ottawa foodies

...since fire!

It is amazing. How many of you are cooking Sous Vide? I did see one thread about experimenting but not much else.

I am like a Sous Vide Missionary, ask me any questions about it and be prepared for me to talk at you lol

I actually only found out about Sous Vide after researching vacuum sealers when I was deciding which to buy.

At first, I thought it was stupid and wouldn't even give it a cursory examination. Later, I started to see the benefits regarding even cooking, timeliness of dispensing, ability to cook delicate foods very easily, etc.

I haven't actually done it yet, but I really see the benefits for this style of cooking. I'm too entrenched in my older style to completely change now. I may look into it further as an addition to current methods or special experimentation.

My feelings are much like Rizak's. I have not tried it yet. Seems like a lot of fuss. Maybe I'll buy a unit to try it but I cannot see me doing much of it.

I have been cooking sous vide for a number of years now. For some things, it is the only way I cook. Off the top of my head beef short ribs (48 hours, next time 72), good cuts of steak, cheap roasts such as eye of round. Chicken breasts are great done this way, they are nice and moist. Pork tenderloin and pork chops are also terrific. I tried fish but find that is more trouble than it's worth. I've also made dulce de leche. Beef cuts come out remarkably tender and since you set the temperature at your desired level of doneness, the internal temperature of the meat won't go past that. A book I highly recommend getting is Sous Vide for the Home Cook by Douglas Baldwin. It is more than a recipe book, it also discusses things like pasturization of meat.

FF you are doing it in your instant pot or do you have a different set up?

How long would you cook chicken breast for? then how long you would brown it afterwards?

Is there any way to re use the plastic? It seems a bit wasteful to me. I can see it making a lot of sense for catering but not much else. Do you prefer sous vide from BBQ or low and slow on the smoker?

We have a couple of sous vide options at home. We first bought the Anova circulator -- it works really well but the unit we have requires a pot at least 8 inches high. We then picked up a Sous Vide Supreme -- this is what I use most of the time as it heats the water faster.

Sous vide really shines for cuts of meat that you have to ensure are cooked but can dry out really quickly -- chicken breasts, pork tenderloin etc. When cooking meats, you will have to do a post sear and we always have a hot cast iron skillet ready once we take the meat out of the water bath.

We also really like vegetables cooked sous vide, especially things like beets, carrots, sweet potatoes etc. It also does a good job on eggs and I want to try cooking a dessert.

Sous vide cooking is somewhat foolproof as you set the temperature and let the food cook for the recommended time -- there is lots of information on the Internet for cooking times and doing research is important to ensure food safety. The nice thing is that you don't have to pull the finished product out right at the designated time -- if you go an extra 30 minutes or so it won't matter. Having two units allows us to prepare dishes using two separate temperatures -- we can cook meat in one unit and use the other to cook vegetables.

The Instant Pot is not a true sous vide machine as you can not fully control the temperature of the water. Interestingly enough, the Instant Pot people are releasing a sous vide circulator that can be attached to the inner pot -- you can find it on Amazon.com but not Amazon.ca. The circulator looks much like the Anova unit.

sous vide is great for all the reasons mentioned above. Its pretty much fool proof. On another post I mentioned this already but it came in handy when a friend asked me to cook for their son's pre-wedding dinner. 30 steaks all served at once. Sous Vide - hold them in a cooler, then on to hot griddle to sear and serve immediately - was a huge hit and a huge success. There is no way we could have pulled that off any other way with the same degree of success.

Sous vide does fish really, really well.