The idea of vacuum packing your food and giving it a water bath might seem a little odd if you are new to sous vide or generally cook with traditional, high-heat methods.
Sous vide is a French food-packaging technique that involves vacuum sealing individual meals into pouches and cooking it over a controlled length of time at low temperatures.
You might be wondering, what’s the point of this though? Sous vide offers individuals a hands-off cooking approach that delivers consistent, restaurant-quality results. The natural juices and flavors of your food get locked into the pouch, providing you with a tender and intensely flavorful final product that requires minimal attention during the cooking process and gives you incredibly healthy meals
Your food retains the same shape and locks in all the vitamins and minerals that are usually lost when steaming or boiling your food. Plus, you can cook any type of meat, vegetables, beans, grains, and even some desserts!
What Are the Benefits of Sous Vide Cooking?
When you are cooking meals with the sous vide method, you can expect numerous benefits both for your health, for your wallet, and for your lifestyle.
The sous vide method is very easy to get used to and use, and it provides you with healthy meals that can be cooked efficiently without losing their flavors or textures.
You Receive Tastier and Richer Flavors.
One of the first things you think of with vacuum-sealed items is dehydration. However, when the food is sealed in the sous vide bag, it does not lose its form, nor does it become dehydrated.
The food will retain its shape, its flavors, and its natural coloring. Go ahead and use those cheaper cuts, as they will turn out beautifully!
The Meal is Healthier.
You do not need to add in additional fat or salt to your meals, as the vacuum sealing process keeps the food’s vitamins and minerals from being lost during the cooking process.
This means that the food is healthier for you to consume and you don’t need to add in extra additives that would make the food less appealing for health enthusiasts.
It also means that those who cannot have extra salt or fat because of health conditions can still enjoy their food.
Restaurant Quality Food.
Any type of meat that you cook in sous vide is going to come out tender, juicy, and moist while vegetables will always retain their crunch and color.
No more chewy chicken or soggy broccoli as foods will always retain their texture and rich flavors.
You Will Consistently Get Good Results.
The sous vide method uses gradual and precise temperature control, meaning that you can get the same results for the same dish, every single time.
This is perfect for individuals who love specific dishes a certain way, as it means you can prepare it the way you like without worrying about the dish coming out widely different from the last time you made it.
No More Undercooked or Overcooked Food.
One of the major issues when cooking on the stovetop is undercooked food. This occurs when you are cooking with high temperatures that quickly cook the outside of the food but take a while to cook the inside.
You end up with a cooked looking meal that is still raw and dangerous to eat.
This isn’t an issue with sous vide cooking as the low temperature ensures that the food is cooked all the way through and can be seared or browned afterward.
Schedule Your Time Better.
Like slow cooking, you can prepare your meals ahead of time and place it in the pouch to be sous vide at an appropriate time that works for you.
Many recipes can be cooked in under 30-minutes and longer meals can be done while you are at work or out running errands.
Extremely Easy to Use & Low Maintenance!
You do not need excessive amounts of time or attention to cook with the sous vide method. You do not have to stand over the machine and watch it as setting a timer is more than enough.
It is as simple as preparing your food, prepping the water bath, setting the temperature, and placing your food inside.
Just make sure to always clip your food to the side of the machine so that it doesn’t get caught in the circulator. Once your food is done, turn the machine off, dump the water bath and wipe the machine out.
You Can Cook in Large Quantities.
You may think that having a smaller machine means you can’t cook for large dinner parties; wrong. You can!
You can easily cook individual portions for a large group without having to worry about intensely watching over all the food. Now you can cook in large quantities and still enjoy the family gets together.
Minimize Food Waste.
While purchasing a sous vide machine is an investment upfront, you do end up accruing savings in the long run as this type of cooking method allows you to minimize waste.
How?
It doesn’t take up nearly as much electricity as ovens do, so whether you are preparing individual meals or entire family dinners, you end up seeing the cost savings via your utility bills.
Extend a Meal’s Shelf Life.
Foods that are cooked with the sous vide method can be quickly cooled down and frozen. You can then thaw them back out and re-heat using traditional methods.
This allows you to extend the shelf life of your food while still getting that perfectly tender and juicy meal options. Just make sure that when you go to reheat the food, you do it on lower temperatures to prevent overcooking or burning.
It is Very Safe to Use.
Unlike traditional styles of cooking where you manipulate high external temperatures to achieve a specific internal temperature, sous vide uses gradual and low temperatures from the get-go.
You will never reach boiling temperatures and the metal outside of your cooking device will never be hot to touch. This makes cooking in sous vide a lot safer for those who are used to getting burned from fire or heated metal.
Appeal to Multiple Palates.
Ever had a family dinner or dinner party where everyone wants something different, but cooking the food at different cook times or adding on different types of rubs, marinades, spices, and herbs is too time-consuming?
You can address this with sous vide cooking as you can place the different recipes into different pouches and then just simply manage the degree of doneness.
What is the Best Thing to Cook in Sous Vide?
Try cooking the following foods in sous vide!
- Tough Cuts of Meat. Do not shy away from tougher cuts of meat just because they are not “the best” or are less desirable. What makes them less desirable is the fact that they are harder to eat and tougher to cook because of their robust protein strands. A sous vide machine will break down these tougher cuts of meat, making them very tender and enjoyable to consume.
- Eggs! Eggs can be very tricky to get perfect every single time because of how delicate they are. If you like a specific consistency, cooking your eggs via sous vide is the way to go because of how precise the temperature is. You will end up with perfectly cooked eggs, every single time.
- Pork. Pork can be dry and bland at times and requires a lot more cooking care and prep to get it to be tender and flavorful. When you cook pork via sous vide, you keep all its fat and juices inside the pouch, leading to a tastier piece of pork chop.
- Vegetables. Carrots, broccoli, asparagus, beets, potatoes, green beans, cauliflower, fennel, leeks, and onions are all quite suitable with the sous vide method. Any type of root vegetable is going to turn out amazing.
- Lamb. Ever had extremely chewy lamb that is undercooked and way over flavored? Take away the guesswork with lamb and make a succulent dish instead.
What Should Not be Sous Vide?
Try to avoid cooking the following items in sous vide. We will explain why!
- Liver. While liver can be feasibly cooked with the sous vide method, it’s not worth your time since it does not benefit from the water bath. Why? The liver is already a very lean meat product to begin with, so you aren’t going to get as rich of a texture or flavor from cooking it sous vide.
- Fillet Fish/Steak. While you can get away with cooking fillet fish in sous vide, for most people, it ends up turning out wrong because of how delicate and flaky fish are. Once they go through the water bath, they tend to fall apart when you try to take them out of their pouch. Shellfish or scallops are better options. As for fillet steak, it is already tender and lean enough that the sous vide machine won’t have much of an impact on it.
- Hollandaise. This is an incredibly tricky food to get right and while some chefs will claim that sous vide works well for it, others note that it just ends up falling apart and looking unappetizing when you pull it out of the bag.
Keep in mind that regardless of what food you cook, you will need to nail down the right temperature and recipe. This may take you a few tries but once you get it, you can produce reliable and delicious results with minimal effort.