Have you ever used sous vide cooking method? Well, this is my first attempt and I am loving it…the steak came out perfect! No fuss and no mess…I already can tell you that sous vide cooking will be on my list of favorite gadgets.
Well, after considering carefully all the aspects of sous vide cooking I finally decided to try. What I mean by considering is the fact that sous vide method uses cooking in a water bath under vacuum in an accurate regulated temperature, and in order to cook under vacuum the food has to be in contact with plastic, which I am very skeptical about it…after reading a lot about the sous vide method I could not resist a perfect cooked piece of steak. Moreover, since the temperature used in sous vide is much lower than the normally used, I assume (please do not quote me on this) that chemical would not be released from the plastic from heat since the temperature used in this method is not that high.
There are many options for sous vide cooking, from DIY to very fancy professional ones. I decided to go with the ANOVA cylinder one. You mainly stick the cylinder in a pot of water, set the desired temperature and cooking time. Once the desired temperature is reached, place the prepared food and place into the water bath and let it cook. Yes, the one that I have has a bluetooth, which you can set all the parameters from the phone or tablet. It will beep once the water has reached the desired temperature alerting you that it is time to place the food in the water bath.
You can find plenty of information by searching the internet for sous vide. With all this said, I am sharing with you my first recipe using sous vide method and it was based in this recipe. Again this is a “no-recipe” post. I generously coated a New York steak with fresh grinded salt and pepper, both sides. Placed the steak into a 1 gallon freezer quality plastic bag and added a dry bay leave and a little olive oil. To create a vacuum in the bag, carefully place the bag with your ingredients into the water-bath, make sure to immerse the bag until near the seal, this will create a vacuum, then seal the bag.
For a medium rare-medium 1½ inch New York steak, I cooked for 1½ hour at 56C degree. Once the cooking time is up, remove the bag from the water bath. Discard the juice from the steak. Heat a cast iron skillet with butter, sear both sides of the steak in high heat. Once seared, remove from the heat and serve. There is no need to rest the steak.
So…were I able to tempt you to give sous vide cooking method a try?
I will be back with more sous vide experiments as I already cooked fish, and it came out delicious!
Update…Since I made this perfect steak I used sous vide in so many more recipes…please check it here.
Did you know that “sous vide” is “under vacuum” in French? This method cooks food in a sealed plastic bag under vacuum in a controlled temperature.
