SV makes a lot of sense for make-ahead for restaurants, large batches, or where there is no time pressure. My prime example is steaks for a large gathering. You have SV’d the cuts to different degrees of doneness, then the help can fire them all the same.
I have a BIL and SIL that were into SV big time at first. They even had 50 special ping-pong balls to insulate the surface of a big Cambro! Fiddly, fiddly, fiddly. Racks that will separate the envelopes and keep them all in place in good circulation are especially maddening. As are vacuum sealers and bags that leak air in (floats) or good stuff out.
As with most gadgets, it can do certain features nothing else can do, e.g. unique braises which give very different results not possible with any other method. Or very simple way to make duck confit
Do you follow the suggested temp and technique? I’ve not had good experience with seafood doing that. Any tips?
This might have been my favorite dish produced. We liked real prime rib cooked sv less than the chuck! Played with timing a few times — 72h was too long, 56-60 was probably the sweet spot, but we liked 36-48 pretty well too. What’s your preferred timing? The juices made a lovely gravy with cream and cognac.
I have only done meat (a brisket, an eye of round roast, some pork chops). They looked great. I really, really didn’t like the texture. It creeped me out, honestly.
Yes to this, with a quick pan sear or torching. - I don’t have the capability to grill.
Interesting. My sibling is the only meat eater in his family, and cooks sous vide extensively for that very reason.
He’ll make a few things and portion off, then pull out a serving to accompany an otherwise vegetarian meal. Much more efficient, after work especially.
I eat much less beef and pork than he does, which is why I think my use has been a lot less, but also I’ll often use the pressure cooker to break down the cuts that benefit significantly from sous vide.
I wasn’t happy with shrimp at 140° even though it’s what’s widely recommended. I preferred going up to 145°.
For the lobster I’ve followed Kenji’s method and really liked it though it’s a bit fussy.
For chuck roast I like 135-137° for 24-30 hours.
Playing with temperature really helps with sous vide imo. Even chicken thighs which I don’t think are best sous vide come out better going past the temps often recommended. Even at 165° for the recommended time I don’t find they’re tender enough. Once I went up to 175° I was much happier. I made soy sauce chicken that looked like the classic but with thighs more to my liking (I tend to prefer breasts in dishes like soy sauce chicken and white cut chicken because the gentle cooking is better for it than sinewy thighs).
Breasts if I’m searing I go 142° and 150° for salads. I have never gotten around to it for Hainanese chicken and similar preps (one of my favorite foods, but tough sell for people who want meat with lots of seasoning and color), but I’d probably go for somewhere in that range.
I like 4-8 hours at 175°, though I haven’t settled on that temp or if I might go even higher for shorter time since I think thighs are great at 180-185°.
I’ve only made salmon twice, i think, but i loved taking the vacuum sealed packages and putting them straight from freezer to SV. I think i did 130 for 70m (as per the anova website recipe). Then salt and pepper and a high quick sear. Really simple but no effort and delicious.
You’re not getting much in the way of recipes or technique because there isn’t much. There’s what goes into the bag, the temperaure, and the time. Most of that comes from published tables.
And the fact that no one has responded that they regularly use SV preferentially over other cooking methods for most or all of their cooking is telling.
Much of cooking comes from recipes with prescribed ingredients and listed methods. And yet, most people tinker and come up with something better, and share, and someone else tries that, and so on. The baking and cooking threads are full of exactly this.
It’s not for you, I get it. There are other threads.
I’m not sure what that’s supposed to prove. I love grilling and the grilling process, but I only grill every once in a while for a few different reasons. The fact that it’s not given preferential treatment as a cooking method doesn’t say anything about grilling’s merits.
I also prefer sous vide as my method for making ice cream base these days. The process is very simple just mixing everything in a blender. By heating the mix to a specific temperature, bases that contain eggs never exceed that temperature, which keeps eggs from getting a stronger flavor that can happen from the temperature getting too high. And finally, it’s the lack of evaporation, which means that flavor is staying in the base.
When I make chicken salad it’s rare I use a method other than sous vide.
Additionally, there are groups on places like Reddit that are dedicated to sous vide and you can find many people there who use sous vide on an almost daily basis.
And especially with the Anova precision oven’s release, people are using sous vide as a regular cooking method.
Let’s agree SV is past the fad stage. But zealots still exist.
I bet there are Reddit groups whose members ride tricycles underwater.
I think steaks are the #1 example cited by SV enthusiasts as being better. IMO, the differences (“no grey band” and uniform doneness) are largely misnomers, not especially desirable and attainable through other, faster, less fiddly means. E.g., focus on thickness, partial freezing, etc.
Do any commercial premium ice cream or gelato makers use SV?
Well, no commercial guacamole makers use a mortar and pestle, but that doesn’t mean that the mortar and pestle is either passé (it’s not) or that it’s not better (it is).
Ice cream makers either order custom bases to be made for them in specialized equipment that a home operation will not have access to, or they make their own bases with other forms of equipment (and usually in a dedicated facility) that are also not available to a home cook. Sous vide is impractical for large volume ice cream production. I’m not sure why that matters in the context of its utility in making ice cream at home except that it’s a much cheaper and realistic alternative to other possible pieces of equipment like a stirring hot plate. My immersion blender isn’t less useful because professionals use an actual homogenizer.
You’re very adept at proving my points. That commercial producers don’t use SV for premium ice cream (or molcajete for guac) speaks pretty elegantly against either giving superior results.
The ice cream people obviously have access to all sorts of industrial equipment, including SV. See, https://marlen.com/food-processing-equipment/sous-vide-solutions/ Ice cream mixes are Pasteurized, but the heating involved isn’t sealed and usually lasts only seconds.
If you have a specific or narrow temperature range you feel you need for egg protein setting, by all means use what you like.
Why would ice cream makers who have specialized equipment for ice cream production use sous vide to make ice cream? Sous vide isn’t specifically designed for ice cream production. That doesn’t mean it’s not a useful tool for making ice cream at home for people who don’t have specialized equipment. Many people who make ice cream professionally also use sous vide for making ice cream at home and prefer it over cooking in a pot over a stove. See the Underbelly blog, for example. Your comment was that nobody uses sous vide preferentially and when given an example of such a case, you are now arguing that sous vide is still no good because it’s not used in commercial ice cream production. I can cook ice cream bases just fine on a stovetop. I PREFER sous vide having tried it fairly recently.
I’ll +1 @honkman 's comments. I really like carrots and asparagus done this way. I haven’t tried it with a ton of vegetables, but I imagine it’s a fairly versatile method for any vegetable that won’t get crushed by the vacuum process. I indulge with a bit (or a lot) of butter on carrots, or you can use olive oil too - and definitely salt and seasoning that you want. The big win for me on this is the resulting texture you get; carrots still have a firmer bite without the hard crunch. It also seems to intensify the sweetness and carrot-y taste. I love a good roasted, caramelized carrot too, but if you ever want to show off a pretty whole carrot on a plate (like the small, colored carrots), sous vide is a great option.
