Sous Vide Cooking

In my kitchen, the laws of the universe are fixed.  There's no way around it, some cuts of meats take longer cooking time to become tender and delicious.    Leg of duck, beef short ribs, or a chicken thighs take a while to cook.  Certainly longer than what time normally elapses between when a restaurant waiter takes my order and he serves it to me.   10-20 minutes isn't enough time enough time breakdown the fibers and make it tender.

Since the same laws of physics apply in a chef's kitchen as my own, they must be cooking these things in advance.  But how are they keeping the meats from drying out when reheating?  Leftovers are rarely as good as fresh cooked foods...they're doing something different.

In my quest to make better foods, I've learned overcooking can be your worst enemy.  Brining can help, but still there's no substitute for awareness of the temperature (and time) you're cooking things.  If you put science (and technology) in your corner, you'll see years of experience are no longer necessary to achieve an end result that's both predictable and repeatable.

Three hours for this confit of chicken leg,
thigh, and wing (duck fat).
Perfectly done

Years ago I learned of a cooking technique called sous vide.  In a nutshell, you place food in a sealed plastic bag (or glass jar), in water that's the same temperature as you want to finish it.  For example, if you want a medium rare steak, you set the water temperature for 130 degrees.  Eventually the food becomes the same temperature as the water.  This is known scientifically as a thermal equilibrium.  No matter how long you leave the food in the water, it will not get hotter than the water temperature.

For years, sous vide systems (and hot water circulators) cost a lot of money...more than I wanted to spend.  For Christmas this year I asked for and received a sous vide for $99 that could easily be mistaken for a stick blender.  It brings water to the desired temperature and circulates it.  You can use a cooler, large pot, kitchen sink, or even a five gallon bucket to cook your food.

Chicken, pork belly, and duck ready for the hot water bath

Once you season and seal your food in a ziptop bag or vacuum seal it, just drop it in the water and it will reach the exact temperature of the surrounding water.  It's that easy.  Chicken, you like it nice and juicy at 160?  Steak, 135 for medium all the way through?  Pork tenderloin, you like it slightly pink at 145...done!  And confit...don't get me started, that's another post...

Pork belly, chicken and duck thighs
all sealed in separate bags,
cooked together for different lengths of time.

So it's perfect...right!  Hold on a moment, this steak looks kinda gray.  At the restaurants, steaks are brown (Maillard).  The only catch to cooking foods to a perfect finished temperatures through sous vide is you will never have the browning/sear we all love.  This necessitates browning in a skillet or use of a kitchen torch to finish the dish.  So fire up your cast iron, aluminum clad, or carbon steel skillet with a bit of high temperature oil (NOT EVOO!!) just like they do in fine restaurants to finish their sous vide dishes.  Golden brown and delicious!

A word of caution: while some meats benefit from extended time in the sous vide (tough cuts) other meats will lose their desired texture if left floating around too long.  Fish, poultry, and tender cuts of beef and pork should only be kept at their finish temperatures for a length of time appropriate to achieve the desired tenderness.  No one likes mushy meat.  Experiment, but keep this in mind.  The more delicate the meat, the more you have to pay attention to this.  As a general reference:

Fish - 1-2 hours (135F)
Chicken - 4 hours or less (160F)
Tough cuts: - 12 - 24 hours or more (Short ribs, pork belly) (165F)

The best part about sous vide is you can do a lot of cooking in advance, keep it in your refrigerator, and brown it when you're ready to eat...it's already cooked perfectly.  It took very little work to have duck (leg and wing), chicken (leg, thigh, wing), and pork belly ready for meals all next week.  I already browned up a bit of the pork belly and enjoyed with with boursin polenta...as good as you'd get anywhere and they'd charge you $25...  And do you want a glass of wine with it?  After tax and tip, you better have a $50 bill in your wallet.  Table for two?  $5 for two of these at home.

Pork Belly with Boursin Polenta

It's hard to mess up using sous vide.  The science and technology make it easy to get it right everytime.  The taster cuts of meat which were once difficult to cook are now simple.  Use a brine and sous vide together and you'll have food as good or better than you've had anywhere.

Bon appetit!