Good video for a newbie. Note, you don’t need a blow torch. You can heat up a cast iron pan as hot as it goes, then sear both sides for 30-60 seconds. Does the same thing.
I too have the Anova. Steak definitely is good.An issue I found is that a lot of enthusiast websites think EVERYTHING is better sous vide. Not in my humble opinion. Honestly, I use the sous vide for my beer wort more than anything. Although with my impending divorce, I will be using it a lot more once for cooking.
I’ve tried the hot cast iron pan rather than a propane torch. Smoke alarms went off and security company called to report a fire alarm. Kind or embarrassing as I had to confess it was my cooking.
I plan to get into sous vide partly as a way to avoid heating up my tiny apartment during air conditioning season. The kitchen and the living room are the same space, and searing anything with a cast iron pan is a bad idea. A blow torch is a way to get instant heat in a very limited area for no longer than I need it.
I do the egg bites in 4 oz Ball canning jars, using an Anova. There are some great recipes on the web.
One great thing about sous vide that hasn’t been covered in this thread yet is that you can really break down the collagens in tough cuts of meat without ever overcooking the meat. We’ve discussed the fact that holding the cooking medium (water) at the precise “doneness” temperature prevents overcooking, but it also allows you to hold the meat at that temperature for much longer than traditional methods allow with no adverse consequences, and some really desired effects. Plus, you can really infuse flavors by adding herbs and seasonings to the vacuum sealed meat and then letting the fats carry the flavors through the meat.
There’s a torch head called a SEARSALL that I was considering rather than the normal torch head I use now. A fried has one and according to him it doesn’t get hot enough for searing meat. Creme brule, yes, steaks, not so much.
He’s a big foodie guy and does sous vide a lot, so I’ll take his word.
I’m hesitant about using a blowtorch. I can see how it would be one notch better than pan searing, you could even cut the meat into thin slices and blowtorch the exterior of each. What should one have and know before using it?
Aside from meat, what else is sous-vide cooking best at?
They are the absolute best device for cooking poached or soft boiled eggs. Sous vide can make a perfect three minute egg. It does take 45 minutes at 145 deg F, but you can make a week’s worth at once and they store in the refrigerator. From the refrigerator you just need to heat it up in the sous vide at 140 deg F.
edited to add: Oh, and if anyone in your house is immunocompromised, or an infant or elderly, you can pasteurize eggs at 135 deg F without cooking them, making them safe for everyone to eat raw.
That actually reminds me of one important sous vide consideration- food safety. Unlike most “normal” cooking methods, with sous vide you have to be extra careful with both temperature and time. This is because the normal methods have their target temperatures aimed at nearly instant lethality vs. disease causing bacteria.
For example, if you cook your chicken to the USDA recommended 165, your food is pretty much pasteurized instantly at that temp. But if you’re cooking your chicken to say… 140 like some recipes recommend, you have to make sure and keep it at that internal temp for around half an hour (27.5 minutes to be exact), or else you run an elevated salmonella risk.
This can be a pain, but it can be helpful; you can make sous-vide medium-rare hamburgers by keeping them at 130 degrees for a couple of hours and have no worries about any issues with bacteria like you normally would with hamburgers cooked less than well done.
Searing isn’t too tricky if you follow a couple basic steps.
Dry the meat thoroughly with paper towels (pat it dry). If it is wet it will steam the meat and not brown.
Get a pan ripping hot before putting the meat in (I prefer putting a tiny bit of oil directly on the meat and rubbing it all around…if the oil is in the pan it might start burning). Cast iron skillets are ideal for this since they hold a lot of heat and do not cool down too much when the meat is put in which is useful for this. Note than it takes several minutes on high heat to heat up a cast iron pan to very hot (some people put it in a 500[sup]o[/sup] oven for 20-30 minutes as a means of heating it up).
Sear the meat perhaps a minute on each side and do the sides.
Note it splatters and smokes a lot when doing this. Alternatively you could throw it on a hot grill.
Since the meat is in the pan for only a couple minutes it mostly sears without overcooking the meat.
Something I just found out: What you can do to brown the surface while minimizing overcooking is to get the pan very hot, put the food on the pan for 1-2 seconds then lift it back up to let the pan heat up for 10-15 seconds then you put the food on the pan for 1-2 seconds etc until it’s browned to your liking. That does a good job of browning the surface while leaving the rest medium rare. Admittedly, that works better with a steak or some single large item than many small ones.
Yes, if you’re willing & able to use a blowtorch, go with that. I was proposing a simpler, safer option. I’d like to hear more about how to safely & correctly use a blowtorch for indoor cooking, though.
I watched a cooking show with a similar, and maybe better technique. If you want to brown and sear something like a steak, without cooking it more, flip it every 10 to 15 seconds on a very hot surface. On the TV show they used a remote thermometer to measure the temperature of the side of the meat not cooking. It cooled down to nominal rapidly. So by using this technique, one can brown meat without overcooking it.
I like shows that use science to explore cooking instead of relying on traditional knowledge which is often wrong. This experiment flew in the face of the idea that ideally, you should only flip a steak once or twice. It is nonsense.
I found a 4 pound hunk of corned beef at the local supermarket marked down to $3.99. I tossed it in the sous vide tonight for a60+ hour cook. Let you know this weekend how it turns out.
BTW, I did an ice chest hack. Basically, buy a plastic cooler, drill out a hole the size of your sous vide machine, and you have an insulated sous vide container. I use it mainly to mash beer.
A couple weeks ago, I noticed the local Sam’s Club was blowing out a model for $50, down from about $85 or so. This thread prompted me to pick one up.
First try was a sirloin on sale, 1 hr at 131 degrees F. After a quick sear, the steak was tender and a perfect medium rare. Ended up cooking the remaining steaks with the same result. I pride myself on use of a grill and smoker but don’t believe I can match what the sous vide process delivered.
Had a slab of ribs in the freezer so tried those as well. My normal process is rub, long time in the smoker and finish in an oven wrapped in foil (yea, it’s cheating, leave me alone!) but tried a rub, 24 hrs @ 151 degrees and a sear on the grill. Came out with ideal consistency but without the smoky flavor as I did not have an Liquid Smoke around (never needed it before.) For the ribs, I would conclude that you would give up some smoked meat flavor but gain in consistency and ease.
Looking forward to the next steak cookout where I can spend a few minutes on a sear instead of 12 minutes fighting flare-ups over a hot fire.
