Active Time: Very Short
Total Time: Hours to Days
Sous Vide (cooking in a warm/hot water bath) is an extraordinary way to perfect the doneness level and juiciness of meats. In addition, this cooking method can be used with excellent results on certain vegetables, such as asparagus.
If you’re new to sous vide cooking, the first thing you’ll need is a sous vide stick. This is the heating element that keeps the water bath at an extremely consistent, controlled temperature. As sous vide has become more popular, there are multiple brands to choose from and you can get them almost anywhere with options starting under $100.
After you have your sous vide stick, the only other items you need to get started are some gallon size ziplock baggies and the food you want to cook. I recommend starting with beef steaks and pork chops. These are super easy to perfect and super hard to screw-up.
You’ll start by filling a stock pot (or anything, really) with water, inserting your sous vide stick into the pot and then setting the desired temperature. I’m not going to get into all the temp details. There are multiple good websites for that such as Serious Eats, Chef Steps and Anova.
After you’ve set your temp and have your meat ready, all you’re going to do is add salt and pepper, toss into a bag and then toss the bag into the water bath. The only tricky detail here is to get the air out of the bag. To do this, simply lower the bag into the water bath with the ziplock seal cracked open slightly. As the bag goes into the water, the water pressure will force the air out of the bag. Let all the air escape and then seal the ziplock at the last moment before it’s ready to go under.
Next, just let it be. Different meats have different cooking times, but all are quite long and have a big range from when they’re first ready until when they’ve been in too long. Steaks, for example, will be ready in one hour, but can reliably stay in the water bath for up to four hours. So you can just leave them in there while doing all your other prep.
For steaks and chops, the step after removing from the water will be to give them a quick sear over very high heat to brown the outside quickly without adding heat to the inside (since the inside is already cooked to perfection from the water bath).
After your first try, you can start to get creative by adding things like herbs, garlic, spices, etc., into the bag with the meat. And also experiment with the finishing sear such as searing in butter.
From there, you can move into more creativity such as perfectly juicy (and safe and healthy) medium rare chicken breast, fish, vegetables, etc. And then you can also move into tougher cuts such as beef short rib that can easily stay in the water bath for 48 hours with some chefs even going to 72 hours. The beauty here is the longer you cook tough cuts, the more the collagen breaks down bringing rich tenderness, but unlike braising, the sous vide bath allows the meat to remain medium rare the whole time.
My only warning is, don’t try this unless you’re prepared for a new addiction. It’s one of the best cooking methods available today, and it’s fun because it’s new to so many chefs.
Enjoy!