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Sous vide, French for “under vacuum,” involves cooking vacuum-packed food in a temperature-controlled water bath until it reaches your desired doneness. It may sound intimidating, and it’s true that this cooking method was once the domain of professional chefs with expensive equipment. Not anymore. Not only is sous vide cooking more accessible than ever, but there are also plenty of inexpensive sous vide cookers on the market. And like many modern kitchen gadgets, many also come with companion apps and Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing you to further automate the process. If you’re interested in giving sous vide cooking a try, we’re here to help you choose the right cooker and share some tips and tricks we’ve learned from our own experiments.
How to Choose a Smart Sous Vide Cooker
If you choose a sous vide cooker, we definitely recommend a smart model with Bluetooth or WiFi capabilities (or both), as the smart models often have more features than the other. We recommend getting a model with a companion app that helps you set and monitor the sous vide cooker temperature remotely. Bluetooth-only models work within 30-40 feet of the cooker, but models with WiFi let you monitor your cooking from anywhere in the home, as long as you’re connected to the same network. We also tend to prefer apps that already have recipes included, especially if you’re new to sous vide cooking and need help getting started.
Other factors to consider
The bare minimum items you need for sous vide cooking are a large metal pot (big enough to hold water) and a zip-top freezer bag to hold your food. Reusable Silicone Bags Products like Stasher’s use this method. Instead of using a vacuum sealer to remove the air, use the water displacement method: you place a bagged food partially open in water and the water pressure pushes the air out of the opening. Once everything is mostly underwater, you seal the bag and leave it submerged.
If it still floats, try weighing it down with a spoon or two. (From J. Kenji Lopez-Alt) Serious Sweets Also, large binder clips (Attach it to the bottom of the bag along with a heavy spoon.) If you’re worried about water getting into the bag, you can secure the top of the bag to a pot with a binder clip to keep the bag upright.
If you’re serious about sous vide cooking, you might want to invest in specialized equipment, such as a large restaurant-style plastic container instead of a pot. Cambro or RubbermaidNot only is plastic a better insulator than metal, but it also generally has more space for food, which is handy when cooking for a crowd.
If you use a pot or plastic container, it’s best to cover the container with plastic wrap if you’re cooking for an extended period of time to minimize evaporation. Some companies, like Chefsteps, offer custom silicone pot lids made specifically to fit sous vide cookers. Or, Lopez-Alt offers a much cheaper and more ingenious solution: cover the water with plastic wrap. Ping pong ballSlows evaporation.
Additionally, ziplock bags are perfect for most purposes, Vacuum Sealer It also comes with thick plastic bags specially designed for sous vide cooking, which you can use to sous vide vegetables or braised meats that require higher temperatures than normal (ziplock bags can burst at the seams when exposed to high temperatures). You can also freeze large quantities of food, vacuum pack them, and sous vide them straight from the freezer, making it a great way to cook in bulk.
You probably already have one, but a frying pan is also a great way to sear meat: a sous vide cooker can sear a steak to medium rare, but it can’t brown it, whereas a cast iron skillet can. Burnzomatic TS8000and we know that others Ciazar — but a cast-iron skillet is a lot more affordable than either option, and of course, if you have a grill, you could use that too.
Other miscellaneous items that might come in handy: Lopez-Alt likes to submerge pot lid organizers inside containers to keep sunken bags separate, and mason jars if you plan on making custard, yogurt, or breakfast cups in your sous vide.
Another essential item worth considering is a tripod to place the water container on so it doesn’t scratch your countertop.
Sous Vide Recipe Resources
Affordable sous vide cookers have been on the market for a few years now, and there’s no shortage of recipes and guidelines online to help you figure out what to do with your new kitchen gadget. The links below are some of our favorites, but keep in mind that a lot of it is based on personal preference; results may vary from person to person.
Analysis of variance
It’s no surprise that the manufacturers of the most popular sous vide machines have an extensive library of sous vide recipes, so if you’re not sure what to make sous vide, check out this website where you can find recipes from professionals and amateurs alike.
Serious Sweets
As mentioned several times in this guide, Serious Sweets It’s a really useful resource for learning all things sous vide cooking. Sous Vide Steak Slow-cooked seasoning is a favorite among Engadget staffers. Sous Vide Cooked EggsThe result was some of the best eggs I’ve ever eaten.
Chef Step
Years before creating Joule, ChefSteps made a name for itself as a culinary school with a focus on food science, technology, and molecular gastronomy, which is why its sous vide recipes are some of the most inventive we’ve ever seen — one recipe, for example, teaches you how to cook the perfect dish. Chicken breast Perfect accompaniments for chicken breasts are crisp apple and fennel salad and buttery carrot puree. Other popular recipes include deliciously tender Salmon filletJuicy Pork chop And Chefsteps’ own interpretation:Vacuum cooked fried eggs“You see this sometimes in certain Starbucks locations.”
Sous vide cooking at home
This is actually a cookbook by the people who made the Nomiku WiFi sous vide machine (now discontinued), but the recipes in this book can be used with any sous vide machine. Not only are the photos beautiful, but the recipes are also great, with recipes like jerk chicken wings, duck confit, and chocolate pots du crème.
Other noteworthy recipes:
Alternatives to Sous Vide Cooking
Besides immersion circulators like the ones we’ve introduced here, you can also choose multi-purpose appliances that have functions like sous vide cooking. For example, some Instant Pots have such a feature. Unfortunately, they don’t circulate the water like the immersion circulators mentioned above, and the temperature is not as precise (which is an obvious minus if you need to cook at a specific temperature). But if you don’t care too much about that, or you just want to try sous vide cooking every now and then, this might be a viable option.
If you absolutely need a multitasking appliance and have the money to spare, Anova Precision OvenIt uses steam, so you can cook sous vide without plastic bags, it also uses a fan to circulate moist air around your food, and a probe thermometer keeps your food at a precise temperature. Of course, the Precision Oven can also be used as a regular oven, making it great for toasting bread and bagels. It’s pretty pricey at $700, though, and it does take up a lot of counter space.
Image: Will Lipman (Courtesy of Engadget) (Anova / Holiday Lights Background)