Or not to Sous Vide… that is the question….
As alert readers will (hopefully) know, the latest (?)
trend sweeping the culinary world is cooking Sous Vide, which translates as: “under
vacuum”. Without getting too involved,
it basically is a cooking method which can regulate the temperature of an item
in a water bath, controlled to a precise temperature. Generally, the item is encased in a vacuum
bag and then immersed in the bath. There are a couple of popular brands: Anova
and Joule. A friend offered to lend me his
Anova to let me experiment with the technique a bit.
The attraction is that the item can be cooked to any desired
temperature, and will stay there as long as you want, no “carry over” cooking
like you have to deal with other methods.
The internal temperature is uniform, not varying from outside to middle,
so to speak. Plus, since the item is
encased is a vacuum bag, no “juices” are lost during the cooking process. Additionally, since we’re in the cyber age,
there are “apps” that allow you to control the thing in your kitchen when you’re
having that Latte at Starbucks or elsewhere.
I think these are most of the positives, we’ll deal with negatives in a
bit (and I think there are some).
Anyway, in general, the only decision(s) left for the “cook”
to consider are to decide what final internal temperature is desired, and then
to figure out the overall timing. There
you need some initial guidance, since you need some idea as to how long it will
take to get the water up to temperature and then how much longer to reach the
end temperature of the product: does it
start cold? Room temperature? Frozen? (not
recommended).
Okay, with that as preamble my adventure with cutting edge
culinary technique ensued. My target
item was a steak, and coward that I am, I first checked the box for the timing
issue
And decided that about an hour and a half in the bath would
be fine (once there it can stay forever, but you have to get it there before
cooking). I also consulted FOJTY who
swears by the technique (more later), and he said to shoot for 130 or so for
the meat. So I set up the device and
cooking tank.
The controls on the Anova are easy to use and understand, it
displays the set temperature and current temperature of the bath on the head,
and in the previous picture, that little blue thing on the stalk is a thumb
wheel that allows you to set the desired temperature.
(Set temp = 130.5, current is 124.8)
so once it reached 130.5 on both displays (with MFO’s help) I
committed Mr. Willy Goddard’s (already vacuum packed) Porterhouse steak
To the bath
Okay, time passes, and at some point you decide the meat
must be (by now) 130.5 degrees throughout and pull it from the bath.
And now, here we go into the negatives (that I
experienced). What you have at this
point is a “boiled” steak. Perfectly
cooked throughout to rare (130) but not anything you would put on the
plate. Now, FOJTY has a Big Green Egg,
which he gets to about 800 degrees and puts the steak on the grill for a “few
seconds” to get a nice caramelization and grill marks. I had anticipated the need for “something” to
make it table worthy. All I have is a plebeian Weber and I did my best to get it "hot"
And committed the steak – (this side is what it looks like coming out of the bag)
and quickly turned it to the other side.
Looks good, eh? BUT, BUT, in the process of making it look “good”,
it took long enough that the meat further cooked (duhhh) so it ended up more
like “medium”.
So therein lies the problem (at least with this type of
meat). It takes two “cooking” sessions: one for internal, and two for making it
presentable. Other options I considered
was a “grill pan”, but that didn’t help much (and made a mess of MFO’s counter)
and one I didn’t have, a torch. I’m sure
the Big Green Egg would be acceptable (except you have to build a fire, and
shuck out about 900 bucks). So that
remains a drawback for me in this process.
Have not tried a salmon, or chicken.
I was considering getting a Joule, because I thought it
looked sexier, I find out the only
way to control it is by your phone (iPad, etc.,). Only the Anova has a visible display of
temperatures. Can you imagine an
engineer not being able to observe data?
I think not.
Anyway, that was my initial experience with this technique. At
this point not a whole hearted supporter.
Chef notes (Stating the obvious):
On another quick note, I finally got out the sharpener and
treated my knives to a refresher
OMG, what a difference.
I waited too long. There is an aesthetic experience to working with a truly sharp knife. Not news, but I will be more careful in the
future.. A word to the wise, take care of your equipment and….
New on the scene (more later):
DFD
No comments:
Post a Comment