All posts filed under: Sous vide

Joule sous vide and LIPAVI Model C10 sous vide container | DadCooksDinner.com

My Sous Vide Setup (2017 edition)

Published by Mike Vrobel

Sunday’s picture of sous vide salmon resulted in some questions about my sous vide setup. Here’s what I currently use: Joule Sous Vide I love the compact Joule Sous Vide from the guys over at ChefSteps.com. The downside? It only works through the Joule app. The upside? It works with the Amazon Echo dot I have in the kitchen, so I don’t even have to open my phone: Video: Alexa and Joule [YouTube.com] The other downside is multiple Joules don’t work with the app. (Yet. ChefSteps says it is coming in an app update at some point in the future.) I do occasionally want to run more than one sous vide at once, so I’m keeping my Anova Sous Vide around until they get that fixed. If you’re not an Alexa or phone app kind of person, and want a manual control you can put your hands on, darn it…get the Anova Sous Vide instead of the Joule. LIVAPI Sous vide containers with custom cut lids The LIVAPI Model C10 is a 12 quart polycarbonate …

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Sous Vide Carnitas

Published by Mike Vrobel

ChefSteps.com’s Cooking Sous Vide: Beyond the Basics class has a lot of great ideas. The one that grabbed me was Tough Cuts: Transformed, where the ChefSteps guys sous vide a whole pork shoulder for 24 hours, ice it down, slice it into steaks, and sear the steaks. The long, slow cooking results in pork shoulder steaks with the consistency of pork tenderloin. Also, check out their amazing Map of Sous Vide Cooking. I’m a habitual map looker, so this is perfect for me. Pork shoulder is one of my favorite cuts of meat, so I had to try this recipe. But, after the pork shoulder was sealed in the vacuum bag, I had an idea. What if, instead of steaks, I cut the pork into cubes and made carnitas? Light bulb! In Mexico, carnitas are made by frying cubes of pork shoulder in lard. (Yes, lard.) The pork is simmered in lard until it is golden brown on the outside and meltingly tender on the inside. The ChefSteps technique gives me tender pork; a quick sear gives …

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Review: Anova Precision Cooker – Sous Vide Immersion Circulator

Published by Mike Vrobel

Anova’s Kickstarter for their second generation sous vide unit, the Anova Precision Cooker, was a roaring success. I was an early backer and got a great deal on the Anova Precision Cooker. It finally arrived last month. I had to wait longer because I wanted it in red. It was worth the wait. The Precision Cooker is light, compact, inexpensive ($179), and easy to use. The controls are simple – a temperature display, a touchscreen play button, and a glowing blue scroll wheel to adjust the temperature. (The play button acts as the control button for the other functions – press it for three seconds to switch between °F and °C; press it for eight seconds to turn on the timer mode). I love the simple interface – it’s obvious how to adjust the unit, and easy to get started. It also has an adjustable clamp; it slides up and down on the unit, so it will fit in a wide range of pots. Is it perfect? Almost…but not entirely. Unlike the all-in-one SousVide Supreme …

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Sous Vide Limoncello

Published by Mike Vrobel

<…In the car, listening to america’s test kitchen podcast…>Wait…I can make my own limoncello?Phew! Christmas list solved. I’ll look up the recipe when I get home. <…At home, searching the web…>Darn…it has to rest for weeks, if not months. Christmas is too close. Hmm. <…adjusting search terms…>Aha! Sous Vide to the rescue! I can speed the infusion time up from weeks to hours. Next, I need 190 proof grain alcohol. <…remembering a particular party in college…shudders. Moving on…>Darn, again…I can’t buy Everclear 190 in Ohio without a prescription. It’s 127 miles to Pittsburgh. I’ve got a full tank of gas, ten organic lemons, it’s snowing… <…one bootlegging run to Pennsylvania later…> Excellent warning labels on this bottle: “Caution! Extremely Flammable! Contents may ignite or explode.” That’s what you get with 95% alcohol. I got to work scrubbing and zesting lemons. And…that’s it. Lemon zest, Everclear, a quart mason jar, and three hours sous vide yield lemon infused liquor; simmering water and sugar gives me simple syrup, and the two combine into limoncello. I can’t believe it …

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Sous Vide Flat Iron Steak with Baby Kale Salad

Published by Mike Vrobel

FCC Notice: PolyScience Culinary gave me a Sous Vide immersion circulator to use in my blog posts; this is one of the recipes I used to test it for my review. Earlier this year, I had a geeky food talk with David Pietranczyk, PolyScience Culinary’s chef. He was manning the PolyScience booth at the IACP Food conference in Chicago, and I had a bunch of questions for him. After a demo a chamber vacuum sealer and a taste test of a chocolate pop from the anti-griddle, I picked his brain about sous vide. Chef David knows more about sous vide than anyone else I’ve talked to, and after twenty minutes. I left with my brain overflowing with information. One of the things he mentioned that stuck with me wasn’t all that scientific – it was how chef David tailgates for his hometown Chicago Bears. 24 hours before the game, he starts skirt steaks at home with his sous vide circulator. Early the next morning, he transfers them from the sous vide circulator to a beer …

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Review: PolyScience Professional Creative Sous Vide Immersion Circulator

Published by Mike Vrobel

FCC Notice: PolyScience Culinary gave me a Sous Vide immersion circulator to use in my blog posts and for this review. PolyScience is the godfather of culinary sous vide circulators. They introduced their first immersion circulator, the Model 73, back in 1973. Did PolyScience know about sous vide cooking back in the ’70s? No. PolyScience makes laboratory equipment with precise temperature controls; the 73 was invented for lab use. In 2007, PolyScience was contacted by professional chefs – Mathias Merges and Wylie Dufrense – asking about their immersion circulators, and if they could be used in a professional kitchen. Philip Preston, president of PolyScience, is a enthusiastic hobbyist cook and immediately saw the possibilities. Soon after that, PolyScience started selling their first immersion circulator designed specifically for cooking – now known as the PolyScience Sous Vide Professional Classic, which costs about $1100. This is the first sous vide unit I was aware of, and I lusted after one for years – but oh, that price. It is designed for hard use in a professional kitchen, …

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Simple Sous Vide Carrots

Published by Mike Vrobel

Why do I cook sous vide? Because I can trade time for effort. Sous vide carrots are a perfect example. They’re easy – peel the carrots, seal the carrots, drop them in a water bath. When they’re done, cut the bag open and serve. But, they’re also slow; the carrots need an hour in a (very hot) water bath. I don’t mind the trade-off. When I’m working on dinner, the hard part is the last part – getting everything finished and on the table. “Cut the bag open and dump on a platter” is what I’m looking for in a side dish. Carrots cook at a very high temperature for sous vide – 185°F. We want to gelatinize the starch, resulting in firm but tender carrots. Unfortunately, that temperature is much higher than we want to cook meat sous vide, so we can’t cook the main course at the same time as these carrots. I have a few strategies for dealing with this: I run two sous vide water baths at the same time, one …

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Sous Vide Strip Steaks with Maitre d’Hotel Butter

Published by Mike Vrobel

Did you make a roll of Maitre d’Hotel butter from my recipe earlier this week? Great! Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself “What do I use it with?” You didn’t make it? Oh. Um…that’s OK, it’s easy. Head back to the compound butter post. I’ll wait here for you. … Got your butter made? Great, let’s move on. So, what do we do with the butter? I love to use it to finish a steak. That’s right – a little bit of butter on top, melting onto the steak, giving it a last minute glaze of flavor. Full disclosure – I’m not the one who thought up this trick. French bistros have thrived for over a hundred years serving Steak Frites, a rump steak topped with butter, and served with fries. I’m borrowing the idea, but skipping the fries. I have a few of vacuum packed semi-boneless strip steaks in my freezer – regular cut, about an inch thick. Sous Vide makes this an easy weeknight meal. When I walk through the door, I fill my water …

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Mellow Hot-Cold Sous Vide Water Bath

Published by Mike Vrobel

Photo courtesy of Mellow I’m a geek. I admit it. I love technology and cooking. Cooking technology? I’m all over it. (That’s why I’m fascinated by sous vide cooking.) The Mellow is the coolest new cooking technology I’ve heard of since sous vide was introduced.As you’ll see, “coolest” is a pun. Sorry. I heard about the Mellow in passing at the end of the This Week In Apple podcast – the mentioned a sous vide machine that is a heater AND a cooler. That’s…that’s…genius! Why didn’t anyone think of that before? My first thought was time shifted sous vide cooking. I drop a bag of vacuum sealed food in the Mellow as I leave for work, and it keeps it chilled all day – until it is time to cook. Then it turns on the heater, and ten minutes later it is at sous vide cooking temperatures. I walk through the door, and my sous vide is ready to go. They had me at “built in cooling”, but then I watched their video – they …

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Sous Vide Jalapeno Infused Tequila

Published by Mike Vrobel

I know how to make hot pepper infused tequila – why should I get all modernist and cook it sous vide? Because, when I want spicy tequila, I want it as soon as possible. Regular infused tequila needs to steep overnight; by adding gentle heat, I can have spicy tequila ready in under an hour. And, it’s easier to vary the amount of heat. I found 45 minutes at 135°F to be the perfect amount of time – it transfers the jalapeno taste and the right amount of spicy heat. If you want the jalapeno flavor with just a bit of heat, infuse the tequila for 30 minutes; if you want to blast your taste buds, infuse it for an hour, extracting all the heat from the peppers. Most sous vide infusion recipes recommend pouring the alcohol into a gallon zip-top bag, but I found that unwieldy. And by “unwieldy”, I mean “I spilled tequila everywhere when the bag slipped.” A quart jar is much easier to deal with; it is the right size for …

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Sous Vide Duck Two Ways – Duck Breast and Duck Leg Confit

Published by Mike Vrobel

Cooking duck is a trade off. Duck breast is a tender red meat, and I want it cooked to a rosy pink medium. Duck legs are full of tough connective tissue, and should be cooked past well done, until they are tender and shreddable. This is impossible on a whole duck. When I roast a duck, I aim to cook the legs and crisp up the skin, and live with overcooked breast. This results in a good duck – the duck fat keeps he duck breast moist, even if it is overcooked. But when I want duck perfection, I break the duck down and cook the legs separately from the breast. That lets me cook each properly – long, low and slow for the legs; a quick saute for the breast. Can I use Sous Vide cooking to improve on perfection? Of course, or we wouldn’t be talking right now. I start with the legs, cooking them confit style, with an overnight salting and ten hours in the water bath to tenderize. Then I drop …

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