Make it Sous Vide!

Meredith Laurence

Description

Take the worry out of under- or over-cooked dishes!Best Selling author, Blue Jean Chef, Meredith Laurence has created easy recipes along with tips, techniques and cooking time charts to guide you through the exciting world of Sous Vide.Create perfectly cooked mouth-watering steak, juicy chicken, succulent fish and seafood, tender veggies plus incredible egg bites, customized yogurt, individual cheesecakes and more. From healthy to decadent the choice is yours.Recipes with beautiful photos include: The Perfect Filet MignonRosemary Rack of Lamb with Thyme MushroomsChicken Breasts with Balsamic SauceHalibut with Orange ButterTender Garlic Butter ShrimpRed Wine Vinegar Orange BeetsHerb Spiced Potato WedgesTomato Basil Cheddar Sous Vide Egg bitesCustom YogurtMini Strawberry CheesecakeChocolate Raspberry Pots de Crme

Informations

• Publié par: Walah! LLC
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781948193122
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

blue jean
CHEF
blue jean
CHEF
Make it Sous Vide
Meredith Laurence
First Edition
Copyright © 2018 by Meredith Laurence.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Walah!, LLC/Publishers

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ISBN-13: 978-1-948193-12-2
ISBN-10: 1-948193-12-4
Photography by Meredith Laurence
Food styling by Lisa Martin
Table of Contents
Introduction
What is Sous Vide?
Why Sous Vide at Home?
Equipment Needed
How to Seal Foods
Time and Temperature
Seasoning
Finishing
Food Safety
Quick Tips for Sous Vide Cooking
Breakfast
Poached Eggs in the Shell
Tomato Basil Cheddar Sous Vide Egg Bites
Plain Yogurt
Beef
The Perfect Filet Mignon
Herb and Spice-Rubbed Rib Eye Steaks
Red Wine Marinated Flank Steak
Hearty Chipotle Chili
BBQ Beef Brisket
Beef Stew
Pork and Lamb
Kansas City Style Baby Back Ribs with Creamy Coleslaw
Pulled Pork Shoulder with Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce
Pineapple Soy Pork Chops
Pork Tenderloin with Dijon Mustard Pan Sauce
Osso Bucco Lamb Shanks
Rosemary Rack of Lamb with Thyme Mushrooms
Chicken and Poultry
Chicken Breasts with Balsamic Sauce
Sous Vide Whole Chicken (in pieces)
Turkey London Broil
Chicken with Red Curry and Coconut
Chicken and Refried Bean Enchiladas
Fish & Seafood
Simple Lemon Dill Salmon
Halibut with Orange Butter
Seared Tuna Steaks with Black Pepper and Sesame Seeds
Tender Garlic Butter Shrimp
Vegetables
Herb Spiced Potato Wedges
Red Wine Vinegar Orange Beets
Thyme Butter Carrots
Garlic Sage Butternut Squash with Cranberries and Pinenuts
Brussels Sprouts
Desserts
Chocolate Raspberry Pots de Crème
Caramel Pots de Crème
Cinnamon Ginger Pears with Raisins
Mini Strawberry Cheesecakes
Gooey Toffee Bread Puddings
Sous Vide Cooking Charts
Introduction
What is Sous Vide?
Sous vide literally means “under vacuum” in French. When you cook something sous vide, food is placed in a vacuum-sealed bag in a water bath at precise temperatures, often well below the boiling point. Restaurant chefs have used this cooking method for years because it offers exact control of the finished product and leaves very little room for human error. For example, if you cook a steak in a water bath set at 140ºF, there is no way the steak can get hotter than 140ºF and so you end up with a perfectly cooked medium steak, whether you cook that steak for one hour or four hours.
Why Sous Vide at Home?
In addition to delivering perfect results with very little effort, there are other advantages to sous vide cooking. The texture of food is enhanced when cooked gently in a water bath, rather than quickly on a stovetop. Cooking a pork shoulder for 24 hours in a sous vide water bath will give you pork that will just fall apart when shredded, but it won’t be dry or over-cooked. Similarly, a brisket cooked sous vide can be super tender, but still have a little pink left to the meat. It will be tender without being cooked well done.
In addition, sous vide foods cook in a bag alone, in their own juices or with other ingredients that you put in the bag. There is no loss of moisture or flavor and in fact, foods can be infused with the flavors of other ingredients. Cooking halibut in a bag with butter and orange juice results in tender, moist and delicious fish infused with orange flavor.
Sous vide machines keep the water at a very precise low temperature. These machines used to be quite large and were therefore primarily used by restaurants rather than home cooks. These days, however, there are many brands of sous vide circulators that can be purchased at very reasonable prices, making sous vide practical for home use.
If you are thinking that sous vide cooking is complicated and really only suited to professional chefs, I implore you to think again. Sous vide cooking at home is relatively new, but it falls into the same category as slow cookers, pressure cookers and air fryers – it’s another great appliance that can help home cooks get a successful dinner on the table with very little effort.
Equipment Needed
In order to cook sous vide, you will first and foremost need a sous vide circulator. This is the tool that will heat and circulate the water. It’s usually not much bigger than an immersion blender and can be used in any vessel.
A large vessel is the next piece of equipment that you will need. I like to use a stockpot or container that is at least 8 quarts in capacity so there is plenty of room for both the circulator and the food I’m cooking. Whatever you use just needs to be food safe and able to hold water. How big a vessel you can use is limited by the brand of circulator you buy. Check to see what maximum amount of water your circulator can efficiently heat and then you’ll know what size vessel to get. You can find a number of large restaurant style storage containers available for single purchase online.
You’ll also need some zipper lock bags. I recommend freezer bags with a double zip seal. It is very important that no water enter the bag, so good-quality food safe bags are a must.
A vacuum sealer is certainly nice to have to remove the air from the bags, but it’s not critical. You can remove air from the bags in a number of ways, as you will see below.
How to Seal Foods
The main reason you need to vacuum seal foods in a bag when cooking sous vide is so that the bag will sink in the water and not float. It’s very important that the food be completely surrounded with the water, that it is fully submerged and not partially submerged, so that it cooks evenly. Certainly, the easiest way to do this with most foods is with a vacuum sealer (electric or hand pumped), but there are other ways to do this as well.
Water Displacement Method
If you have liquid in the bag along with the food you are cooking (a marinade, for example), it is difficult to vacuum seal the bag without sucking out all the liquid as well. In these instances, seal the bag almost completely and then lower the bag into some water. The water will displace the air in the bag. When you have lowered the bag almost completely, being sure not to let any water into the bag, finish sealing the zipper lock and the food should sink easily.
Countertop Method
Another way to remove air from a bag that has liquid inside is to use your countertop. Hold the bag by the zipper lock and let the food in the bag hang over the edge of the counter. Pull the bag up so that the top of the food almost starts to come over the edge of the counter. Smooth out the bag on the surface of the countertop to remove the excess air and then seal the lock on the bag.
How ever you seal the bags, remember that a good seal is critical to your success. If any water enters the bag, the food will be ruined and you’ll have to start again.
Time and Temperature
Knowing how long to cook foods and at what temperature is a puzzle to anyone new to sous vide cooking. I recommend starting with recipes until you get the hang of the technique. Then, at the back of this book, you’ll find extensive cooking charts with both time and temperature listed for different foods, from meats to vegetables to desserts and dairy products.
Seasoning
Seasoning your foods with salt is very important, but you have the option of seasoning before you cook sous vide or afterwards, once the food comes out of the bag. Salt does affect foods in more ways than just bringing out flavors. It draws out moisture and therefore changes the textures of foods, making it firmer. Sometimes you want that texture change (as with fish) and sometimes you don’t (as in flank steak).
I generally use time as the determining factor for when I season foods. If the food is cooking sous vide for a shorter period of time (under 2 hours), I’ll season before I put the food in the bag. If it is cooking for a longer period of time, I’ll season after the food comes out of the bag.
Finishing
While cooking sous vide will give you perfectly and evenly cooked foods that are tender and moist, it won’t brown at all and can’t create a crust on the exterior of foods. So, to remedy that shortcoming, it’s common to sear foods either before or at the end of sous vide cooking.
Searing food before you put it in the bag will give you some color, but the texture that searing provides will be lost after the food has cooked in its own juices for a little while. The advantage to searing ahead of time is that it can help adhere a seasoning to the food, and it gives you a head start so that if you choose to sear the food at the end of cooking, you already have some color to start with.
Searing at the end of sous vide cooking needs to be done quickly and in a very hot pan so that you don’t lose the benefits of what you’ve just done – you don’t want to over-cook your food at this point. Heat a skillet over high heat for at least a couple of minutes. Add a little oil and try to sear for no longer than a minute per side. You can also use a very hot grill to sear food at the last minute.
Food Safety
How you can safely cook foods at such low temperatures for so long was the most perplexing question to me when I first started cooking sous vide. I soon discovered that there is no greater food safety risk to sous vide cooking than there is to any other cooking method. Let me explain.
We cook foods so that harmful bacteria cannot grow or multiply and are indeed killed. Food scientists have determined that by cooking food to over 140ºF, we kill most harmful bacteria. What is less known is that when you hold foods at a lower temperature but for a longer period of time, the bacteria are also eliminated and bacterial growth is prevented. It’s not just a matter of temperature, but of temperature and time. H