Big SV fan here, but it’s not the right tool for everything. I like it for chicken and turkey breast, pork tenderloin, duck breast, salmon and shrimp (but not most other fish). I also like it for cooking roulades (like a stuffed and rolled flank steak or turkey thigh), because those items are very difficult to cook evenly due to thickness. It makes great pork belly, too, as long as you get it good and dry before you try to crisp it up.
It also makes great pâté and crème brûlée, really anything you’d normally cook in a bain-marie in the oven. Also works well for tempering chocolate.
Not a fan of it for most proteins - there is something about the texture I don’t care for, but I love it for making yogurt. And since we go through yogurt rapidly here I’m making a batch a week normally (temporary apartment during our reno so SV did not make the moving cut as no counter space)
I use it, and have both a “water oven” and an immersion circulator.
Now that you ask, I used to use it for 72 hour short ribs, but I realize now my main use is larger batches of “poached” chicken breasts for chicken chili, salmon for confit, or a bunch of soft boiled eggs. I’ve tried to use it for tempering chocolate, but could use some help with that.
For steak, pork chops, and chicken breast for two, I now do a dry brine and “reverse sear”.
I like my sous vide but can’t say I use it all the time. I use it most often for eggs, steaks and certain vegetables. It really depends on the dish, and most of my nightly cooking is what can be cooked fast. Since I get a meat share, I occasionally get cuts better suited for long and slow cooking. The sous vide works perfectly for those.
I prefer sous vide when I need to have precise temperature control and have the time to do it super slowly. It’s a lot easier than minding a pot on the stove, checking for spillovers, water level, etc.
Cooked sous vide after a long time, and it struck me that lots of people here do but we don’t talk about it much anymore.
I’ve been using my Instant Pot’s sous vide functionality, which works remarkably well even though there isn’t a circulator.
Yesterday I cooked a whole pack of bacon, one of the things I think sous vide does good things for. 145F for 24h (I did 135 for the first 2h because I had a steak in there too). Goes into the freezer, crisped before eating.
Also the aforementioned steak, which I cooked at 135F for 2h and is now in the freezer for a quick meal another night.
Now that I’m using it again, I’m reminding myself of the things I’ve actually preferred cooked (or started / tenderized) this way – pork chops, beef short ribs, korean galbi, and beef chuck roast (whole or in steaks).
Anyone still cooking this way regularly? Favorites? Marinades, methods, times & temps?
Linking the thread that came (and went quiet) before this one.
I was at 130F actually. I find lower than that more rare than I like (medium rare is my sweet spot). Lamb iirc at 125. It has been a long time since I cooked anything sv, so relearning a bit what my preferences used to be.
Agree on reverse sear, that’s what I almost always do. But this works well for cooking ahead.
One of these days I’ll get some chuck on sale again. I thought that was one of the better outcomes.
Oh, it’s an oldie from Kenjii. I don’t have a deep rationale for it, but SV carrots taste more… carroty to me. I also think that the method optimizes uniform texture. And, when you’re done, you’re done, unless you want to glaze.
Well, you’d have to adjust. Steak’s like that already, yeah?
It’d depend on the cross section of the carrot, too. You could get a fat monster Red Chantenay almost done in the bath, and then “sear” the exterior in a roaster or under a salamander.
I mostly use mine for pasteurizing eggs for ice cream, though recently used it to make a turkey leg for thanksgiving as an extra dish and also egg bites in 4oz jars, both with success. I have enjoyed using it to cook frozen salmon.
Cooking vegetables sous-vide in general causes less cell wall breakdown and less leakage from the cells which ultimately leads to more preservation of molecules responsible for their taste (and also more nutrients)
As a single, I find SV a bit of a waste of time and money… My first experiment when I got the equipment was to cook 3 soft boiled eggs. After 2 hours in the machine, I was wondering why I just did not boil them in water for 6 minutes as I would usually! I would have worked out much cheaper :o) But I understand the benefits if you pre-cook in batch (like professionals do) and I still use it occasionally for salmon, with nice results. But I use stem much more than SV.
Kenji and other chefs like cooking carrots before roasting and the carrots turn out well. So sous vide wouldn’t be any different, though considering sous vide gives you more flavor than the preliminary simmering, I probably wouldn’t bother.
