Now that my kitchen is unpacked, cooking seems like the natural next step(as opposed to unpacking the rest of my belongings). Living in an apartment means that I do have some limitations with regards to how many random, expensive, but ultimately useless kitchen gadgets I should possess. Luckily I one of the main “gadgets” that I do own is a SousVide Supreme.
What is sous vide cooking? My friends may ask. Muffin(being full of bullshit) might try to convince you that the french means “under armpit” which hardly sounds like a delicious way to cook. In reality it means “under vacuum”, which is a bit of a misnomer. While vacuum sealing the food is part of cooking sous vide, the most important part of cooking sous vide is the temperature controlled water bath.
Just a teaser, here’s a picture of a pork tenderloin that I cooked sous vide recently:
As Alton Brown may say, Food + Heat = Cooking. While there are inexhaustible combinations of food components, there’s a relatively limited number of ways to apply heat. A medium rare steak has an internal temperature of 55C/130F. Traditionally on a grill or a hot skillet, you’re hitting the exterior of the meat with at least double this temperature(150C/300F), so that eventually the interior can hit the desired doneness. So when your steak is done, you basically have a gradient of temperature in the steak from overcooked to perfectly done.
With sous vide cooking, you vacuum seal the food, and put it into a water bath of exactly the desired temperature. Then take it out at any point once your food has hit equilibrium temperature. Said medium rare steak is now a perfectly done 55C/130F from edge to edge. Unfortunately that wonderful tasting crust on a steak is no where to be found with sous vide cooking. This crust is due to the Maillard reaction, which starts to take place at 155C/310F. Luckily for sous vide cooking, this is easily done to meats by searing the meat quickly with either a blowtorch or a smoking cast iron skillet.
Perhaps I’ll write more later, but here’s some samples with a simple pork tenderloin(bought from my local butchery – Rain Shadow Meats) with some fresh fennel.
First off, here’s an image of the pork tenderloin that’s been salted with chopped fennel bulbs and garlic in a vacuum sealed bag:
After a 4 hour water bath at 55C, it’s not the most appetizing piece of pork out there:
After a quick sear in a cast iron skillet with smoking oil, garlic, and chopped fennel it looks much more delicious:
Notice how the pork has a slightly pink medium rare color pretty much from end to end. Too bad the gnocchi paled in comparison. The flavors of the pork were excellent, but I probably need to combine it with some kind of sauce(perhaps apple or pears). There’s a bit too much depth of field in this photo, definitely something to pay attention to for future food porn photos.
