What exactly does it mean to cook sous vide?
Have you ever cooked using sous vide? Last year we received a sous vide immersion stick as a gift, so we’ve been experimenting with using it in our own dinner prep.
If you’ve never heard of it before, sous vide is a method of cooking where food is vacuum-sealed in a plastic pouch and cooked in a water bath at precise and consistent temperatures, typically lower than those used in traditional cooking methods. You can use it to cook meat, veggies, eggs, even desserts (although we’ve only experimented with meat thus far).
One of the things I’ve loved most is that it ensures even cooking throughout the food, locking in flavor and moisture while preserving texture. Often people complain that items like steak or pork chops are cooked unevenly – some are a little over done, some are under done, but sous vide eliminates that problem because everything is cooked evenly. You set it for a certain length of time (most of the items I’ve tried thus far have been 1-4 hours), but then it just holds the food at that temperature. The beauty of this for me has been setting it before I go work out on the farm or run kids to an activity and then when I get back, all it takes is a few minutes of hands-on time to finish off a great meal.
How do you finish sous vide items so they look and taste good?
After cooking, I usually finish off the meat with a quick sear because it comes out looking a little gray and unappealing, but using a hot pan and finishing it for 30 seconds to a minute on each side is perfect. I put together a quick 1 minute video last year to show you how we finished off pork chops we had cooked using sous vide, so click on the picture below if you want to see it in action!
As someone who tries to be conscious of my plastic consumption (both for environmental and health considerations), I don’t love all the single use plastic, but I do try to use BPA free bags and purchased a set of silicone sous vide bags as an alternative.
Thus far pork chops and steak have been my go-to items, although we made a delicious trout dish the other day with some local fish our friend shared with us. During the height of the growing season last year I kept forgetting to use it with veggie dishes, so maybe this year I’ll remember and can report back on what we liked (or didn’t). If you have used sous vide before and have favorite recipes, feel free to send them my way!
