Sous vide or help! my iPad is cooking dinner

So I succumbed when the boss pointed out a sous vide device in the paper, five days later it was in my hands. Then it took dinner out of my hands and now rules.

https://anovaculinary.com
It is a great unit, well built, simple, clear controls and display, blue tooth enabled so you download the app, two clicks and they connect and take over your kitchen. Very easy to use by person power as well.
So we are trying stuff, starting with the simple.

Porterhouse steaks cooked to medium rare th n flash grilled for grid marks, pleasant and tender but now more appreciate comments on the forum about that even colour all the way through, is odd.

Fillets of orange roughy, S&P, slivers of garlic, thyme, butter vac packed and fridge for an hour, then allowed the beast to cook them. Sensational taste and texture but I plated when done as is and it was lukewarm o we need to think of a good way to get it hot without spoiling the texture and overcooking, possibly a Brief flash in the MW, trying to get it in a pan would be madness. Perhaps a firmer fish next time.

The famous 60 degree egg. Well if she wants to cook my food so be it!! Cooked 'em cooled 'em and next day shelled them. On the edge, so delicate and tender, popped 'em in just boiled water to heat fir perfect "poached " eggs.


So we shall see where to go from here.
Advantages that became obvious almost immediately are
-consistency of cooking
-longer and very specific times make it easier to coordinate other elements
-she shrieks at you when done
-retention af flavour

It gives me personally some happiness in cooking steak and fish.
Been doing it for years but I do tend to under cook steaks ( except my Bleu) and fish ( not good)

Interesting beastie, looking forward to also including flavour from my other very new toy the smoking gun.

[Robin Garr]

Thanks for the report, Barb! It sounds fascinating!

Ooh, Barb. Congratulations on the Kitchen Tyrant.

I don't have one of these contraptions yet, but I am curious. Keep posting!

Bit of an update.
The beast is fantastic for confit duck! So easy to control the heat, uses much less duck fat and the end product is already sealed up in the fat ready to refrigerate for future use. I did duck Marylands in pairs worked very well. Still have o e pack for a rainy day.
Like Jenise I have found it useful for time management and also freeing up cooking space, eg cooking halved chat potatoes with herbs and butter, over in a corner out of the way of all the other prep.
Using it for culturing cream (for cultured butter) and should be great for yoghurt as well.

Barb, have you tried sous vide for black garlic ?

Barb, have you tried sous vide for black garlic ?

No. I have yet to experience black garlic. I must look up a method, or have you got a tried and true you could share? Is it really good?

Black garlic is amazing. There is a local producer but I have not tried to do it myself. The most frequent recipes use a rice cooker to achieve a constant, very low temperature for WEEKS !!!!
I do not have a rice cooker. Always wanting to try anything once I thought that sous vide might be able to achieve the same.
I find the sous vide useful for freeing up time for weekend chores but duck and venison tenderloin have been excellent with the method

[Jenise]

Congrats. It's a lot of fun. Try butter-vacced pounded filets of chicken breast. But re fish: I've only had sous vided fish once and found it mushy/mealy. And it makes sense--fish starts out tender.

Interesting! I've also had my eye on one of these for some time now. We have so little room in our kitchen that I've not pulled the trigger, but the more I hear about them the more I think I just need to carve out a space for one.

Mile I understand about the pressure of space. The type of gadget I have, and I believe the one Jenise has is similar, they are an immersion device which you use in an existing container ie stockpot, so not as large a footprint as the full blown models. This can be put away in a cupboard or drawer and is not an effort to grab it out for use, where a bulky unit stored away has a tendency to stay away.

[Jenise]

Mile I understand about the pressure of space. The type of gadget I have, and I believe the one Jenise has is similar, they are an immersion device which you use in an existing container ie stockpot, so not as large a footprint as the full blown models. This can be put away in a cupboard or drawer and is not an effort to grab it out for use, where a bulky unit stored away has a tendency to stay away.

Barb's right. It takes up about as much space as a medium sized stalk of celery.

I have utilized sous vide for a while now and find it a useful tool in the kitchen. I especially appreciate the control for foods that are very sensitive to over cooking. For instance, Maine lobster. I blanch them just long enough to allow removal of the meat, bag it and then into the water bath (you can butter poach the meat if desired). Completely cooked, but the texture is firm without being rubbery. Makes a great lobster roll.

[Jenise]

Greg, I love the idea of butter poaching lobster in sous vide. Will have to try it; I'd actually avoided seafood because a friend once did halibut this method and I didn't like the texture at all. Too soft. But lobster is firm enough to handle it, which I'd never considered.