Question Of The Day #32

If you cook sous vide, what is the single biggest benefit you find with it? If you don’t, what’s your biggest reason for not trying it?

Find more posts tagged with

QOTD

Comments

Nick_Valliquette_64114

Consistancy and precision while cooking is my favourite thing about sous vide.. Things like fish, green veg and exclusive recipes like chefsteps hollandaise are why everything should cook this way

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Nick's answer is pretty comprehensive, but I would add convenience to my list. Cooking SV is largely fire-and-forget, if everything is working properly. I love that I can cook several meal's worth of food at the same time, while sitting on the couch watching football, beer in hand.

Kyle_Swanbeck_13795

I have gone on a serious kick of cooking sous vide and like Nick commented the precision and consistency are the best parts. It takes guess work out of temps and opens up a whole new thought process of things to cook and ways to cook them.

Jace_Credo_25619

It's useful for production kitchens and for eggs. I don't see it so necessary for anything else

Davide_Tassinari_86770

I got one for my mother and now she's not nervous about cooking "fancy" meat any more.

Even after I took the time to teach her the proper classical technique she would never buy pork chops or t-bones for herself: too scared of the hot pan, too nervous about under- or over-cooking, so she would buy some sad thin steaks and murder them on a medium pan (or buy roasts and murder them in an oven).

Now she has the CS time and temp chart, and she's ecstatic about being able to have properly cooked proteins any time she wants. That, and 65 °C eggs.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I've admittedly strayed from cooking SV a lot recently in lieu of the pressure cooker mainly because of time constraints. I really enjoy cooking tough cuts and I have a hard time planning far enough in advance to drop a shoulder in the bath for 48h or oxtails for 100h, etc. However, the consistency of the method and the ease of it was what drew me to it in the first place. I will be getting back to it soon though because my PC is starting to break down. I do use it almost exclusively for seafood though, I love the mix of barely cooked texture with such ease of cooking.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

As a kitchen brigade of one, I can knock out perfect proteins for 20 guests, not stressing that if I don't pull the proteins the second the timer goes off, I will end up with charcoal.

A lazy Sunday afternoon in the kitchen will give me individual portioned, fridge stable proteins to feed my wife and I for a month.

chriswrightcycles

Sous vide is an unattended cooking method. Frees up my hands for other tasks.

merridith

I cook SV regularly, including many CS recipes. Still, however by far, I find that white meat turkey or chicken is the most dramatic and revelatory thing ever. Second on the list would be beef short ribs and third would be pulled pork. I am not wild about steak or other beef dishes cooked SV. I also make ice cream base, custards and other such things in the water bath. Once I served a very large group SV scrambled eggs and everybody raved!

tshewman

precision, consistency and flexibility. My largest delay was the "plastics" issue (which turned out not to be one).

Manfred_18311

Consistency of the product in texture and taste, the temperature sensible cooking develops a fare more intense and optimized taste. I would say it brings the flavor origin of the product to an enhanced stage. I use SV for all meat and fish products near exclusive. Just had a whole duck 1500g, 2hr at 60°, than 8min per side under the grill, the taste was simply fantastic and incomparable with a plain roasted duck. I would only be limited by the size of the product in deciding for SV or not. A whole piglet for example.

Lukasz_Bodaszewski_121725

consistency and precision! love the fact that every time you cook s.v you get the same amazing results

mike-chefsteps

The biggest benefit is how much it has reduced my overcooking of proteins - e.g. the famous juicy chicken breast.

But I'm starting to appreciate the utility and flexibility of having a water bath in the kitchen. For example, we were bottling some beer recently, and fitting the hoses over the fermenter and bottling bucket spigots is always a pain. But this time we happened to have a 57 C water bath (mmm short ribs) running on the counter, so I just stuck the hose ends in there to soften them. I've also used it for heating hot packs, for my sore neck and for keeping food hot during transport.

And third, reading to learn to cook sous vide has led me on to learn so much more about food and cooking. I just kept pulling on that thread...