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Just bought a Sous Vide. Those who own one, what are your favorite things to use it for? Any recommended accessories?
Have a friend who has raved about using these for cooking meet during the work day and pan searing it for a quick easy and delicious meal. Plan on doing that with steaks/chicken, but wanted to see if anyone else on Tildes owns one and has any tips or favorite use cases to share.
Onsen tamago is the main thing I use it for now. But that may not be your thing. It’s an egg that’s only semi-cooked. Historically, it was done with a hot spring, hence the name.
Otherwise, I think the best thing about it is that it makes cooking meat no skill. Some specialties is pork belly, cooked over 24 hours. But you can do steak or whatever as well.
The issue is that it takes a lot of prep. I’ve mostly replaced it by just being better at cooking traditionally.
Why do you say it takes a lot of prep? Throw salt and pepper on a steak or chicken breast, throw it in a bag for however long you feel like keeping it there, then sear the steak for a few minutes total, eat the chicken immediately if you want, or throw them in the fridge and reheat for a perfectly cooked meal prep.
It's not the amount of prep, it's the time beforehand - most things will be 2-3 hours. If you're not remote, it's kinda an awkward amount imo. Especially for things like rare-medium rare steak, you can't be too early either, since it's technically not below the temperature to safely cook steak, so if you do it for 8 hours it's not going to be food safe anymore.
Even for the things that are OK for 8 hour cooking times, it's kinda just annoying to setup in the mornings before work.
If you do after work, it'll be like 8 or 9 before you can eat.
Actually it will be perfectly fine to keep it in there for a longer period. The recommendations are designed for high heat. Cooking at lower temperatures still kills bacteria, it just takes longer for it to happen - which is exactly what you are doing with sous vide.
Generally true, but there are a couple of caveats. There are a few pathogens that’ll still be growing close to 54°C, and it can be reasonable to cook steak below that if you like it rare, so most guides recommend around a two hour max at lower temperatures (enough to kill off the most common bacteria without giving too much time for the more heat tolerant ones to multiply, and allowing for a realistic margin of uncertainty in the equipment). Very detailed info here for anyone who’s interested: https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety
Once you’re at 55°C or higher nothing’s realistically going to make you ill as long as you give it enough time, but you do start getting into noticeable textural changes from two to four to eight hours - to the extent that I wouldn’t go past three or four hours for anything that wasn’t deliberately aiming for a slow-cooked texture.
I still find sous vide to be extremely forgiving, but there was a definite learning curve for me in finding the margins where the rules don’t hold so well.
Isn't the issue that for a rare-medium rare steak, the temperature never reaches the point where it kills all the bacteria, no matter how long it is cooked? I've always read that for those temperatures, sous vide can be done, but shouldn't be done for long periods.
eg. https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-steak
There is definitely a minimum temperature you should cook at.
I work from home so the prep time of leaving it in the cooker is not an issue at all thankfully!
There is a method to cook things faster by starting with a higher temperature, but it consequently also requires more attention and, I imagine, some practice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GapkjSTx3Ao
You can use it to pasturize eggs or flour for safe cookie dough.
I've also used mine to par cook the apples for apple pie. It gets you a filling with an amazing texture https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-apple-pie-recipe-double-crusted-thanksgiving-dessert
The final thing I used mine frequently for was easy Roast Beef for sandwiches. Just cover it in salt and garlic powder (rosemary too, if you have it) , put it in at 135 and let it go. Time will depend on the size, but like 85% of the effort is slicing the meat at the end.
@dhcrazy333, seriouseats is the website that you are now required--by law--to check first for all sous vide recipes. It's not actually always the best, but it often is. And I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Kenji uses Tildes from time to time. He's definitely on reddit and he seems like the kind of person I'd expect to have made an account here in like 2018 or 2019 or something.
Found some great regular recipes on Serious Eats so I'll definitely be checking that out for some recipes moving forward with the Sous Vide. Always love me some Kenji as well.
it's been a few years now, but chefsteps was always my go to for souse vide recipes.
I've got plans to try duck confit soon which I've seen recommended many times.
I do my duck confit sousvide and it's lovely. Strong recommend.
How does it compare to traditional confit? I've always assumed evaporation played a role in that.
It might depend on what you do with it after cooking? My preference is a sandwich with fig jam and the softest brie I can find. It works wonderfully for that. I also had good luck in my rillettes experiment, though I've only done that the once.
The big advantage of sousvide'ing for confit is that you can do a duck leg with only a tablespoon or two of extra fat, which means there's a lot less fat to deal with when you're done. (If you're looking for ideas there, duck fat foccacia is decadent)
If you do not have a vacuum sealer that can help but I wouldn’t start with one as spending on a better one can save a lot of money in the long run.
Chicken, without skin, is a great starting place. Something like chicken thighs will be juicier than you’ve likely ever had.
One of the best things about them is that overcooking is much less of a thing. Most recipes are “pull out any time between when it’s done and 3 hours after”. Means you can easily start something in the morning and just pull it out when you’re home.
While a little less forgiving it’s also great for fish. A lot of the frozen fish you buy comes vacuumed sealed and you can just drop it in as is and add some time to the cook.
Finishing is ultimately the trick. You’ll still want to grill your stuff after it’s done usually, but it’s very easy.
It's been years and I always use big Ziploc bags and a tub of water to displace air. And then silicone sealed bags for reusability.
Played with a vacuum sealer once and hated how fussy it was.
A vacuum sealer is really more for food storage than just sous vide use, and the issue is that the entry level ones that are "cheap" also suck in the long run (bags are basically proprietary and are hideously over costed, and you lose some flexibility.)
I got a chamber sealer from Avid Armor forever ago for a bit more, and it's a much better product. Being able to buy a bunch of chicken/beef/pork at bulk rates, seal and freeze it, and then just throw it in the sous vide when I want to cook it is very very nice. It can also handle sealing liquids better (although that still requires some finesse it's at least possible).
My favorite uses no one has talked about yet are:
Quick softening frozen butter. Set to 60-70 F and come back in 20-30 min. It's saved the day for unplanned cookies on a few occasions
Psuedo proofing cabinet. My kitchen tends to run cold over night. So, if I'm making sourdough and have a 10-15 hour bulk rise. I can put my bread tub into my sousvide tub and set it to 74 F. This means that my bread is always a happy temperature and will rise quite well overnight even during the winter.
Oooh, your proofing idea is pretty good. I've been trying to make a new sourdough mother and the slow proofing from the cold weather is driving me nuts.
I discovered it by accident when I was making bread and sousvide'ing something else nearby on the counter over night and have been doing it intentionally ever since.
Okay I’m tempted to try this for proofing, but I’m confused how you set this up. The dough is in a container and then you submerge that into the water? What is the container made of? Is it sealed?
I use a 6L cambro tub with a lid as my proofing container and a 12L cambro tub as my sousvide tub. There's just enough space for the 6L tub to sit inside with the sous vide stick. The biggest issue is that the 6L tub floats from all of the air, so I use some string to tie it down and keep it submerged. It doesn't submerge all the way, only 75% or so.
Sous vide cheese cake is probably the only thing I'd still bust my sous vide out for.
Texture-wise, sous vide does amazing things to tougher cuts of meat. I've never been a huge fan of the resulting flavors though. Sous vide Beef reminds me of the flavor of the chunks of beef in dinty moore beef stew - sort of a sharp almost metallic after taste I'd previously attributed to the meat sitting in a can for weeks/months/years. I'm not a big fan of marinades, which could be a game changer, but you'd want a marinade designed specifically for sous vide (the long cook times can do weird things to herbs and spices in my experience, mostly rendering them flavorless).
Back when I was still super into exploring the world of sous vide, one of my go to recipes was to sous vide a brisket for 24 hours and then throw it on a smoker for a couple of hours. It worked well enough for feeding a large crowd who didn't know what good brisket was.
You can definitely dial in your perfect onsen tomago (and you should). I was never a fan of trying to extract a soft poached egg from its shell, and eventually I learned to poach eggs in the classic way (simmering de-shelled in salted water) reliably enough to never bother with onsen tomago again.
I played around with sous vide'ing chicken a bit. While you can easily and consistently achieve the most tender, juiciest chicken breast I've ever eaten, it always felt like it was under cooked (it wasn't) and gave me the oogies.
Maybe just turn it up a few degrees? Most of my sous vide recipes are from Modernist Cuisine At Home, and they usually have a table for desired consistency. Turkey came out "wrong" for me as well but dial up the temp and it tastes like safe, tender oven cooked.
100% you can just turn up the temperature and it was a miss on my part to not say so (thank you!)
To me, higher temp sous vide chicken has the same texture as regular chicken just with extra steps. These days I spatchcock and use a good bluetooth temp probe in the oven/smoker. Takes less than an hour and doesn't require busting out the vacuum sealer, sanitizing the vacuum sealer after (yay raw chicken), setting up the sous vide bath and working the multi-hour soak into my schedule.
I have thought a few times about sous vide'ing and freezing a bunch of chicken, which would be worth the effort probably. Making a note for future self in case I ever do get motivated to meal plan.
edit to add - I've had a ton of fun exploring the modernist cuisine at home cook book set. Pressure cooker carrot soup is still a favorite. "Get a copy of Modernist Cuisine and explore the sous vide options" really should be top comment for @dhcrazy333.
Absolutely a godsend of a book for me, since I didn't grow up cooking but sure did my share of chemistry labs. The entire series of books are as delightful for science as they are for food. Definitely recommend them to everyone, especially At Home.
I agree, the texture of sous vide chicken is very wrong. The best chicken I have ever had was one I made myself, but it was actually really simple; just chicken breasts tossed in an oven bag with some broth and fresh herbs and garlic and then baked.
In my humble opinion it is only good for two things. The first is that it will make the most tender meat you will ever have. The second is that it will make large batches of specifically-cooked eggs (like onsen tamago). For vegetables it’s still best to cook them other ways since you don’t have to have those specific temperatures and long cooking times for them to turn out well.
Of course I don’t eat meat or eggs anymore, so my immersion circulator is just a dust magnet at this point.
Generally agree re: vegetables, but sous vide root vegetables like carrots can be incredible.
I’m surprised you think so. Carrots tend to come out pretty similar to me as if I had made them in the pressure cooker, and that is much more convenient for me for a number of reasons.
Fair enough. I can certainly see why you wouldn't get the sous vide out just for carrots.
Came to say eggs like everyone else.
I guess the word of caution is that it's useless for vegetables. I thought corn on the cob sous-vide in butter would be a great idea. No.
I've had good luck with a Tbsp of butter with an ear of corn cooked at 85 C for 30 min.
I'm curious what the result with the corn was. Mushy?
If anything I remember it being under-cooked after what felt like too long at too high.
Just since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: Sous Vide is awesome for fermenting. Being able to hold things in the temperature butterzone speeds things up massively.
Yogurt in particular is pretty easy to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMInAL7JRRo
Anova has a nice list of other ideas too: https://anovaculinary.com/blogs/blog/8-weird-ways-use-precision-cooker
Not exactly the easiest recipes, but I really enjoy using mine for making ice cream and cheese.
Basically any time you need to precisely cook milk and need to be in the sweet spot between boiling off water, without burning the fat molecules. Even if you just burn milk a little bit, and it's sticking to the bottom of the pot, the "ash" sediment can be dispersed through the liquid and it will affect taste.
Its particularly important in cheese because the exact temperature changes over time dictates the culture profile, affecting taste and texture.
I also use the SV for "utility cooking" like tempering chocolate, pasteurized milk or making caramels and preserves. Even sterilizing containers or just melting wax enough to still be thick is a lot easier.
Its a very powerful device, especially if you have a good container or deep sink to really put it to use.
Edit
Forgot to include the recipes.
For all cheese making: https://www.youtube.com/@GavinWebber
As for ice cream
Sweet cream base that's still a WIP. It's a large batch that you can split for different flavors.
750 ml whole milk / 25¼ fl oz whole milk
375 ml single cream / 12¾ fl oz single cream
500g mascarpone / 1 lb mascarpone
85 g caster sugar / 3 oz caster sugar
360g evaporated milk / 12¾ oz ideal milk
teaspoon salt
optional stabilizer (you'll need to experiment. I like gum Arabic but it can have weird texture effects with different measurements and quality)
I found a big bath for the SV and I immerse my pot in water, being sure to keep the water line just over the level of the milk. This allows for a much more even boil. Be careful not to allow water to splash into the pot though. I had laser cut stencils for my pots to snugly sit in and also kept them off the bottom of the bath but I'm getting away with just using a taller pot now.
Just mix or immersion blend all the ingredients together and heat up to 95 C - 102 C , constantly stirring (exact temp depends on altitude. Higher temps for coastal areas). Skim off all the muck that floats to the top and after 30 - 45 min the mixture should have thickened considerably.
This is a low sweetness mixture, without eggs for a clean taste and color. Its easier to add sweetness than take it out. I don't like egg yellow and vanilla custard flavor in everything. Excellent mix to accompany another desert like hot brownies/sweet pies /lava cake in winter or fruit salads or ice cream cakes in summer.
Except for coffee, caramel and chocolate, I prefer to incorporate any flavors after the mixture cools so the heat doesn't affect them. Most of my flavors I just improvise and I just add and taste till its good.
Also I never follow this recipe exactly and constantly change things. Like mascarpone is not as cheap anymore so I'm trying to find something else to add that density.
And then the cooked ice cream mixture gets chilled, then go into one of those frozen pots that fit under a stand mixer to stir?
Oh, if we're talking dairy, you can so make an incredibly easy creme brulee in a mason jar. Just mix the ingredients and sous vide! Then, allow it to cool in the fridge and torch it with sugar.
When my sister and I did it, we did infuse the cream with a vanilla bean first, so that's a bit more effort, but it was amazing.
I've also heard of people using a sous vide to make proper vanilla extract at home.
As most have already mentioned, it's great for making meat super tender. Ive done 48 hour beef short rib that were amazing, as well as a 3 day pork belly recipe for Christmas one year.
As for accessories, I highly recommend getting a bag of the little plastic balls they sell to retain the water for long cook times. I've read it works better than a lid as the moisture that escapes from where the sous vide is placed could potentially damage the device.
Poultry breasts. Chicken and turkey breast to me tastes dry, no matter how moist it is. But somehow sous vide makes it work - my SO has cooked them numerous times. Some were copiously marinated beforehand, and others (not quite as many) were doctored after the fact.
I also like my steaks rare, but I did not like steaks sous vide then seared. It just didn't work for my palette. Just wanted to mention that.
(Note: I'm American and after having duck and goose, those are not qualified for the "dry" taste. Also they are way more uniquely flavorful.)
Will need to experiment for the steaks then and see how it turns out.
For chicken, not sure if you've tried it or not but highly recommend getting a mallet to pound out the chicken breast beforehand if you're cooking it normally on a stove/in a pan. Butterfly it first, pound it out flat so it's all mostly the same thickness, then lightly flour each side and cook it in some regular vegetable oil on the stove. Has been working great for me recently.
If there's one thing I'll ever miss if I move away from Germany (other than good döner kebab), it'll be the fact that the grocery store sells pre-flattened chicken breasts. It makes pan-frying chicken so much easier to not have to do that myself.
Funny you ask, I just pulled a bunch of turkey thighs out for a friendsgiving. Cooked them for 24 hours. I never liked turkey that much until I first made them sous vide 6+ years ago. They're not dry so they're actually good. I also haven't done it in 6+ years because I'm too lazy to do most things I like, so I hope these ones are good.
Sous vide is the second best way to cook a steak (reverse sear bearing #1--it's essentially a poor man's sous vide that ended up being better) but it's also more reliable than reverse searing. The first time I tried reverse searing, my medium rare steak came out practically still refrigerated, so that wasn't great. But sous vide is super simple to cook precisely.
The only use I haven't seen suggested yet is to hold things at tempurature. If you like to do dinner parties or multi-course meals, a sous vide is invaluable for holding things like purees and sauces at the proper temperatures so that you can plate them at will without having to go and reheat stuff.
Edit: damn, @chocobean already said that.
I like pork tenderloin or chicken breast with a good marinade. You can also use it to get perfect consistency on a chunky beef steak.
I use them to make lamb racks, and it's great to be able to have meat sit at temperature until everything else is ready to serve. I have a propane torch with a regulated torch (so you can use it in any direction) but honestly they do not render fat well. The pan is better for that.
Chicken breasts are divine at ~148. Kenji's article on sous vide is a very thorough explainer on how food safety is achieved at lower temperatures.
I use it for everything (I may have a problem). I just did a turkey for a work event and someone told me it was the best they ever had. Steaks are fantastic, tender and perfectly done but my favorite thing to do is brisket. You will need a cooler to fit the whole thing but I sous vide it for a day, cool it down and then smoke it for at least 4 hours. Turns out amazing every time.
There is actually a fun YouTube channel by the same guys as on Guga Foods, called Sous Vide Everything that you should check out. They do a lot of crazy experiments that often don't work out so well, but also plenty of stuff that does, and standard recipes too (mostly further back in the channel history).
We aren't allowed a proper BBQ at our new condo so I am thinking of getting a sous vide machine as well, and that is the channel I intend to thoroughly mine for ideas when I do.
p.s. As for recommendations for accessories, Guga uses a Grill Blazer, and its results are impressive. It definitely seems like a must have, at least for steaks.
Recommended accessory: a case for the device when not in use.
I got one for my husband's sous vide cooker, and he said he never would have thought to get one himself but loves that it has "a place to go" when being stored.
Mine came in a yellow paper cylinder and that's where it still lives
You now have the opportunity to create this wacky burger from Internet Shaquille. Basically sous vide is one of the only ways to cook ground beef in this particular way - with the grain being all vertical in the burger - which makes the burger very tender, lets you cook thick patties, and lets you sear it like you would a smash burger while still maintaining a thick patty.
I don't have a sous vide - I think 95% of what you get with a sous vide is just consistency, and the fiddlyness of it seems to offset the need - but this is one of the things that I think would be very difficult to cook without a sous vide. I've thought about getting one just to try this, but that seems like too much.
I mainly use it for obvious stuff, like reverse-searing a steak or making a super tender and flavorful chuck roast over a long cook. I've done salmon as well, but prefer to just pan-sear it nowadays. I never liked the way chicken breast came out in it.
Putting up a 2nd top level comment - poached egg 'jam' (that's what I call it, not claiming to be the first to 'invent' this, but I've arrived here independently)
Crack a bunch of eggs into a ziplock bag taking care to not break any yolks. Sous vide the entire bag of eggs around 146F'ish for at least 50 minutes (you can hold at temp for hours!). The whites will be firm'ish and the yolks are super thick but just barely still runny. Dump the now soft poached eggs into a bowl and whisk with a fork until the whole thing is a chunky mixture of egg white bits and runny yolk. Viola - egg jam.
Dump the egg jam back in the ziplock and put it back in the sous vide bath until you and your guests are seated and ready to dig into pipin' hot egg jam. I only do this with avocado toast, but it'd be lovely in a breakfast burrito too (albeit a tad messy).
edit to add: the whites are never as firm as I'd like them to be via sous vide, but the ability to hold the eggs at temperature until all the toast is done and guests are seated more than makes up for it imho
One of the more obscure options that works surprisingly well: potatoes!
With sweet potatoes, you can perfectly sweeten them before finishing them in the oven: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-mashed-sweet-potatoes-recipe
With standard potatoes, it's great for reheating mashed potatoes which is very convenient around the holidays when all the other cooking appliances are in-use.
I don't use it all the time, but it is a great device for perfect outcomes for on certain recipes.
Duck breast and duck confit are both incredible (Kenji recipes if I recall correctly). If also used to to great acclaim for large cuts for big parties, like a beef tenderloin or brisket. Those get finished on a grill or in an oven obviously, but the long slow cook gets amazing results that's easy to do at home.
More basic stuff: I like it for beets and carrots, to get them to the perfect texture and to keep their flavor infused (plus I like a little vinegar with my beets). Chicken breasts, to just have well cooked chicken as a simple protein for the week.
The (only) magic in the tech is in making things turn out consistently the same way, and giving you time to do the other parts of the dinner. Consistency and time.
Otherwise everything that can be done in a sous vide water bath can be, and are routinely, done by chefs who can time things exactly right and who don't muff things up. It's a skill equaliser, and that's about it. And keep in mind texture changes with time -- do not recommend for beef chicken pork to go for more than 8 hours. Exceptions for tough cuts like brisket duck goose turkey.
My usual use cases: (1) start dinner well before I am done with work for the day (2) hold at temperature while I get everything else ready (3) [edit missing item] to pasteurize ingredients
Unusual use case 1: we had a baby Gosling who wasn't doing well, and needed to be kept indoors and warm. The heat lamp was too much for the poor thing, so we put the circulator inside a metal pot and set it to "warm" the water. Little fella would nestle next to the warmed pot all day in between "venturing out" to the other side of the box for food and water. (Picture of Gosling and geese)
Unusual 2: it was winter, and we were inoculating logs with mushroom mycelium covered dowels which then need to be sealed with melted wax. Used the circulator to keep wax liquid. But in the end it was much easier to hold a solid piece of wax over the dowel, dessert torch it to drip.
The reason we got one was because my wife loves baking and she read the Serious Eats article on vanilla extraction techniques and it didn't take much convincing for us to buy one. I see lots of food chemistry already in the thread but no mention of this yet so thought I'd share - especially as I'm using said vanilla to make some ice cream lol