Just learned about the wonders of Sous Vide cooking. I bought a machine and made some perfect steaks. The meat was perfectly medium rare the whole way through, and the fat was amazingly tasty instead of gristly.
I’ll be bringing the machine in later this week to make a few steaks. Regrettably, since we don’t have a grill, we’ll have to skip the final step of searing the meat for improving its color and overall appearance.
Who’s interested in going in on an informal potluck with me? If someone else has a sous vide water heater-circulator machine too, we can prepare multiple kinds of meats, like chicken or fish, in different tubs at different temperatures and durations. Hit me up by PM (private message) if you’re interested.
If the informal potluck goes well, and there’s sufficient interest/demand, maybe next time we could make a class out of this.
Souls vide is a big personal fave at our house too. For certain meats, I’m a fan of hitting it with a Searzall torch attachment afterwards to get your Mallaird action going. It’s super fast so you don’t diminish all the excellent fine control work you’ve just done!
For perfect chicken to top a Cobb Salad put a few tablespoons of the Olive Garden salad dressing (available at most grocery stores) and cook via sous vide at 150F for 45 min to 1 hours (depending on how thick your chicken breasts are). Serve warm, or refrigerate and serve cold.
My personal experiments with sous vide cooking of chicken breast has led me to believe that, when served hot, the chicken comes out more tender and juicy but with a texture I didn’t prefer. Cooling that exact chicken breast in the fridge caused it to be very juicy with a great texture that I loved. I actually prefer that cold, sous vide chicken breast to any hot chicken that I’ve made.
I’ll still take store-bought rotisserie chicken over any of them any day of the week. Can’t tell you why.
I definitely prefer roast chicken, if I have my way, but I like this method because I can cook many chicken breasts at a time. I do prefer this style cold, though, unless being used in a soup.
The app that controls mine (Joule) gives varying temperatures between 140F and 176F depending on the texture that you want. I like mine “tender and juicy”, which is kind of an arbitrary way of describing it but after trying all of them I decided on. I do prefer this style of chicken cold as well, though.
You can, but I find that searing after works better to get that crispy maillard reaction on the outside. If you sear it before you sous vide it I find that you lose some of that. Some people swear by it, though.
When it comes to Sous Vide, you basically want to cook whatever you’re making up until it’s fully cooked first, and then for most meat you want to sear it in a rocket hot pan for as little time as possible (because it’s already cooked, you basically just want the color on the outside without any cooking on the inside at all).
Also you can totally do things other than meat. Sous Vide mashed potatoes is pretty damn tasty, and I know a recipe to make creme brule in it as well.
Oh, that’s a great idea! I hate tempering chocolate, and usually reserve it for making Christmas candies and need a large batch.
I could keep several smaller batches at just the right temperature and pull them out as I’m ready to use them!
I have an Anova circulator and love it. I have often used a cast iron pan to sear as well as a cooking torch, never a grill. I’d think the former, particularly the torch, could be used at DMS safely with a minimum of fuss.
We have a HAAS machine for CNCing a mold (or the Multicam, or the Polyprinter). We have a vacuum former for making disposable, flexible plastic trays from that mold. We have sous vide machines for melting chocolate. We have an ice machine for bringing that chocolate down to temperature.
I predict that we might one day have custom chocolate bars with the DMS logo on them to sell in our gift shop. Or, members could make them on demand as Christmas gifts. Might be a good interdisciplinary class.
