We really truly do live in a crazy cool time. Two and a half years ago I was out on a family trip to California to attend a wedding where we road tripped down from Canada to San Francisco. Along the way we passed through Napa Valley, of course. What we all collectively decided to do was to pay a visit to the CIA – Culinary Institute of America. I remember watching that show when I was very young with my dad (Cooking Secrets of the CIA) and even referenced to their “The Professional Chef” series of cooking textbooks multiple times. Walking along there we marveled at this Sous Vide machine at the store, which I am pretty sure were were looking at the Sous Vide Supreme Water Oven which was around $500 to $600 then I think. At that point we’ve all heard in passing of a ‘new’ cooking technique where you seal food in plastic bags and cook them in a temperature controlled water-bath for an undetermined amount of time. Yea, it was cool, but it wasn’t $500 cool. We opted out.
Fast forward to 2014 and I workout at a gym where a friend of mine who does something with sous vide. Curious, I ask him what his company does. You can get these rather phallic looking objects called an “Immersion Circulator” now where you can turn pretty much ANY pot or cooking container into a temperature bath. Damned if I wasn’t intrigued! So I order one of them from him and his company – Nomiku. I bought version 1 was around $200 bucks. Now they have a better version coming out in the Spring 2015 for cheaper and more feature laden.
Eggs and some chicken cooking in the bag.
So I buy the original to try it to venture into uncharted territory. In fact, I think it’s pretty cool that I’m learning a new cooking technique by myself that I’ve never been exposed to which I was pretty excited about. It also made me realize how cooking could be so daunting and confusing to a cooking newbie trying to explore their culinary journey alone. Braising, frying, simmering, sauteeing, roasting, stir frying, poaching etc., the list goes on and on to achieve different tastes and textures to suit the meat that you’re trying to cook. No wonder most are intimidated by this skill. There’s so many avenues to cook food, which one do you choose? How do we optimize taste and texture? What tool do we use?
Sous Vide (French for “under vacuum”) has been been a staple in molecular gastronomy circles for a very good reason. Say no to the days of overcooking as everything is cooked in a temperature water bath with the only variable being time. Most of the guesswork is taken out and if you follow the instructions, it’s fairly hard to mess up. And frankly in my opinion, I think that is pretty cool. For instance, chicken breast is the bane of my existence to cook well and is primarily one of the main reasons I don’t really like buying it. It tends to get dry easily without good prep work, and I HATE EATING DRY CHICKEN BREAST!! But with sous vide, you can cook the chicken breast to desired doneness, pat it dry, grab your torch out to torch the meat, or throw it onto a hot grill to get some more texture to it. The inside will be as moist and juicy as ever.
Anyway, back to my first Nomiku experience. I didn’t really know what I was doing I decide to buy a bunch of different proteins and experiment with it.
- Eggs
- Salmon
- Potatoes, Carrots and Radishes
- Pork Chops
- Grassfed Rib Eye Steak
- Chicken Breast
- Pork and Chicken Sausage
- Ground Turkey Patties.
Eggs
Eggs are one of the first thing everybody seems to try when they get try sous vide for a good reason. You can get these cool textures that’s not possible with conventional hard boiling or soft boiling. The ‘onsen’ style eggs being of particular fame. Traditionally this is done in Japan heating up eggs in a hot spring.
Some eggs taking a bath in 65C water.
At Ulla in Victoria, this when I had my first experience with the Sous Vide technique back in 2010-ish. I ordered this egg that was the same texture in the white and in the yolk. I was blown away. I tried to replicate this at 65.2C for 1 hour. And all I got was runny whites with some watery parts. That was really strange to me. The yolk was slightly firm, highly malleable and spreadable. It was pretty cool in that regards. Turns out that Serious Eats has a whole food lab section post to the Sous Vide Egg. I should’ve checked that first, but that still wouldn’t yield the same result from Ulla I think. What I should’ve done was do the egg SV style and then poach it for a bit which would help the whites cook more.
As a scrambled eggs man, this weirds me out.
Coming to think of it, I don’t even think I was supposed to eat the watery whites. Sous vide n00b, what can I say? Thinking about it more, I don’t think Ulla’s was a true onsen egg either, it was something that they created themselves at the restaurant. The onsen egg that I created with the Nomiku was a bit too novel for me at the time and I didn’t truly appreciate it.
But really, check out those yolks. Spreadable yolks!
Salmon
I used this Grilled Salmon Recipe for flavouring. And I did it at 20 mins at 43C. This is where SV is pretty cool in my opinion where you get to cross the threshold between raw and cooked. It had a distinctly cooked texture but, it was still sort of raw at the same time. Buttery soft, and smooth.
I had a second piece where I saved it, and I reheated it in a water bath for 15 mins at 47C the next day. It was still very nice and pleasant, and not overcooked at all. Couldn’t tell that it was ‘leftovers’. I tried to pan fry it to make the skin crispy but that didn’t work so well. In retrospect, I should’ve patted it dry and got a torch to make the skin crisp. The texture between the pan fried part of the fish and the SV part was night and day though. Again, one was stringy and dry, while the other side retained it’s characteristic softness.
Chilling out in its ziplock bag.
Potatoes, Carrots and Radishes
This was an interesting experiment and I found the vegetables to be underwhelming. Maybe if I used organic local vegetables it would be a better intense vegetable taste.
I needed to heat up the water to 85C… that took over ONE HOUR. Next time, boil water, pour it in a pot with some cold water and then let it regulate itself. One problem I found was when you add the vegetables in, it was extremely hard to get the water levels right from minimum to maximum and I had to scoop out water to manage the water levels. This was very annoying. I cooked it for about an hour.
Preventing heatloss. Some people put the unit in a cooler. I think that’s genius.
The results… I can’t I was wowed by the radishes or carrots. I could’ve gotten the same results by good old fashioned poaching. The potatoes were pretty good thought with an al dente texture.
Pork Chops
I seasoned my pork chops with my usual mix of cumin, coriander, bourbon, onion powder, garlic powder, olive oil, garlic, shallots, salt, and pepper and put it in for 140F for 2.5 hours. The porkchops… damn, they were the BEST PORKCHOPS I’ve ever had! Juicy, moist and tender. It comes out of the ziplock bag looking questionable though. Nothing a quick sear on the pan didn’t fix. This was a huge winner.
Pork chop on the left, Steak on the right.
Grassfed Rib Eye Steak
130F. 2.5 hours.
The rib eye came out looking… weird. Mushy grey but it kinda got redder as it rested which was unusual to me. I then heated a cast iron pan and pan fried it.
The texture was tougher than usual and it just occurred to me this was my first grass fed beef, so maybe that’s why. It also had a gamey taste which is uncharacteristic to my grain fed beef diet, but still good. I should’ve tested Sirloin instead for testing purposes since I don’t even buy rib eye that much usually.
I suspect the steak needed more time for the proteins to break down because of it’s grass fed origins.
So the steak in was… just ok.
Grass fed rib eye, sous vide style.
Chicken Breast
I did two chicken breasts, but they were pretty much the same results. I did a greek marinade, and then a straight up no marinade poached-style chicken which I used a classic Chinese ginger scallion condiment/sauce to season and eat it with.
It was…. FANTASTIC. 140F at 1.5 hours.
Part of the reason I almost never buy chicken breast or like eating it because it is always too tough, too dry and hard to cook well. And if you heat it up the next day via microwave (this is important to me because I meal prep) it gets even more stringy and dry. Disgusting. And if you undercook it, there’s always the risk of getting sick.
Sous Vide seriously is the holy grail of chicken breast making in my opinion. It keeps all the juices in, and just cooks it enough that it is pasteurised and safe to eat. It is incredibly tender and soft and provides a wonderful mouthfeel. Ideally you heat it up SV style again the next day if you want to eat it, but microwaving is still ok since it doesn’t drastically dry the chicken out. I was pretty impressed with this.
Some chicken with the aforementioned vegetables.
Pork and Chicken Sausage
I bought some raw sausages from the super market. 140F at 1.5 hours, then pan fried and browned. It was very soft and moist inside. Great for meal prep too.
Still slightly pink inside the sausage post refrigerator, post microwave.
Ground Turkey Patties.
Bought some turkey patties and tried to SV them 140F at 1.5 hours. It was underwhelming and borderline gross. The protein juices coagulated and it just wasn’t the same. Save these for the grill!
Overall Thoughts
So… sous vide. I went into it thinking I could sous vide everything and everything will taste great. Some stuff will taste great, some you question whether it was worth your time. I see it as fancy slow cooking and you get optimal results that you can’t get with with conventional cooking techniques with certain ingredients. Another tool in a chef’s toolbox really.
One thing SV could be cool for as well would be dinner party preparation. Say you have a dinner party of 10, it would be nice to SV 10 steaks in advance, and then lightly sear them. It doesn’t really matter how long they’re in the water bath for since it can’t cook more than the temperature it is at so it makes it incredibly convenient to have some steaks at a high enough standard to serve to your guests. I am in the camp though where BBQ’ed or pan fried is still preferable.
Vegetables… I personally feel it’s a waste of time from this one experience since I didn’t find it add anything really new how I’ve been cooking vegetables. And for eggs and salmon, it’s certainly a really cool novel way of eating food like that and in that texture that you usually don’t get.
Where it really sells it for me are meats with an unforgiving window of time for cooking, things you don’t want to overcook or undercook. The pork chops and chicken were perfect examples of this. Many times you’d have to optimize it be leaving it out a room temperature, searing it to cook the outside enough and finish in a low temp oven to help cook the inside. Sous vide solves all that and allows you to be lazy to get superior results. Lean meats is where SV reign supreme in my opinion. This would be a specific case use scenario for me with a SV unit.
In Southern Chinese cooking (cantonese), you usually poach your chickens so it’s just barely cooked. You want that texture that roughly translates to ‘slippery, smooth’ and not a texture that’s ‘rough’. It’s the smoothness that’s the gold standard. Sous Vide delivers that texture perfectly every time.
This is the future of Hainanese Chicken Rice!! Simply amazing. I wish there was a better descriptor for it.
