[I mentioned this in the, “Do you even cook, bro?” thread, but I didn’t want to hijack that thread, so I created another one.]
My New Year’s Resolution almost always consists of, “spend less money,” and “lose weight.” If y’all are anything like us, you eat out too much, which aggravates both issues: eating out is pricey, and it’s usually not all that healthy.
The most proffered solution to this vexing conundrum is “cook stuff at home.” But that usually requires two things: energy/time, and the skill/ability to cook things. When you have DoorDash in your area and you’re exhausted when you get home, the energy/time thing is a factor. When you have to look up instructions when you boil water (…sadly, not kidding), the latter becomes an issue.
I may have happened upon the perfect solution over the holidays. I would usually never comment on anything cooking-related because it’s so far outside my wheel-house, but I’m so stoked about this I wanted to share.
I found one of these Anova “Sous Vide” machines in a holiday buyer’s guide, and took a gamble on one. If you have no idea what “sous vide” is, you’re not alone. Had it not been for the buyer’s guide layman’s explanation, I wouldn’t have bothered Googling it. Basically: you “vacuum seal” things in a bag, then submerse the bag in an extremely consistent hot water bath for some period of time. You don’t need anything fancy to “vacuum” seal the bags, you basically just squeeze as much air out of them as you can.
Because the contents of the bag are immersed in water at a certain temperature, everything in the bag is heated to a consistent temperature. Because the bag is sealed, whatever’s inside can’t dry out the way most food would if you cooked it via other methods. What results is a nearly foolproof cooking method that requires little more than a sous vide apparatus and some Zip-Loc bags.
Once the food is done soaking, you can pull it out and sear it if you want. Searing isn’t necessary, but it adds a bit of flavor and makes the texture familiar (one common complaint about sous vide isn’t that the food tastes “weird,” just that it tastes “different.”)
It’s effectively idiot-proof. To give you an example of how easy it is: I have never managed to finish cooking a steak that didn’t result in the meat being reduced to charcoal or still mooing. The first try at cooking a steak earlier this week looked like this:
We tried simple boneless, skinless chicken breasts the next evening. They ended up evenly cooked, juicy, and flavorful. Probably not conveyed in the included picture, but here’s a picture nonetheless.
Last night we tried tilapia. We sealed it in the bag with some Italian dressing, then my SO seared it when we were done. Again, idiot-proof (speaking about myself, not my SO [love you, honey]). Juicy, flavorful, restaurant-quality stuff. I would have taken a photo, but I was too busy eating.
An additional benefit: you don’t even need to thaw the meat before you cook it. Add some extra time in the water bath, and the thing will thaw naturally, then cook. So if you forget to set out food to thaw the night before, you just need to wait a little longer the next day.
The cleanup is trivial: throw away the bags and wash the frying pan. That's it.
There were a few people in the aforementioned thread that had worked with sous vide before, so I hope they’ll chime in here. We’re really looking to learn the ins-and-outs, dos-and-don’ts, because this seems like the answer to a lot of our food-related troubles.
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Originally Posted by JclInAtx
