Man, that blind taste test loss is the real lesson here, not the sous vide itself. What gets me is you thought the technique was cheating, but the thing that actually beat you was Marge's 40 years of knowing exactly what doneness she wanted and having a tool that could hit it every single time. A braise is a moving target, right? Every pot, every burner, every piece of meat runs a little different, so even a great cook gets a range of results. Sous vide takes that range and shrinks it down to nothing, which is why her ribs landed the same way 14 times out of 17. That's not cheating, that's just removing the guesswork so the skill shows through. For the pork belly, go for it, but keep the skin separate and crisp it hard however you normally do it, because the water bath can't give you that part. Do a small batch first though, because pork belly holds a ton of fat and the timing that worked for short ribs won't carry over.

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