Why sous vide? Its the easiest cooking method for incredible meals with very little margin of error. Placing food in plastic or silicone pouches, releasing the air (to get that “under vacuum” characteristic that the French words “sous” and “vide” translate to), and cooking it in a precisely heated water bath results in culinary perfection. If youve been asking yourself or friends, what are the advantages of sous vide, then we have the answers for you.
This method of cooking is ideal for all sorts of applications. For proteins like beef and lamb, sous vide cooking can get your meat to its ideal temperature, and then hold it there for hours, ensuring that your meat is cooked edge-to-edge at that target temp, with no risk of overcooking.
But are they worth it? If you aren’t a chef, do you need to sous vide at home, or should you just leave it to the pros?
Having said all of that, if you are someone who does not entertain regularly and has a good set of dishes that you are used to cooking for yourself day to day, they are not inexpensive gadgets and you could probably take a pass. There is little that they do that cannot be achieved with a low oven, a slow cooker, or your smallest burner on the lowest setting. They also work best with vacuum-sealed food, the Ziploc bag method is possible but always imperfect, so you do have to think about the potential need for investing in a food saver as well. But the good news is that if you do, you can freeze your meats in the vacuum sealed bags and cook straight from frozen in the sous vide.
If you are the kind of person who benefits regularly from dishes out of a slow cooker, this is a good method for you, because unlike slow cooking, you don’t need it to be a soup or stew or chili, so if you have the need to set a meal up before leaving the house and come home to it fairly ready to go, this could be a good addition to your arsenal. And if you have dietary restrictions that require access to protein-heavy snacks and meals, or a houseful of growing children to keep fed, it can be a boon, because you can cook three different meats or a couple of dozen hard boiled eggs perfectly all at once, and then stash in the fridge for last minute zhuzhing.
My best advice if you are contemplating a sous vide, see if you have a pal with one they could loan you, or if your local library does equipment loans (you’d be surprised how many do!) and experiment a bit before investing.
For me, the game changer that made me pull the trigger was Passover. I often serve leg of lamb for Passover, which is best at medium rare. Hard to achieve when you don’t really know how long the service will go, and whether anyone will want a second bowl of matzo ball soup before the entrée. Cooking my lamb sous vide means that it is perfectly medium rare all the way through when the guests arrive, and all I have to do is sear and carve before serving. Bliss.
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FAQ
Is sous vide worth getting?
What is the point of sous vide cooking?
Do real chefs use sous vide?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of sous vide cooking?
But the advantages of sous vide, so well-known by restaurants, can also be enormously helpful to the home cook. 1. Eliminates anxiety about food safety and cooking time. Sous vide cooking relies on timing and the immersion circulator to do precise cooking, taking much of the guesswork out of cooking.
Is sous vide worth it?
To its critics, however, sous-vide is little more than boil-in-the-bag with a physics degree, and takes much of the skill, not to mention the fun, out of cooking. “It’s ideal for larger-scale, high-end restaurants that are seeking consistency and accuracy,” says Adam Byatt, chef/owner of Michelin-starred Trinity in Clapham, south London.
What is sous vide cooking?
Sous vide is a cooking style originating from France that cooks vacuum-sealed food in a temperature-controlled water bath over several hours. Advantages of sous vide include consistent and precise cooking, juicy and flavorful food, and ease of use.
Is sous vide cooking hard to replicate at home?
When you see someone sous vide cooking for the first time, it may seem intimidating and hard to replicate at home. Honestly, it can look pretty unnerving, especially if you don’t consider yourself a world-class home chef.