Sous Vide Recipes. What are your best/favourite/proven uses? All suggestions welcome.

[Bm101]

Following from a previous thread about cooking wagyu steak.... I recently bought an Aldi sous vide machine. I've cooked a (rather extravagant) rib of beef in it for the first go which was possibly a bit daft but it was amazing. 6 hours at 52.5 and then rubbed it with salt, ground pepper and dried rosemary. Chucked it back in a hot oven for 15 minutes.
It was cooked perfectly rare wall to wall so to speak. Even the Mrs, not a great carnivore, went backtwice for more. I was astounded how good it was.
I also bought my first T Bone at the same local butcher and perhaps madly I also put that in. (Finished in the cast pan etc)I didn't get that quite right tbh.
Moving forwards I'm back to far more affordable and usual joints. So I was interested in what you guys could afford me in the way of good advice and experience.
Today I picked up an aged Lidl joint of roasting beef. It looks quite nice. I haven't bought a beef joint in years due to constant dissappointments so I'm hoping the sous vide gives me an option to enjoy rare and tender beef again. Shooting at the stars with a pop gun possibly but I live in hope.
I also picked up a much more affordable irate person joint. Thinking of doing that with a balsamaic/brown sugar glaze that looks deadly.
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes...m-with-balsamic-brown-sugar-glaze-recipe.htmlNext up I'm going to try and get a bit of venison from her old mans butcher in Essex (lockdown allowing). Father in law cooks that every year at christmas and it's amazing. He makes a big show of carving the loin Every. Single.Year.
Be sweetly pleasing if I could quietly make him quieten down lol. (In a nice way... )
Open to any and all ideas. From rabbit to fish and vegetables. Not just the big meat dishes. We could all eat more healthily.
Also.... while on the subject does anyone smoke duck?
And any tried and tested bombproof websites for sous vide recipes?

Cheers guys, as always.
Chris

 

[marcros]

you could also get yourself a blow torch to finish steaks. A mate swears by it, I dont have a sous vide myself (yet)

 

[Bm101]

Rather than the cast preheated iron pan ? I do have a rothenberger superfire 2 Mark. By coincidence.

 

[Rorschach]

Next time I do beef I am going to try the reverse sear method, I have heard it is more forgiving.

 

[craigs]

I use my sous vide for everything from burgers, to brisket, to cod loin (or any fish) and making yoghurt. try a pork fillet and cook it pink. also whole carrots in butter. look at the chefsteps website, or anova

 

[AJB Temple]

Check out this website for sous vide recipes used by restaurant chefs.

I would not use a blowtorch, even with Map gas, to finish steaks - takes ages. Black steel or cast iron pan, preheated (ridged or flat) or a hot BBQ cast iron plate.

Reverse sear works very well. If your oven is capable of maintaining an even and low temperature, similar results to SV can be achieved with low and slow. It is worth getting Neil Rankin's book on this. Highly recommended.

 

[Rorschach]

I'll be honest the main thing I use mine for is Chicken breasts, one of the most difficult to cook pieces of meat is easy when done sous vide. That being said, I tend to eat thighs more often now.

 

[craigs]

Rather than the cast preheated iron pan ? I do have a rothenberger superfire 2 Mark. By coincidence.

If you want to do the best searing, put a grate over a charcoal chimney starter, some chap done a load of testing and this was the best way as it gives you super high heat and you need a short time so you dont cook the interior more.

a la

 

[D_W]

For those of us who don't like vinegar, the world of food has really gone down hill in the last 25 years!!

I don't know much about the sous vide trend, but appreciate good meat with salt, garlic butter and black pepper. I think that's a taste that's a few decades out of date now.

 

[D_W]

serious question for the knowledgeable - why not heat a billet of metal with some mass to do the searing. Like a section of railroad track dumped in a fire and pulled back out.

I've been forging things lately, so I'm aware of the potential for injury, but if the objective is to get heat on a surface quickly, I can't think of a better way to do it.

I suppose this could be made more safe by suspending the segment of metal above a fire so that it didn't have to be moved.

I'm also aware that a fire pit grill that's too hot will literally render and burn the fat of meat immediately (resulting in fire on contact) and leave behind char.

 

[Rorschach]

I don't know much about the sous vide trend, but appreciate good meat with salt, garlic butter and black pepper. I think that's a taste that's a few decades out of date now.

On the contrary, using Sous vide cooking allows you to get the absolute best out of even the cheaper cuts of meat both in terms of texture and flavour. Salt, butter and pepper are often the only additions needed.

 

[D_W]

That would generally be my aim - to work with meat that needs no more than that. Nothing is much less inviting than meat that was started yesterday by someone, described in huge detail, and then is still tough and could be woven into a rope when you actually go to eat it....

...I just haven't followed the movement. Parents were children of farmers and all of the expensive cuts were sold, so cooking slowly was the only thing we ever did, but not the same way as is being discussed here.

 

[AJB Temple]

DW - because searing is a standard kitchen / chef I'm restaurant technique. Works fine with a hot steel or cast iron pan usually over gas or induction. As it is a frequent task it needs to be convenient.

 

[D_W]

OK - never mind my comments. I read the definition (cooking in a bag or jar in water for a long period of time). English speaking people using french to refer to something kind of reminds me of the japanese tool users (of which I am one - but many go overboard wanting to use only the japanese name).

The idea of cooking food in a bag immersed makes sense.

 

[AJB Temple]

The advantage of sous vide DW is that it delivers a consistent temperature throughout the chosen cut, but with no loss of moisture. Even slow cooked in a casserole, meat will leach moisture out. It has drawbacks though. I am not a fan of it for fish for example.

 

[D_W]

DW - because searing is a standard kitchen / chef I'm restaurant technique. Works fine with a hot steel or cast iron pan usually over gas or induction. As it is a frequent task it needs to be convenient.

I get that. all clad is located just south of me - moving on from my parents house allowed me to explore the world of spending enough money to be able to sear in pan and then throw the meat in the oven to finish, though I'm not remotely close to foodie and kind of figured that searing would make more sense after the fact than before if texture is important.

But I don't generally consider too much what chefs do where time is money except to observe what they're doing to get a general idea of steps (as pan searing and dumping the meat in the oven is something I saw on TV and it fits a lazy man like me well).

 

[AJB Temple]

I get that. all clad is located just south of me - moving on from my parents house allowed me to explore the world of spending enough money to be able to sear in pan and then throw the meat in the oven to finish, though I'm not remotely close to foodie and kind of figured that searing would make more sense after the fact than before if texture is important.

But I don't generally consider too much what chefs do where time is money except to observe what they're doing to get a general idea of steps (as pan searing and dumping the meat in the oven is something I saw on TV and it fits a lazy man like me well).

It's not just that time is money, but customers expect food to arrive quickly. If it is a high class restaurant aiming for excellence, sous vide enables food to be cooked bar finishing, and held at temperature. At home we can usually plan a special meal and allow for the time that sous vide or slow cook or cook pot simmer takes. We all seek optimised flavour I guess.

 

[Bm101]

Check out this website for sous vide recipes used by restaurant chefs.

I would not use a blowtorch, even with Map gas, to finish steaks - takes ages. Black steel or cast iron pan, preheated (ridged or flat) or a hot BBQ cast iron plate.

Reverse sear works very well. If your oven is capable of maintaining an even and low temperature, similar results to SV can be achieved with low and slow. It is worth getting Neil Rankin's book on this. Highly recommended.

Yeh I was being nice tbh. I wouldnt use mapp. I'm missing your weblink atm.
Thanks for all the replies guys.

 

[AJB Temple]

Sorry weblink is here: Sous Vide Recipes - Great British Chefs

 

[D_W]

The advantage of sous vide DW is that it delivers a consistent temperature throughout the chosen cut, but with no loss of moisture. Even slow cooked in a casserole, meat will leach moisture out. It has drawbacks though. I am not a fan of it for fish for example.

I can't imagine it for fish, either. Beef and pork come to mind for me as those are my two standby meats for back and forth between oven and cooktop (and in no way advanced, just trying to get the texture of the meat and the flavor right without it being tough or overcooked). I suppose butter is the poor man's searing bag.

As little as I know about meat, I learned pretty quickly when I left home (my mother cooks the life out of everything) that temperature control is awfully important if you're looking for the internal bits to have some kind of specific quality (other than cooked to death or, oops...still below room temperature).

As a kid, the go-to for my mother was pressure cooking. Sans bag, this results in almost magical things with cheap meat, but the result is missing the bag part - the meat is soft, but something has to be done with it after the cook to put flavor back in. Thus, the idea of the bag is very attractive - get control of blasting the flavor out of it into the liquid.

Laziness points me to understanding the smallest number of variables necessary to get good flavor, temp and texture.

Somewhat interesting that here in the states, "safe" electric pressure cookers are all over the place now - I guess the folks of means never started at the low end side and ate what we ate, so they've not heard of pressure cookers other than that they can blow up a kitchen. Something is missing from the current ones, though - I don't know if they work at lower pressure, but they don't do the same job as my mother's did.