Guest post today from my wonderful husband and fellow food enthusiast.
If you are not familiar with sous vide it is a method of cooking where food is placed in an air tight bag and placed in a water bath at a relatively low temperature using an immersion circulator. (An immersion circulator is a device originally developed for laboratory use that can keep a fluid bath at a very specific temperature.) The advantage of this is you are able to get the "low and slow" effect most people use to smoke meats in a more versatile environment. Since the heat is low, you are less likely to over cook a food and preserve some elements of a food that are lost to high heat. It is also a superior way to infuse flavors into the food you are cooking. The disadvantage is your average immersion circulator is not cheap. Prices range from $500 to $1000 which puts them well out of the price range of the home chef.
If you are not familiar with sous vide it is a method of cooking where food is placed in an air tight bag and placed in a water bath at a relatively low temperature using an immersion circulator. (An immersion circulator is a device originally developed for laboratory use that can keep a fluid bath at a very specific temperature.) The advantage of this is you are able to get the "low and slow" effect most people use to smoke meats in a more versatile environment. Since the heat is low, you are less likely to over cook a food and preserve some elements of a food that are lost to high heat. It is also a superior way to infuse flavors into the food you are cooking. The disadvantage is your average immersion circulator is not cheap. Prices range from $500 to $1000 which puts them well out of the price range of the home chef.
A few years ago I built an immersion circulator form some plans in Issue 25 of Make Magazine. It was a pretty capable device but I think it kind of frightened the wife. So, I was the only one who would ever use it and it ended up being relegated to the garage at some point. I thought it worked well for a device that cost around $100 and only took a few hours to build.
In May of this year the Anova Precision Cooker hit Kickstarter and I immediately backed it. The idea of having a home immersion circulator for less then $200 was pretty amazing. The controls were simple and intuitive and the built-in Bluetooth will allow you to control time and temperature from your phone. I guess Sheldon Cooper's observation was correct, "Everything is better with Bluetooth." I received my order the last week of November, which was only about a month past the original promise date; Making it the least delayed of any Kickstarter project that I have backed to date. The companion app is not yet available, so I can only review the unit at this time. But, so far we have been able to use it on three recipes provided by Anova Culinary's blog.
Ingredients:
- Source Anova Culinary
Sous Vide Herb Crusted Pork Loin
We started with this recipe because we were hoping to use the precision cooker like a slow cooker so we could leave the house for a few hours and come back and eat. The ingredients were also a good place to start for the first time sous vide cook.Ingredients:
- 1 pork tenderloin
- 1 tbsp chopped basil
- 1 tbsp chopped parsley
- 1 tbsp chopped rosemary
- 2 tbsp butter (Divided)
- salt and pepper
Start off by setting your circulator to 134.6F (57C).
Many recipes were originally created using laboratory equipment which only had Celsius setting which is why many temperature conversions will not be whole numbers. While your water bath comes to temperature you will need to prepare your tenderloin. Start by salting and peppering both sides then roll it through your herb mixture until it is coated nicely.
The next step is to place it into the vacuum seal bag with 1 tbsp of butter on top of it. Seal and wait for the circulator to get to the desired temperature. Unfortunately we were out of the wide bags and we had to try and feed the tenderloin down a narrow bag which reminded me of stuffing sausage casings.
We were victorious, and only lost a little of the herb coating to the edge of the bag opening. Once your water is back up to temperature. simply place the tenderloin in the vessel for two hours. Remember we are going for low and slow here!
We were victorious, and only lost a little of the herb coating to the edge of the bag opening. Once your water is back up to temperature. simply place the tenderloin in the vessel for two hours. Remember we are going for low and slow here!
At this point you might be asking. "what If I don't want to invest in a vacuum sealer?" Well why not?They are awesome, they keep things from getting freezer burn, and can keep shelf stable items from becoming stale. You won't have to throw away nearly as much food every year and it will undoubtedly pay for itself. However, I know you just bought a fancy immersion circulator so maybe it isn't in the budget right now. Luckily the helpful people over at Anova did a post on how to remove all the air from a standard zipper top plastic bag for those of you that don't have a vacuum sealer.
Once the two hours are up, remove the tenderloin from the bath and liberate it from the plastic bag. Place a pan over medium heat and add the remaining tablespoon of butter. Once the butter is melted and the pan is hot, add the tenderloin to the plan to allow it to brown slightly. Turn frequently to make sure you brown all sides evenly. You can also spoon some of the hot butter over the top and pretend you are a fancy Food Network chef.
Remember we are only trying to give it a nice brown and bring it up the last few degrees to reach the, USDA recommended, final internal temperature of 145F.
Remember we are only trying to give it a nice brown and bring it up the last few degrees to reach the, USDA recommended, final internal temperature of 145F.
The end product is slightly pink in the center and very moist even after being microwaved the second day. As a result of the cooking method and the fat, the herb flavor penetrates to the core of the pork to give you a pleasant flavor to each bite.
- Source Anova Culinary
Sous Vide Steak
The perfect steak is such a difficult thing to attain. Everyone has different methods for telling you when you have the perfect medium rare such as touch, time, and temperature. The touch method always sounds impressive but I have never mastered it. The people who pull it off are magicians. Time is always too hard to reproduce in my experience, and temperature is great, but if you forget about carry over, your medium rare becomes medium during the resting period. The beauty of the sous vide method here is that you can get the meat to a precise temperature and hold it there without going over.
Ingredients:
- 1 steak of your favorite cut
- salt and pepper
Temperature
- Rare: 129.2F (54C)
- Medium Rare: 134.6F (57C)
- Medium: 140.0F (60C)
- Medium-Well: 147.2F (64C)
Times
- 1.25cm steak = 15 minutes
- 2.5cm steak = 45 minutes
- 3.8cm steak = 90 minutes
- 5cm steak = 2 hours
Once the water reaches the appropriate temperature, place your vacuum sealed steaks into the water. Do not forget to set a timer for the steaks and a timer for anything else you wish to cook so you don't end up cutting it super close like I did.Shortly before the time is up, place a cast iron pan over medium-high heat. Once the steaks are ready, remove them from the water and the plastic bags. At this point they will have the look of boiled meat and aren't very appetizing looking.
Once they look ready to eat, take them out and let them rest for at least 10 minutes before severing. My wife likes her steak with a little A1 but I go without sauce or if I have the supplies I make Alton Brown's Cognac Pan Sauce found in Good Eats Volume 1.
What do you think? Anyone going to buy or make their own Sous Vide cooker?
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