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An immersion circulation heater is used for sous vide cooking.
In some ways it's similar to a convection oven, but much more efficient because water conducts heat better than air. Because the water is always circulating it produces a constant heat at the specified temperature everywhere in the pot, as opposed to having a pot on a stove where the temperature at the bottom is going to be much warmer than at the top.
Fish and chicken are the most frequently mentioned proteins in sous vice cooking, but you can cook nearly anything this way.
For example, if you want a steak cooked to 135 degrees, you just put it in a boiling bag, set the immersion heater to 135 and when you're done it is a uniform 135 degrees throughout, which means it's the same degree of redness from edge to edge.
If you want a seared outside or grill marks on the outside, a minute or two in a pan or on the grill will finish it off.
By contract, when you cook a steak in a pan or on the grill, by the time the center gets to 135 degrees the outside is probably at 170 or higher.
Restaurants often use sous vide techniques to par-cook foods to save time later on and ensure consistent results.
Something I learned about cooking potatoes from Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking is that if you cook them at 130-140 degrees for about 20 minutes then raise the temperature to finish cooking them, they'll stay firm even after they're fully cooked and diced. This makes for a nicer potato salad. In essence this is a sous vide technique.
