue.
That last step is worth doing regardless. Sous vide vegetables come out evenly cooked and slightly flat, and a fast finish in a hot pan gives them the browning the water bath cannot.
If you cook this way often, a second cheap bath is the obvious answer, but the sequence above works with one and is what I do most weeks.