My wins/fails with everyday household cooking - including experiments with Sous Vide and the occasional fling with Crockpot and stove.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

First Meal Sous Vide



A photo-blog of the first sous vide dinner I've cooked so far.  Looking forward to many more!

The Sous Vide Supreme "water bath" cooker.  It's looks prettier sitting on the counter than I expected.
Unfortunately with today being Thursday, the kitchen isn't quite as well-stocked with groceries as I would like.  But on-hand AND valid for the sous vide are apples and carrots.  Here are the results.


Carrots were peeled, sliced, and vacuum sealed into a pouch with butter, salt and pepper.


Apples chopped and vacuumed with butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

After a bit of experimenting, fiddling, and splashing water about, the packets were placed in the water at 183 degrees for about an hour.  While they cooked I started on some scrambled eggs with sausage and spinach, and whipped up some cream to go with dessert.

Cooked carrots, still bagged.  The thing about sous vide cooking is that after things are "done", they still need a bit of finishing off before serving.  That might be a sauce, or a quick sear in a pan to give them a nice brown finished look.  For the carrots I poured them into a very hot cast-iron skillet to caramelize.

Just barely saved from burning!  I actually liked the very dark spots of color they developed, and thought the smoky taste was nice with the concentrated sweetness of the cooked carrot.

The apples were treated in the same way...poured into a very hot skillet and browned while the liquid reduced. (Ha! The steam kept fogging up my lens :)


With the final results:



















Verdict - I'm excited!  While the first try took longer than it should have, overall I'm happy with the way these two items turned out.  The carrots were intensely carroty, and the apples were (while a bit overcooked at 1 hour) pretty tasty too.

2 comments:

b. said...

so when are we having apples again?

:D

Schatze said...

Hopefully soon! :)