Top Three Reasons for Beginners to get into Sous Vide
There’s never been a better time for beginners to get into cooking sous vide.
For a long time sous vide was the domain of professional chefs, restaurants, and ambitious home cooks. It was hard to find the sous vide tools you’d need in order to start out as a beginner. It was even harder to find good advice on how do sous vide.
Fortunately, everyone from home chefs to coffee franchises like Starbucks are getting in on the sous vide game.
There’s never been a better time for beginners to get into sous vide.
So what is sous vide?
Sous vide is the process of cooking vacuum sealed food in a pot of water at a low, but precise temperature.
Sous vide uses a similar approach to southern BBQ’s low and slow method. The temperature is kept low and precisely measured for as little as one hour and as long as 48.
Starting cooking with sous vide can be pretty intimidating. It’s an intensely precise method of cooking which demands a careful eye. The right tools make it easier, but it’s much more important to stay present when you’re cooking.
To get started you’ll need a three things.
- Sous vide thermometer like the Nutrichef supreme sous vide immersion circulator.
- A vacuum sealer (check out our list), and
- Foodsaver sous vide bags
The first step is to prep your meat or vegetables with a marinade. Sous Vide Guy has just started covering a bunch of different recipes for vegetables, and we have loads of recipes for meat as well. Sous vide allows for a lot of the flavours which are lost in high temperature cooking to be preserved.
If in doubt keep it simple. Most food doesn’t need much more than salt and pepper to really shine.
Once you’ve got your recipe prepped and ready it’s time to seal. There’s a wide range of vacuum sealers available.
The most important thing is to get an airtight seal on your sous vide bag. Air means that the bag will float and the food will cook unevenly. Air really is the enemy.
Then it’s time to get down to cooking.
Reason two: cooking with sous vide can be fast. It usually takes 1 to 7 hours to cook which is less than most slow cookers.
Once you get your head around sous vide getting started is as easy as 1-2-3-4. To start with;
- Get your pot filled with water.
- Set up your thermometer so it can read the temperature of the water.
- Heat the water to the desired temperature for meat (Anova has an awesome chart to help you out.)
- Cook until desired doneness.
When your food’s done use tongs to pull bag out of the water and carefully open it up.
This is where it pays to get creative. Although meat or veg prepped with sous vide will be ready to go right out of the pot it’s best to sear, broil, deep fry, or grill to lock everything back in.
Reason number three: there’s an app for that.
Yes, really. Some sous vide equipment comes equipped with app or wifi functionality. This lets you input a recipe and have the thermometer let you know when the water’s at the correct temperature.
Today sous vide is more accessible than ever. Before 2008 people often bought and sterilized lab equipment to vacuum seal their food and get to cooking. Ten years later and accessible sous vide options have flooded the market.
There hasn’t been a better time to be a beginner and get into sous vide.