Holiday cooking

Helloooo it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Sorry! I've just been eating out so much and cooking quite a bit at home and I just couldn't decide on what to write. So heres a big post.

During one of my many home cooking adventures I stumbled across the 'Sous Vide' (soo veed) technique of cooking. This technique is used in quite a few more expensive dishes in higher end restaurants which meticulously cook their food to perfection, and to be able to do this myself at home with no technical ability at all, I find it particularly exciting.

Sous Vide

There are many cooking techniques out there that are well known: Deep/Shallow fry, stiry fry, pan fry, boiling, steaming, etc.. But the thing that sets Sous Vide apart from these is that the technique itself requires knowledge of the specific cooking temperatures of food and to a lesser extent water content and the behavior of the food that is being cooked when it is cooked. (Chemical reactions, physical processes, e.g. contraction / formation of collagen fibers.)

So in other words, Sous Vide is food science at it's best - at least what I've seen and tasted so far.

Sous Vide salmon - Take note of how the salmon broke. Just cooked to flaking point. Mindblowing texture. No knife was used.

What is Sous Vide?

Sous Vide means under a vacuum. The technique refers to cooking food in vacuum sealed plastic in a water bath at lower than normal cooking temperatures for a longer time. But why go through all the trouble? The answer is simple. The end product has a much more intense flavour and a better texture. Meats are so moist and tender you will be left unbelieving.  

The experiment begins

After a very successful experiment with a stray piece of salmon from a previous salmon crusade: 

Potato crusted salmon on crushed potatoes

Salmon crusted salmon on asian greens

Crispy skin salmon with asparagus and garlic dip

I  continue to exploit this technique like a child exploits all kinds of uses for their newfound toy.

Method

First I portion off my rib eye steak and soak it in a 10%  w/w brine for 10 minutes 

1 kg eye fillet $$$

 While it soaked I prepared a simple garlic thyme marinade

Garlic, Thyme, Olive oil, Soy, Rice vinegar and a splash of brandy

moosh

 Taking the steaks out of the brine, I dried them off with a paper towel and sealed them off in a glad zip bag after sucking the air out with a straw.

With the smallest burner on the stove at the lowest setting I set up a pot of water with a crumpled rectangular cake tin. The tin ensures no direct heat is transferred from the pot.

Lowest of low!

The home lab

After an hour and a half I took the steak out and put it on the pan to give it some colour

Not so pretty

Brushed up

Using whatever juices and remaining marinade that was left in the bag I made a quick sauce to plate up

Looking too well done and possibly dry

Results

So the beef turned out to be just under well done. I was disappointed.  The pang of failure seemed to hit me. The lack of colour and the rareness of the meat really put me off. So. I thought I had reached a point in my cooking where I could no longer pull off dishes without practise.

I gritted my teeth and shoved aside my intense hate for well done steak. Wiping away my tears for wasting my rib eye steak, I took a bite.

 It tasted pretty good! Okay, pretty good was an understatement - Even as a well done steak, it rivals a perfectly cooked medium to medium rare steak in terms of flavour, texture and moisture. This only lead me to wonder how a perfect medium rare sous vide steak would be like... but that's for next time. I'll report in again when I can get my hands on some more rib eye. Oh and I went and got a thermometer so I don't have to use my hand to test the water now haha. Until next time!