Sous Vide: Egg Calculator

This is such an amazing way to cook an egg. The folks over at Chefsteps created a pretty handy egg calculator to get the yolk and white texture you want. Thin carrot slices were cut on a mandolin and sautéed with a little olive oil, salt, garlic and minced rosemary and topped with the egg. A few flakes of extra coarse sea salt provides a nice salty crunch and fresh cracked pepper adds a little heat.

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-egg-calculator

Sous Vide: A Lesson Learned

Lesson Learned: do not cook meat sous vide with liquid in the bag.

In trying to cook beef and chicken in various ways and the ones that are consistently bad are ones cooked in marinating liquid or traditional Indian curry as shown above. The meat takes on a tough dry texture despite being cooked at sixty to sixty-two degrees and flavor is strange and unexpectedly gamey. The texture and flavor come out better if the steak is fairly dry going into the bag with a little fat.

Sous Vide: Salmon

Salmon Mi Cuit (recipe taken from chef steps http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/salmon-mi-cuit)

Water bath cooking does quite well with chilled salmon dishes. The texture is comparable to smoked salmon and execution is straight forward and allows for a pretty wide margin of error. The dish above has whipped horseradish cream and pickled beets, recipes can be found at the chefsteps link above.

FAVORITE STUFF: Pyrex Griffen Beaker Set

I love this set of lab glassware from Pyrex. I may be a little extra nerdy with this but the set is made from borosilicate glass rather than the soda lime glass you will find in the Pyrex consumer grade glassware. Pyrex sold their consumer grade line to a separate company that uses soda lime glass unless you are lucky enough to get your Pyrex glassware in Europe (it is still made of borosilicate). I won't go into too much detail but borosilicate doesn't have has many thermal expansion issues (expanding when heating). The glass for the 1000 series (see the "1000" just below the white rectangle) is a little thin, the "heavy duty" 1003 series (pricier) is thicker. I use the above Griffen beaker set much more than I expected. It was a gift from my amazing girlfriend and I find it to be the perfect shape for using a hand mixer and the spout is fantastic for pouring into cream whippers, hot water for pour over coffee, ice cream churners etc...

1000 Series Set

27$ http://www.amazon.com/Corning-Graduated-Griffin-Beaker-Assortment/dp/B004DGIITC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424628182&sr=8-1&keywords=pyrex+griffin+beaker



1003 Series (thicker glass):

http://www.amazon.com/PYREX-Griffin-Beaker-Double-Graduated/dp/B00LORGN8Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1429675986&sr=8-2&keywords=pyrex+1003

http://www.amazon.com/PYREX-Griffin-Beaker-Double-Graduated/dp/B00LORGJ1C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1429675986&sr=8-4&keywords=pyrex+1003

Sous Vide: Strip Steak

 We tried it two different ways, pre (steak 1) and post seared (steak 2). I know I should not season before hand but considering how bland the chicken was, I did it to both anyway. We seared steak 1 in butter on a pan and steak 2 went straight into the bag. Before searing steak 1, I seasoned and put it in the fridge on a rack to dry out. I removed steak 1 from the fridge and quickly seared while it was pretty cold and put it in the bag. 

Both steaks cooked at 56°C for an hour and a half.

The non seared steak (steak 2) looks a strange gray throughout cooking, expected but still strange when you see it the first time.

When the time was up, we seared steak 2 with some butter, rosemary and thyme. We also threw the pre seared steak 1 on the pan quickly to get a better crust.

Steak 1

The pre seared steak 1 was juicier. Searing the steak when it is pretty chilly, from the fridge, keeps the middle pretty raw and ready to sous vide. Searing the steak after sous vide cooking (steak 2) dried it out a little. Maybe cooking it in a lower temp bath would make searing dry it out less but I'll play around with that more later. I didn't pay attention to grain when I sliced so it's a little chewier than it should have been. still pretty juicy.

Sous Vide: Crème brûlée

Amazing. This thing is perfect for egg based stuff. 

Youtube video coming soon.

Sous Vide: Egg

Really amazing egg. Custardy white and creamy yolk. Cooked it 75°C for thirteen minutes. I can't cook chicken with it (see last post) but I can cook a pretty good egg... A $170 egg cooker in my hands. Cooking with a circulator is not as straight forward as websites suggest, it takes a lot of prep.