I was trying to figure out how you could use a sous vide circulator to chill wine, since it doesn't have a cooling element in it. When I did a quick online search, I found out how that works. Basically, you just set up an ice bath and put in the circulator set to the lowest temperature setting (So it won't try to heat it up). The main thing it's doing is circulating the cold water to help chill the bottles faster, since the heat is being removed from the area around the bottles more efficiently.
Thanks - I didn't figure this out. Further though, there are more efficient ways to chill wine. The speed at which things cool is heavily dependent on the temperature gradient between, in this case, the water and the glass and wine. So, the sous vide will cool the warmer wine close to the glass quite quickly, but not as efficiently continue to cool the wine further inside the bottle. Circulating the wine (by agitation) in the bottle is important to place warmer wine close to the glass. There are relatively inexpensive wine cooking machines that have a mechanism to rotate the bottle to move the wine around. Adding salt to iced water will reduce the water temperature below zero, allowing you to cool the wine to less than 4C even faster - in less than five minutes if you manually rotate the bottle. :)
aha! was wondering that myself anyway, the fast way to do that with no extra equipment is to wrap the bottle in a _wet_ paper towel and throw it in the fridge for cooling off wine or in the freezer for quickly chilling warm beer to american-style cold. a good ten minutes will do the trick
One of my favorite Christmas presents from years ago was an immersion circulator for sous vide. I use it all the time, and find that it’s absolutely ruined me when it comes to lean meats. Always makes for amazing chicken breast or pork loin without stress. I’m definitely in the “ease of use” camp when it comes to it.
Yeah. I use it almost solely for meats. Lean meats, but also things like ribs or shoulders. It's really nice to toss a rack of ribs or a shoulder in the machine and come back tomorrow afternoon. There are some benefits for using it on vegetables, but eh.
This is the first video I watched about sous vide that really touched on the innovative aspects of sous vide, i.e. what is achievable ONLY by sous vide and the unusual ways of using it! Everyone talks about the perfect temperature, but never the breakdown of protein and pectin. Kudos to the team, I'll be subscribing to the Patreon!
I love the sous-vide method for meats. The part I didn't like was the bag waste and hauling out the vacuum sealer - solved both problems with a set of re-usable silicone bags, they work perfectly, just by keeping the open tops of them outside of the water. From Perfect Steaks to Perfect Pork shoulder, I haven't thrown out a plastic bag because of sous-vide in several years now.
This is what i recommend to everyone getting into sous vide. You can get reusable bags pretty cheap, especially if they're on sale. And even the absolute bottom of the barrel, garbage quality bags can be reused over and over if their air valve breaks just by putting a piece of tape over it. I buy a bundle of 60 cheap bags for $30, and they last me multiple years, allowing me to do a week or two of meal prep in just a few hours.
@@hassiaschbi no, the air is forced out of the bag by the water surrounding the extremely flexible bag, after a few minutes in the water, the air is all gone.
@@yourgooglemeister6745 Are you being an ass on purpose? I was tired of spending the time and money on vac sealing, and throwing out so many bags. The silicone bags are excellent.
You forgot to say how easy it is to expand. Not a lot more effort to cook one portion than to cook 20. And you don't need to vacuum the food. Water displacement in a ziplock is just as good. I love it for party or frozen meal prep.
I have one and I rarely use it. Mainly because I don't plan ahead enough. That said, sausages cooked sous vide are incredible. I do love the chuck steak trick, and you can basically do the same with pork shoulder (Chefsteps just released a video about it). And while I wouldn't buy an immersion circulator just for yogurt, it is perfect for making yogurt.
I put pork roasts in foodsaver bag with the seasoning already in. I could cook it from frozen if need be. I cooked a turkey breast that had my neighbor's mom driving over to try, it was so tender.
I made sous vide sausages for sausage sandwiches with sauteed peppers, onions, and mushrooms recently, and they were fantastic. You can also make breakfast sausage in a sous vide by following the same method for burgers - forming a log which you can then slice and sear individual patties from
Literally what I had for dinner last night lol. Pork loin with soy sauce, ginger, and honey in the bag cooked sous vide, and glazed on top of the pork when it’s finished in the pan. Soooo good
You should try SV on tough cuts, thats where SV really shines. Pork belly, oxtail, chuck, shin, the tougher it is, the better results SV will get you. I turned a tough chuck into fork tender chuck steak, and it secured me my girlfriend, now fiancee.
I have a sous vide + broiled pork belly in the fridge right now, and it's absolutely divine. A sous vide circulator is one of the items in my kitchen that I've gotten consistent use out of. You can also use it to make ultra thick burgers that you can cook as rare as you like
I worked in a japanes restaurant for a while. There was an immersion circulator filled with eggs at every shift! Lots of perfect soft boiled eggs for lots of bowls of ramen!
hmmmm, I didn't expect this to work for eggs, since the white requires a higher temperature to turn solid than the yolk, so cooking it to an even temperature should either give you liquid white and soft yolk, or soft yolk and runny white 🤔
@@MegaBanane9 You don't fully cook it to an even temperature, the outside will naturally cook faster than the inside. Chefsteps has a great "egg calculator" on their site to show you exactly what kind of temp / time combo gets you what kind of egg
Sous Vide also makes tempering chocolate really easy, as well as poaching eggs. It's a great tool for how cheap they are, how flexible it is for scaling up and down to different uses, and how little kitchen space they take up.
One thing you didn't touch on was energy usage of sous-vide. It would be a nice experiment to see how much energy it takes to cook 1 and 10 pounds of the same thing to see which uses more energy, an induction stove, sous vide, an air frier, regular oven, etc.
I use my sous vide often. I've even used it to make tough cheap cuts of skirt steak into the most tender and juicy fajitas just by cooking low and slow until the connective tissues dissolve and the fats melt into the muscle fibers. Then a quick sear on grill and I've got fajitas that my friends and family think I secretly worked at a restaurant or spent tons of money on a perfect cut of beef. The other benefit is if you cook using canning jars, you can create some portioned meals that will last longer in the fridge (as long as they are evacuated of air). The cost of the setup is cheap compared to the savings in food costs.
The biggest issue I have with sous vide is the use of plastic in heated food prep. Almost everything else about it has a place alongside more standard cooking techniques. I won't give up a fire charred steak or properly stir fried rice to it, but it's fantastic for dealing with dubious food that you don't want to boil to death or something that needs slow cooking anyway. We recently switched to silicon bags to try to avoid the plastic component. It works fairly well to the point I'm not a convert, but certainly won't say no to reasonable use in the kitchen.
@@jessehunter362 Absolutely! I'm not a chemist, and my regulatory days are behind me, but from what I have read (what we understand of the claimed chemistry and good manufacturing practice), it's about as safe as other common materials in the kitchen. Not as inert as borosilicate glass, nor as durable against wear as 316 steel, but in comparison to many ceramics on the market (heavy metals), or many wooden utensils with dubious manufacturing (e.g. non-food safe finishes), it's a preferred choice right now. I'd absolutely love a minutefood review of what wooden utensil finishes are safer on average, as well as what wood species should be avoided (either due to geographic/geologic sourcing or due to natural uptake of problematic minerals and chemicals).
@@DariusBaktash Glad you know that stuff better than me, just felt weird not trying to add clarification even when I agree on silicone’s safety. Wood video would be great, there’s a lot of information there to help clarify. Even beyond which woods are safe to use, there’s so much that goes into making and maintaining wooden cookware that i’d be surprised if there wasn’t already a book on it.
@@jessehunter362what are you talking about 😂. Plastic is made from polymerisation of carbon based materials, often petrochemicals such as crude oil. Silicone is a type of polymer made from silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. It's technically a synthetic rubber, not a plastic. Silicones are derived from silica (sand, for example). Idk what you're reading to think silicone is a plastic 😂
@@adzx4 My chemistry professor is my source for the definition of “plastic” I know: a synthetic material with polymers as the main ingredient. Rubber and plastic are not mutually exclusive terms, as far as i know. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise, I don’t have familiarity with the technical language used by materials scientists and higher level chemists, but silicones fit within the definition of plastic i have learned.
i'm team innovation all the way. the ability to not only cook your food to an exact temp, but also to do so uniformly throughout, is absolutely game changing. and the sear can get INSANE when you don't have to worry about also trying to cook the inside to temp. the versatility for sous vide is just unmatched
One of my go-to uses for an immersion circulator is defrosting rather than cooking. Keeps water moving while not using gallons and gallons, and you get temperature feedback on how it's going and when you're done.
If given the chance I will ALWAYS cook meat using sous vide. As long as people don't see the meat when I take it out and only see the meat after I've seared it then I've received rave reviews. It's especially useful for tough meats like brisket.
That's one aspect she left out at the end. I don't care about innovation nor ease-of-use. I do, however, care that the price of meat has gone sky high. With sous vide, I can buy cheaper, tougher cuts and still have delicious tender meats.
My biggest nitpick with the technology was the amount of plastic waste involved as the majority of set ups use single use vacuum bags. Now that there are reusable silicon versions out there I'm much more interested in trying it.
I think the biggest issue with Sous Vide cooking you missed (considering you guys also run Minute Earth) is its reliance to single use plastics. You could use zip lock bags to allow some reuse, but plastic is plasticm
Reusable silicone bags work for some items, especially if using a marinade, or you can use glass jars. Since silicone is thicker they can make it harder to remove air around the contents, but some air bubbles usually aren't a big problem. (I had some silicone bags split open on me after a few uses though)
There is a reusable zip top plastic bag brand you can get that has a tool to suck the air out. It’s a bit cumbersome but I’ve gotten several uses out of each bag.
@@squidward5110 Your feelings are acknowledged and respected. However, this is a method that has been used in thousands of top restaurants for many, many years - it's just now that it has come to home cooks, and only a small percentage will be sufficiently interested. There's more than one way to fry a steak. It's still cooking.
I just handed off some sous vide pork chops to my dad form him and my mother to have for dinner. It's just so easy to do. I don't mind the grey meat, because I almost always sous vide meat in a sauce. (In the case, it was creme of mushroom soup.) I also don't mind grey meat and the sciency nature of the cooking is a plus for me. ... Also, it is beyond easy. If you get the temperature right and know the minimum time, the outcome is nearly perfect every time. I do wonder if sous vide is environmentally friendly. You do have to heat up a lot of water, but once the water hits the right temperature, it doesn't take a lot of energy to keep it there. Also... you can cook whole eggs so they are barely set. I'm talking 59 - 60 degrees Celsius. Cook them and then peel them and use an emulsion blender on them. What you get is something with the taste and consistency of mayonnaise, but since you used the whole egg, it is mostly protein instead of mostly fat.
Got one, and designated it for specific dishes where I really want very specific properties. Primary cooked salmon and spare ribs. Chuck a lot of salmon into the water bath, and afterward put everything on glass. I got prepared salmon for spreadable and dinners. For sparerib I buy the ribs raw and add my own sauce to it. Only catch is that I need to prepare it 24 hours in advanced, but it beats most I get at restaurants. Also a tip I got from another fellow: Liquid smoke. If you want your sous vide to have that smokey flavor. Overall: I love it for whenever I want to infuse a certain flavor into the dish.
Another commenter here asking about the plastic issue. I’m not so concerned about plastic leaching into the food. I am concerned about plastic waste, and am trying to limit how much plastic I use and throw away. I realize everyone makes their own cost/benefit analysis about harm we do to the environment, but I’m surprised you didn’t mention it at all, especially in a science channel. Generally love your stuff btw. This just seemed like a big omission.
For me, the science experiment feeling of sous vide is exactly why I like it. I don't do it very much anymore but when I do I love it (and sometimes I also like it for the ease-of-prep-in-bulk thing).
Most of what I've heard on that front is an overextention of the process being overhyped. They're not so keen on the whole steak being cooked to the same doneness, and they like deep crusts and browning. It's almost like the food starts slipping into the uncanny valley.
I've been using sous vide for steaks for years and i will say it is my favorite way to cook meat. It's impossible to mess up and you always have the perfect doneness every time. I seriously recommend this for people who want to impress with their cooking.
On the ease of use side of things, i think there's almost a third group. My favourite covert entry come travel come cooking channel, devient ollam, teaches people to cook starting with sous vide. Recepies like "starbucks style egg cups" do lean on the batch cooking aspect, but he mostly focuses on the steak. Because the process is science forward, it can be less intimidating, and easier to pull off. Well, as long as you don't mind big spreadsheets...
The only time I use the sous vide method is when cooking thick bone-in steaks, usually pork or beef. When your meat is more than an inch or two thick, reverse searing is the preferable method. You can use the oven, but you risk drying out the outside of the meat before it hits the heat in the pan at the end. By the time it hits the plate your crust might be inedible. Sure, it takes longer, but you get a perfectly cooked steak all the way through. A couple tips: You don't need a sous vide machine or a vacuum bagger. Use a pot of water on the lowest burner and a meat thermometer to regulate the heat. You can use any leakproof plastic bag, pinned to a chopstick or skewer laid on top of the pot. Just make sure the bag does not touch the sides or bottom of the pot. I like using a twist-tie bag without the zipper. I'll just slowly dunk the bag in the pot before heating it, letting the water displace the air, before twisting it shut under the water and tying it off. EZ
I love cooking sous vide. And when people ask me for my recipes and I mention my cooking methods, I often find people would rather buy their own circulator because of how good it is
I'm in the "I love sous-vide" camp. For its ease, but also for the perfect temperature. I love it for steaks, where the meat is the same temperature the whole way through (how many times have you ordered a steak, let's say medium rare to see the thin part is well done and the thickest part is barely cooked?). Also, I always make creme anglaise/custard in sous vide since it's a very thin temperature window between "it takes forever because the temperature is too low" and "I've made scrambled eggs"
if you shop at a grocery store your food almost certainly wasted orders of magnitude more plastic getting trough the supply chain that you should be lobbying your congressman about regulating rather than fretting about using a couple vacuum bags yourself.
@@kaiserruhsam Plastic waste in the grocery industry is a big problem we should aim to solve, but I believe the person you are replying to is addressing cooking food in plastic bags rather than being worried about wasting them. I for one don't want more plastic waste and I don't want to cook my food in a plastic bag, it's easy enough to cook with proper technique to not need a sous vide imo.
@@ledheavy26 food-safe bags are food-safe, and while i can make an acceptable steak or whatever with traditional methods, there are novel preparations of a variety of foods that are basically impossible without the precise temperature control... that and making the cheapest cut of beef taste and texture like a well prepared above-average cut are the unreproducible incentives for sous vide. tl;dr get over your plastic hangup and taste the food.
Quick tip for anybody using one: Dont follow her setup. Use a cooler and cover it with tin foil, listen to the machine and you can tell its working far less.
@@sanjaymatsuda4504These temperatures are too low for radiation to have much of any affect. However, aluminum foil is significantly more recycleable than a plastic film would be.
Sous vide can allow huge amounts to be precooked ahead of time, then stored in the fridge before finishing. I think that's the best benefit for me, since cooking prep can be done in bulk while preserving variety.
While I don't use my immersion heater for meat or vegetables anymore, I've found that the precise temperature control is fantastic for incubation and fermentation. So - yogurt, homemade cheese curds ( while "ripening" ), bread dough, and even 1-gallon batches of beer, all go into the water bath. And it's also great for pot-o-creme or creme brulee in mason jars.
In our lab we use that same sou vide heater in this video as a water bath. That's because it reaches temperature much faster and is way cheaper than a traditional lab water bath.
I think you described it as it should be. As a tool to help you make food better. Not an all for 1 cooking method. Also, try putting butter and rosemary/thyme and garlic….(on anything actually);I was going to say steak. And then searing it it’s so good!
The ease is a huge factor for me given my lifestyle. Get home from work, throw in sous vide, then go run errands or such. It also narrows down the things affecting my cooking. I self-teach (or educate via youtube and forums) a lot for my cooking, so especially when it comes to meats I don't know why two seemingly identical processes go so different. Is it the cut, my cookware, how I cooked it, something else? With Sous vide I know I cooked it the same way each time and can learn more about other uncertainties
Sous vide is another tool in the toolbox. It's not about can you do it for everything all the time. But it's great for meats and other applications (try mashed potatoes or even custards). But it's the very best way to be able to serve proteins to larger groups for sure.
Oh yay I’m glad you made a video on this. I use sous vide mostly for meats that dry out easily (chicken, turkey, and pork) but also for some that take a while to cook, like brisket. It’s cool it also works on vegetables; I never considered use it for that for some reason.
By far the best thing about Sousvide for me is how amazing it is at re-heating food. Re-heating steak or really anything almost always overcooks something, but pop it in the sousvide and that is impossible.
Omg only your 25th? I love them so much, they've been a part of my regular viewing and I've forgotten this is a relatively new spin-off of minute earth.
It's amazing for meal prep. Buy all the meat, season and vacuum seal, freeze it away. Cook it in it's bath, thawed or frozen, do some stuff until it's ready, then finish it off on the grill with a propane torch.
I use an instant pot / multicooker for years and I never vacuum sealed anything. Never had any problem either. 80% of the food I eat I cook this way, but I guess it's more of a "slow cooking at controlled temperature" process than proper sous vide, maybe? I find it VERY convenient and my results are excellent. Never tried harder cuts of meat for very long periods like you suggested, I admit I learned that from your video. Never thought of sous vide for more than 3 or 4 hours was effective on doing anything (unless you're cooking something too large for the target temperature to reach the core long enough to cook/kill bacteria). I am surely going to give that idea a try.
It's sad that you don't like sous-vide. I love it for meats. My steaks and chicken are always perfectly done now. I can throw it in when I go to work, then I use my propane torch when I come home to get the sear done. The food is always amazing without worrying about whether it will be done or not. By far my favorite method of cooking. Going to try the carrots today, I usually don't do veggies, but I'm make pulled pork in my slow cooker so I have plenty of time
I personally only really got one for steaks, because I really like the way they turn out. But to be honest it is only marginally better than the "reverse searing" technique (and some people even disagree with this). I think a lot of people like it because it is one of the only cooking techniques I know of where you get almost the best possible result every time with a method that is basically impossible to screw up.
It’s great for meats that dry out easily like chicken, or Turkey breast, and boneless pork loin, Oy tenderloin. It’s also excellent at turning a cheep cut of beef in to something very delicious. It’s not the most fun or intuitive way to cook, but I find very useful, and cost saving. It can convert a $5.99 a pound chuck roast in to a fantastic thick cut steak. I’m not a super fan, mostly because of the plating waste, but I probably use it once or twice a week. Fair and accurate review, I subscribed 😁
One of the best uses I've found is for cooking steaks... my wife likes medium well while I prefer medium rare. I pre-cook hers in the sous vide at 145⁰ then drop the temp to 125⁰ for mine (I leave hers in the sous vide). Then I pan sear both for the same amount of time to get two steaks cooked perfectly to our preferences. The other cool thing is that you don't need to rest meat after it's been in the sous vide, making it a lot easier to have everything ready at the same time.
For me, when I’m cooking bison steak, I always use sous vide. It’s really important to not overcook bison… It becomes tough very quickly if overcooked. Cooking to precise temperature is essential, and then I follow it up with a quick seer in a really hot cast-iron pan.
@@hackarma2072 Yeah, with what kind of food you can actually get away with just chopping a bit off and with which you run the risk of not so nice side effects
th-cam.com/video/NgduUAu8s3g/w-d-xo.html This is a video by Adam Ragusea, another youtuber I love that makes food science videos as well! This is an amazing video about mold that should answer your questions
@@be_cracked8212 given you only see a small ammount of rot vs the area the mould mycelium has grown over the food, once something has started to go mouldy its considered spoilt. A lot of moulds are toxic or straight up carcinogenic and its hard to tell which one your dealing with so never worth the risk.
Is this a spot to make requests? Something I've wanted a video about since your video about different cooking methods and air fryers: what about steaming as a cooking method? Why do steamed veggies mostly taste so bad but everything else steamed tastes so good? What are the properties of steaming that achieve that and the pros/cons? Another thing I'm curious about: tenderizing foods, how different methods work (eg: slow cooking, physical tenderization, baking soda, marinades, etc) and all that.
I have one and i love it. I actually got it as a response to something my dad got, a smoker grill since i have an apartment. It's similarish, in that its low temp, slow cooking, but what he can't do in variety, I can't do in flavorings and sear.
A different method for the meats to avoid grey blobs is to sear before you bag. It also helps avoid over-cooking post bath which is a super easy mistake to make since the meat is ideally at the perfect temp already
I have a specific recipe I use sous vide for (though instead of vacuum packing, I push all the air out of a Ziploc bag with water). I throw steaks into a bag and add a "marinade" I came up with, that way as it cooks for that long period of time I'm able to infuse the steak with a lot of flavors like liquid smoke, salt, butter, Worcestershire sauce, black garlic, or umami powder (I also add meat tenderizer so it's ULTRA tender). Then I take it out and hit it on a grill with one of those flame throwers used for killing weeds (my understanding is the higher temperature and faster the searing process, the better the sear). So I get a perfect doneness, perfect doneness gradient, ultra tender, ultra flavorful, and perfectly seared steak. The process is complicated though, so I only do it when cooking for multiple people since it's easy to cook multiple steaks at once and sear them all at the end. They're so good my mom says she doesn't get steaks at restaurants anymore because they aren't as good as mine (though there are a lot of flavors I can taste at restaurants I like that I don't get with my method). A few more things I want to try are adding baking soda sometime before the sear so that the maillard reaction more readily takes place, and dehydrating the steaks and/or concentrating the marinade so the steaks' juices don't dilute too much.
I love sous vide for meat/pork. We can buy a whole pork loin, cut it into chops, season and vacuum seal many chops at once. Throw them in the freezer, then just toss them into the sous vide bath when we want them. So easy...! And amazingly delicious.
I sometimes do a "dry" sous vide a la Alton Brown for cooking multiple steaks. You set your oven as low as it goes (ideally 180-200F) and set your steaks on a rack over a sheet pan for 1-1.5 hours, until the internal temp has achieved 125F or so. Because it's so slow, you have a large window of opportunity for pulling your steaks at the perfect internal temp, and you have barely any carryover at all. Then sear in a ripping hot cast iron skillet for maybe 20-30 seconds per side and it's perfect. For someone not ready to add another tool to his appliance garage, this has been a good crossover method for me.
With Sous Vide you have the added costs of the vacuum sealer, plastic to seal the food, and the immersion circulator. These aren't common kitchen staples, for most people.
You don't need a vacuum sealer, just ziplock bags. Use the water immersion method to remove air. That's what I do. Even after my son bought me a vacuum sealer.
As the others said there is no need for a vaccum sealer. Honestly, you don't even need to close the bags if you clip them to the side of the container.
My immersion stick made me love pork tenderloin and roast beef. Any time I've made it or had it before, it was dry, dusty sawdust. Now I cook it all the time and it's sooooo moist and tasty. I'm both an easy of cooking AND an innovator. My stuffed pork tenderloin is to die for and it would not be possible without my sous vide.
The biggest benefit is for longevity. It avoids advanced glycation end products present when food turns brown from heat (assuming you skip the searing). AGEs are a significant contributor to aging/disease.
I remember it now! After all these years! At primary school we accdintally cooked this way an entire fish tank of fish! We weren't allowed to eat the fish afterward. But maybe someone else were?
My biggest issue with these is the need for non-reusable bags. I see they’re a lot cheaper than they used to be, though. I’m tempted to try the thing though because I like the idea of being able to walk away for hours without worrying about overcooking dinner or burning the bottom of the food like sometimes happened in a crockpot.
These days I use it mostly for Partys or pricey meats I dont regulat cook like lamb. Its an awesome tool for meal prep and beginners and also cheap. Sometimes you find a sous vide stick for 30-40$, a bucket or old cooler can be used as a water vessel and the vacuum machine and bags can be replaced with a zip lock bag and the water method.
I use sous vide to do my meal preps for the week. Each vacuum sealed bag contains the same meat as the others but different seasoning and/or marinades. TBH I'm rather lazy so I don't sear them after. The point is, I get to eat different things everyday (albeit the same meat but you can easily cook different meats together too).
It’s funny how words can change meaning when jumping languages. As native French speaker, “sous vide” refers only to the process of removing air from a container (usually food, usually before freezing). Some people store their clothes “sous vide” when travelling to save space, for example.
For me sous vide is also fun. Toy still have to fry stuff afterwards, still prepare othe food aside from the steak or other sous vide meat. But I agree that it's main strengths are perfect results , ease of use and experiments. 😊
i dont sous vide the vast majority of things i cook, but there are certain things i only cook sous vide these days, namely chicken breast and pork fillet. I also use sous vide when I bbq something like chicken for multiple people to make it super reliable and stress free. I personally love it cause it gives me options for super easy meals that i can make whilst doing other things like cleaning a filthy kitchen, preparing another element of the dish, or just going for a nap. Its never super exciting but the reliability and ease is every now and then just exactly what i need to get a super simple but delicious meal on the plate.
Sous Vide is my favorite method for.... ...pasteurizing Eggs (for use in ice creams, nogs, smoothies, etc) ...barbecue (with a cold smoke first) ...mashed potatoes (I cook them with all the cream, butter, seasonings, etc. Drain it. Mash them. Add the liquid back in. Keeps all the russet flavor so it's like eating a creamy potato chip) ...thawing a turkey when I forgot to set it in the fridge three days ago and today is Thanksgiving.
For me, it is the perfect way to cook delicate white fish like haddock. Put a nice marinade in the bag, start your rice cooker, come back after a while and microwave some veggies for an amazing meal.
@@MinuteFood Do they stay sealed? I've been lookign for some for a long time, but the sizes are wierd and they tend to open because they are more rigid
It's so weird. I see a video about sous vide, I think "neat, maybe I'll watch it later", click away and forget it. Ten minutes later I see this video and click it instantly...
I got one for Christmas and I love it, but it's not something I use every day. It's great for those days where I know I'm going to be getting home late. After a particularly long day at work I don't want to go through the whole hullabaloo of cooking a good meal, I just want to get home, slap whatever I've got cooking in a pan for a couple minutes, and have a nice piece of seared meat. I basically use it like an alternative to my Crockpot. A slow cooked stew or pot roast is nice and comforting on a cold day, but not quite as much so when it's 110°F out
Another weird thing sousvide can do is Clean off hard water built-up. Use a combination of water and vinegar and heat it to 140° for about 15 minutes. cleans off faucet nozzles, and various other things that have hard water buildup in record time.
Most instapots and the like have a sous vide function. It works well, holds the heat better than the open container you show. I’ve even used a cooler with no element to do low temp items like steaks. Tap water gets to about 120F. Even with some cooling, that can get the meat to 100-110, fine for sous vide especially with a sear afterward. You can always add a little hot tap or boiled water to make temp adjustments later on in the day.
It can deactivate the enzyme that causes browning in avocados. Immersion circulate your avocados before making your guac for the next party, and it can sit on the table for hours with minimal discoloration.
Cheap cuts of meat that get fantastic results are my main uses for sousvide. Perfect juicy pulled pork that never got warmer than 60C. Roasts and steaks with bones in still get perfectly cooked near the bone. Duck leg confit without adding any fat. Do that in small portion sized bags and you'll be able to just open a bag and finish/reheat as needed any day within 2 weeks or so. Perfectly tempered choccolate or how about the most perfect creme brulee without any risk of overcooking? With a chamber vac, you could also portion out soup and freeze it and easily reheat in the bag.
I was trying to figure out how to use more plastic this year and I think sous vide might be the thing. Shoutouts on throwing just the pre-packaged meat in the box, smart move.
You can achieve similar effects to sous vide, by just packing the food in foil and put it in a convection ofen. I do all my steaks this way, slow cook reverse sear. Its close to fool prove and always has fantastic results, no additional equipment needed. Cheers
There is one food I find I want sou-vied, and that is fish. Fish VERY easily gets overcooked, but with sou vide that doesn't happen nearly as much. Particularly needed with lean/white fish like cod. More partial to baked or pan fried salmon while cod easily gets bland and mushy.
Worth noting a few things: The maillard reaction can happen at room temp and/or be sped up by other things, such as making the marinade you put in the bag alkaline with baking soda. If you are going to marinade or brine your meat, that time is instantly saved because the food can slow cook while marinading instead of sitting in your fridge for 30 minutes to 4 hours. 145F is too low for chicken breast for most people. It will be safe, but TOO soft and moist, almost jello-y. It wont taste like chicken to people. If you sous vide at 150-155F, it will have a more appealing texture and be cooked MUCH faster. Vacuum sealing is overkill. Most people use ziploc freezer bags or use a big bag that you roll up the edge and clip it to the wall of your immersion container
Sous Vide has its applications in say, a high end steakhouse where you will want to mitigate errors as much as possible and turn out the most consistent steaks you possibly can. Having tried a quickly seared sous vide and a steak cooked on a grill to medium rare (my preferred level for most steaks), I prefer the grill steak for its better char.
You don't have to incinerate your chicken at all. So many people get hung up on the recommended temperature for food and forget what matters is TIME at temp. Less than a minute at 155 will be just as safe as 165 instantly for chicken for example.
Another usage is to prepare the meat beforehand and use it when you wish. So you sous vide more food, and without opening after that, you freeze it and it keeps the quality and safety for a long time. When you use it, only defrost it and sear it. Quick meal.
Ive always been interested in trying it myself but have come to realize that I’d most likely use the immersion circulator for photo developing chemicals
The other sciencey benefit of sous vide is diffusion of flavor. Sous vide tends to intensify flavors in the substance since the aromatics have nowhere to go. This is more the "vide" part at work. This can eliminate the need for marinating since that all happens while the thing is cooking. The danger is often *over* flavoring.
I usually choose it for ease of use - set it up and come back after doing other things for an hour or so without having to worry about watching it like i would for something on the stove top. Or I know I can get red meats and tougher cuts reliably tender. Most of the time I just want to cook something quickly and get to eating though - roasting in the oven usually takes a bit less time and often just as little attention. With time and planning there's some things i only do sous vide, like a pork shoulder overnight that I finish on the BBQ with some wood smoke.
I do sous vide cooking all the time for chicken to salmon to beef. The only time I did it for an extended period was for freezer-burned steaks (the vacuum bag was cut open in the deep freezer). But 30 hours with a sous-vide and it was like nothing ever happened. I've had freezer burned steaks cooked normally, and they were awful. I think the sous-vide method allowed the meat to re-absorb the moisture and tenderize.
the fact that they’ve only had 25 videos is kind of crazy to me it feels like there’s way more
ikr!? wtf
You're probably just used to all of "Minute-verse" videos haha
wait there's only 25 videos? dang I guess MintueFood is one of their newer 'minute' series
Did they do food-related videos on the MinutePhysics channel before? 🤔
They know how to pack a lot of content in such a short format, I shamelessly admire the skill.
I was trying to figure out how you could use a sous vide circulator to chill wine, since it doesn't have a cooling element in it. When I did a quick online search, I found out how that works. Basically, you just set up an ice bath and put in the circulator set to the lowest temperature setting (So it won't try to heat it up). The main thing it's doing is circulating the cold water to help chill the bottles faster, since the heat is being removed from the area around the bottles more efficiently.
Thanks - I didn't figure this out. Further though, there are more efficient ways to chill wine. The speed at which things cool is heavily dependent on the temperature gradient between, in this case, the water and the glass and wine. So, the sous vide will cool the warmer wine close to the glass quite quickly, but not as efficiently continue to cool the wine further inside the bottle. Circulating the wine (by agitation) in the bottle is important to place warmer wine close to the glass.
There are relatively inexpensive wine cooking machines that have a mechanism to rotate the bottle to move the wine around. Adding salt to iced water will reduce the water temperature below zero, allowing you to cool the wine to less than 4C even faster - in less than five minutes if you manually rotate the bottle. :)
There ya go. Folks don’t realize how that works. The ol delta T.
aha! was wondering that myself
anyway, the fast way to do that with no extra equipment is to wrap the bottle in a _wet_ paper towel and throw it in the fridge for cooling off wine or in the freezer for quickly chilling warm beer to american-style cold. a good ten minutes will do the trick
Holly shit that’s genius
this is beyond stupid. just put the wine in an ice bath.
One of my favorite Christmas presents from years ago was an immersion circulator for sous vide. I use it all the time, and find that it’s absolutely ruined me when it comes to lean meats. Always makes for amazing chicken breast or pork loin without stress. I’m definitely in the “ease of use” camp when it comes to it.
If you haven't tried a chuck steak, you *have* to. Truly incredible how transformative the process is to such a tough cut.
Yeah. I use it almost solely for meats. Lean meats, but also things like ribs or shoulders. It's really nice to toss a rack of ribs or a shoulder in the machine and come back tomorrow afternoon. There are some benefits for using it on vegetables, but eh.
This is the first video I watched about sous vide that really touched on the innovative aspects of sous vide, i.e. what is achievable ONLY by sous vide and the unusual ways of using it! Everyone talks about the perfect temperature, but never the breakdown of protein and pectin. Kudos to the team, I'll be subscribing to the Patreon!
I love the sous-vide method for meats. The part I didn't like was the bag waste and hauling out the vacuum sealer - solved both problems with a set of re-usable silicone bags, they work perfectly, just by keeping the open tops of them outside of the water. From Perfect Steaks to Perfect Pork shoulder, I haven't thrown out a plastic bag because of sous-vide in several years now.
This is what i recommend to everyone getting into sous vide. You can get reusable bags pretty cheap, especially if they're on sale. And even the absolute bottom of the barrel, garbage quality bags can be reused over and over if their air valve breaks just by putting a piece of tape over it. I buy a bundle of 60 cheap bags for $30, and they last me multiple years, allowing me to do a week or two of meal prep in just a few hours.
Isn't the air inside the bag a problem?
@@hassiaschbi no, the air is forced out of the bag by the water surrounding the extremely flexible bag, after a few minutes in the water, the air is all gone.
Good for you hero you get 2 virtue points for today!
@@yourgooglemeister6745 Are you being an ass on purpose? I was tired of spending the time and money on vac sealing, and throwing out so many bags. The silicone bags are excellent.
You forgot to say how easy it is to expand. Not a lot more effort to cook one portion than to cook 20. And you don't need to vacuum the food. Water displacement in a ziplock is just as good. I love it for party or frozen meal prep.
I have one and I rarely use it. Mainly because I don't plan ahead enough. That said, sausages cooked sous vide are incredible. I do love the chuck steak trick, and you can basically do the same with pork shoulder (Chefsteps just released a video about it). And while I wouldn't buy an immersion circulator just for yogurt, it is perfect for making yogurt.
Freeze stuff ahead of time. Then just drop it in and add ~30 minutes to the cooking time. I keep my freezer filled with vacuum packed meat
I put pork roasts in foodsaver bag with the seasoning already in. I could cook it from frozen if need be. I cooked a turkey breast that had my neighbor's mom driving over to try, it was so tender.
I made sous vide sausages for sausage sandwiches with sauteed peppers, onions, and mushrooms recently, and they were fantastic. You can also make breakfast sausage in a sous vide by following the same method for burgers - forming a log which you can then slice and sear individual patties from
if you like lean PERFECTLY cooked pork loin, chops or white meat chicken done EASY this is pretty awesome.
Literally what I had for dinner last night lol. Pork loin with soy sauce, ginger, and honey in the bag cooked sous vide, and glazed on top of the pork when it’s finished in the pan. Soooo good
Pork chops with a little Italian seasoning and it tastes like breakfast sausage and has the texture of ham!
Pork belly in marinade is amazing cooked this way. Perfectly rendered fat every time.
You should try SV on tough cuts, thats where SV really shines. Pork belly, oxtail, chuck, shin, the tougher it is, the better results SV will get you. I turned a tough chuck into fork tender chuck steak, and it secured me my girlfriend, now fiancee.
I have a sous vide + broiled pork belly in the fridge right now, and it's absolutely divine. A sous vide circulator is one of the items in my kitchen that I've gotten consistent use out of. You can also use it to make ultra thick burgers that you can cook as rare as you like
I worked in a japanes restaurant for a while. There was an immersion circulator filled with eggs at every shift! Lots of perfect soft boiled eggs for lots of bowls of ramen!
hmmmm, I didn't expect this to work for eggs, since the white requires a higher temperature to turn solid than the yolk, so cooking it to an even temperature should either give you liquid white and soft yolk, or soft yolk and runny white 🤔
That's exactly how ramen eggs are done for the smarter restaurants nowadays
@@MegaBanane9 You don't fully cook it to an even temperature, the outside will naturally cook faster than the inside. Chefsteps has a great "egg calculator" on their site to show you exactly what kind of temp / time combo gets you what kind of egg
Sous Vide also makes tempering chocolate really easy, as well as poaching eggs. It's a great tool for how cheap they are, how flexible it is for scaling up and down to different uses, and how little kitchen space they take up.
Best way to poach eggs is soft boiling them though ~ courtesy of Jacques pépin
One thing you didn't touch on was energy usage of sous-vide. It would be a nice experiment to see how much energy it takes to cook 1 and 10 pounds of the same thing to see which uses more energy, an induction stove, sous vide, an air frier, regular oven, etc.
And use an insulated bowl pleased!
don't forget the microwave
this is science goddammit
I'd be super interested in that
If you start with hot water from the tap, and have an insulated vessel with a lid, then sous vide should be very efficient
@@MikeTaffet yeah. I use my crockpot. It takes about as much time as if I cooked stew.
I use my sous vide often. I've even used it to make tough cheap cuts of skirt steak into the most tender and juicy fajitas just by cooking low and slow until the connective tissues dissolve and the fats melt into the muscle fibers. Then a quick sear on grill and I've got fajitas that my friends and family think I secretly worked at a restaurant or spent tons of money on a perfect cut of beef.
The other benefit is if you cook using canning jars, you can create some portioned meals that will last longer in the fridge (as long as they are evacuated of air). The cost of the setup is cheap compared to the savings in food costs.
Good luck. Food business is about logistics though
YAY!!! I asked for this in your air fryer episode. I'm so glad you got around to it. Thank you!
The biggest issue I have with sous vide is the use of plastic in heated food prep. Almost everything else about it has a place alongside more standard cooking techniques. I won't give up a fire charred steak or properly stir fried rice to it, but it's fantastic for dealing with dubious food that you don't want to boil to death or something that needs slow cooking anyway.
We recently switched to silicon bags to try to avoid the plastic component. It works fairly well to the point I'm not a convert, but certainly won't say no to reasonable use in the kitchen.
Silicone is still a plastic, just among the better groups of them as far as toxicity goes.
@@jessehunter362 Absolutely!
I'm not a chemist, and my regulatory days are behind me, but from what I have read (what we understand of the claimed chemistry and good manufacturing practice), it's about as safe as other common materials in the kitchen. Not as inert as borosilicate glass, nor as durable against wear as 316 steel, but in comparison to many ceramics on the market (heavy metals), or many wooden utensils with dubious manufacturing (e.g. non-food safe finishes), it's a preferred choice right now.
I'd absolutely love a minutefood review of what wooden utensil finishes are safer on average, as well as what wood species should be avoided (either due to geographic/geologic sourcing or due to natural uptake of problematic minerals and chemicals).
@@DariusBaktash Glad you know that stuff better than me, just felt weird not trying to add clarification even when I agree on silicone’s safety.
Wood video would be great, there’s a lot of information there to help clarify. Even beyond which woods are safe to use, there’s so much that goes into making and maintaining wooden cookware that i’d be surprised if there wasn’t already a book on it.
@@jessehunter362what are you talking about 😂. Plastic is made from polymerisation of carbon based materials, often petrochemicals such as crude oil. Silicone is a type of polymer made from silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. It's technically a synthetic rubber, not a plastic. Silicones are derived from silica (sand, for example).
Idk what you're reading to think silicone is a plastic 😂
@@adzx4 My chemistry professor is my source for the definition of “plastic” I know: a synthetic material with polymers as the main ingredient. Rubber and plastic are not mutually exclusive terms, as far as i know. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise, I don’t have familiarity with the technical language used by materials scientists and higher level chemists, but silicones fit within the definition of plastic i have learned.
i'm team innovation all the way. the ability to not only cook your food to an exact temp, but also to do so uniformly throughout, is absolutely game changing. and the sear can get INSANE when you don't have to worry about also trying to cook the inside to temp. the versatility for sous vide is just unmatched
One of my go-to uses for an immersion circulator is defrosting rather than cooking. Keeps water moving while not using gallons and gallons, and you get temperature feedback on how it's going and when you're done.
If given the chance I will ALWAYS cook meat using sous vide. As long as people don't see the meat when I take it out and only see the meat after I've seared it then I've received rave reviews. It's especially useful for tough meats like brisket.
That's one aspect she left out at the end. I don't care about innovation nor ease-of-use. I do, however, care that the price of meat has gone sky high. With sous vide, I can buy cheaper, tougher cuts and still have delicious tender meats.
My biggest nitpick with the technology was the amount of plastic waste involved as the majority of set ups use single use vacuum bags. Now that there are reusable silicon versions out there I'm much more interested in trying it.
I think the biggest issue with Sous Vide cooking you missed (considering you guys also run Minute Earth) is its reliance to single use plastics. You could use zip lock bags to allow some reuse, but plastic is plasticm
Yeah I'm surprised they didn't mention any of that.
Reusable silicone bags work for some items, especially if using a marinade, or you can use glass jars.
Since silicone is thicker they can make it harder to remove air around the contents, but some air bubbles usually aren't a big problem. (I had some silicone bags split open on me after a few uses though)
There is a reusable zip top plastic bag brand you can get that has a tool to suck the air out. It’s a bit cumbersome but I’ve gotten several uses out of each bag.
@@squidward5110 Your feelings are acknowledged and respected. However, this is a method that has been used in thousands of top restaurants for many, many years - it's just now that it has come to home cooks, and only a small percentage will be sufficiently interested. There's more than one way to fry a steak. It's still cooking.
I actually reuse the plastic. I make them way bigger then they need to be, cut of the top, wash it and use it again.
I just handed off some sous vide pork chops to my dad form him and my mother to have for dinner. It's just so easy to do. I don't mind the grey meat, because I almost always sous vide meat in a sauce. (In the case, it was creme of mushroom soup.) I also don't mind grey meat and the sciency nature of the cooking is a plus for me. ... Also, it is beyond easy. If you get the temperature right and know the minimum time, the outcome is nearly perfect every time.
I do wonder if sous vide is environmentally friendly. You do have to heat up a lot of water, but once the water hits the right temperature, it doesn't take a lot of energy to keep it there.
Also... you can cook whole eggs so they are barely set. I'm talking 59 - 60 degrees Celsius. Cook them and then peel them and use an emulsion blender on them. What you get is something with the taste and consistency of mayonnaise, but since you used the whole egg, it is mostly protein instead of mostly fat.
there are two easy solutions to the grey meat either sear it in a high temperature pan or buy a blowtorch
Got one, and designated it for specific dishes where I really want very specific properties.
Primary cooked salmon and spare ribs.
Chuck a lot of salmon into the water bath, and afterward put everything on glass. I got prepared salmon for spreadable and dinners.
For sparerib I buy the ribs raw and add my own sauce to it. Only catch is that I need to prepare it 24 hours in advanced, but it beats most I get at restaurants.
Also a tip I got from another fellow: Liquid smoke. If you want your sous vide to have that smokey flavor.
Overall: I love it for whenever I want to infuse a certain flavor into the dish.
Another commenter here asking about the plastic issue. I’m not so concerned about plastic leaching into the food. I am concerned about plastic waste, and am trying to limit how much plastic I use and throw away. I realize everyone makes their own cost/benefit analysis about harm we do to the environment, but I’m surprised you didn’t mention it at all, especially in a science channel.
Generally love your stuff btw. This just seemed like a big omission.
For me, the science experiment feeling of sous vide is exactly why I like it. I don't do it very much anymore but when I do I love it (and sometimes I also like it for the ease-of-prep-in-bulk thing).
0:12 You forgot to tell us about the people who "really dislike it"
A group I've never heard of myself
Most of what I've heard on that front is an overextention of the process being overhyped. They're not so keen on the whole steak being cooked to the same doneness, and they like deep crusts and browning. It's almost like the food starts slipping into the uncanny valley.
I've been using sous vide for steaks for years and i will say it is my favorite way to cook meat. It's impossible to mess up and you always have the perfect doneness every time. I seriously recommend this for people who want to impress with their cooking.
Or you can learn proper cooking techniques. I haven’t touched mine my immersion cookers in about four years now.
@@Ski_3_p_o Proper cooking techniques? Most steak houses use sous vide brother. There's no "proper" technique, if it turns out good it turns out good.
On the ease of use side of things, i think there's almost a third group. My favourite covert entry come travel come cooking channel, devient ollam, teaches people to cook starting with sous vide. Recepies like "starbucks style egg cups" do lean on the batch cooking aspect, but he mostly focuses on the steak. Because the process is science forward, it can be less intimidating, and easier to pull off. Well, as long as you don't mind big spreadsheets...
The only time I use the sous vide method is when cooking thick bone-in steaks, usually pork or beef. When your meat is more than an inch or two thick, reverse searing is the preferable method. You can use the oven, but you risk drying out the outside of the meat before it hits the heat in the pan at the end. By the time it hits the plate your crust might be inedible. Sure, it takes longer, but you get a perfectly cooked steak all the way through.
A couple tips: You don't need a sous vide machine or a vacuum bagger. Use a pot of water on the lowest burner and a meat thermometer to regulate the heat. You can use any leakproof plastic bag, pinned to a chopstick or skewer laid on top of the pot. Just make sure the bag does not touch the sides or bottom of the pot.
I like using a twist-tie bag without the zipper. I'll just slowly dunk the bag in the pot before heating it, letting the water displace the air, before twisting it shut under the water and tying it off. EZ
I love cooking sous vide. And when people ask me for my recipes and I mention my cooking methods, I often find people would rather buy their own circulator because of how good it is
I'm in the "I love sous-vide" camp. For its ease, but also for the perfect temperature. I love it for steaks, where the meat is the same temperature the whole way through (how many times have you ordered a steak, let's say medium rare to see the thin part is well done and the thickest part is barely cooked?). Also, I always make creme anglaise/custard in sous vide since it's a very thin temperature window between "it takes forever because the temperature is too low" and "I've made scrambled eggs"
Love the idea, wish you didn't have to wrap your food in plastic to get it done
There are reusable bags that work (stasher etc)
Just make sure is food grade BPA-free or something
if you shop at a grocery store your food almost certainly wasted orders of magnitude more plastic getting trough the supply chain that you should be lobbying your congressman about regulating rather than fretting about using a couple vacuum bags yourself.
@@kaiserruhsam Plastic waste in the grocery industry is a big problem we should aim to solve, but I believe the person you are replying to is addressing cooking food in plastic bags rather than being worried about wasting them. I for one don't want more plastic waste and I don't want to cook my food in a plastic bag, it's easy enough to cook with proper technique to not need a sous vide imo.
@@ledheavy26 food-safe bags are food-safe, and while i can make an acceptable steak or whatever with traditional methods, there are novel preparations of a variety of foods that are basically impossible without the precise temperature control... that and making the cheapest cut of beef taste and texture like a well prepared above-average cut are the unreproducible incentives for sous vide.
tl;dr get over your plastic hangup and taste the food.
Quick tip for anybody using one: Dont follow her setup. Use a cooler and cover it with tin foil, listen to the machine and you can tell its working far less.
Oh because of the insulation of the cooler you mean?
Though I'm not sure what the tin foil does, compared to other ways of covering it up
@@WanderTheNomad A cover helps. The type of cover doesn't seem to matter.
@@WanderTheNomad I'm guessing that tin foil reflects some of the radiated heat back into the water, which a regular plastic or glass lid might not do.
@@WanderTheNomadyup because a thin plastic jar will leak all the warmth
@@sanjaymatsuda4504These temperatures are too low for radiation to have much of any affect. However, aluminum foil is significantly more recycleable than a plastic film would be.
Sous vide can allow huge amounts to be precooked ahead of time, then stored in the fridge before finishing.
I think that's the best benefit for me, since cooking prep can be done in bulk while preserving variety.
While I don't use my immersion heater for meat or vegetables anymore, I've found that the precise temperature control is fantastic for incubation and fermentation. So - yogurt, homemade cheese curds ( while "ripening" ), bread dough, and even 1-gallon batches of beer, all go into the water bath. And it's also great for pot-o-creme or creme brulee in mason jars.
In our lab we use that same sou vide heater in this video as a water bath. That's because it reaches temperature much faster and is way cheaper than a traditional lab water bath.
I think you described it as it should be. As a tool to help you make food better. Not an all for 1 cooking method.
Also, try putting butter and rosemary/thyme and garlic….(on anything actually);I was going to say steak. And then searing it it’s so good!
The ease is a huge factor for me given my lifestyle. Get home from work, throw in sous vide, then go run errands or such. It also narrows down the things affecting my cooking. I self-teach (or educate via youtube and forums) a lot for my cooking, so especially when it comes to meats I don't know why two seemingly identical processes go so different. Is it the cut, my cookware, how I cooked it, something else? With Sous vide I know I cooked it the same way each time and can learn more about other uncertainties
Sous vide is another tool in the toolbox. It's not about can you do it for everything all the time. But it's great for meats and other applications (try mashed potatoes or even custards). But it's the very best way to be able to serve proteins to larger groups for sure.
Oh yay I’m glad you made a video on this. I use sous vide mostly for meats that dry out easily (chicken, turkey, and pork) but also for some that take a while to cook, like brisket. It’s cool it also works on vegetables; I never considered use it for that for some reason.
By far the best thing about Sousvide for me is how amazing it is at re-heating food. Re-heating steak or really anything almost always overcooks something, but pop it in the sousvide and that is impossible.
Omg only your 25th? I love them so much, they've been a part of my regular viewing and I've forgotten this is a relatively new spin-off of minute earth.
It's amazing for meal prep. Buy all the meat, season and vacuum seal, freeze it away. Cook it in it's bath, thawed or frozen, do some stuff until it's ready, then finish it off on the grill with a propane torch.
I use an instant pot / multicooker for years and I never vacuum sealed anything. Never had any problem either. 80% of the food I eat I cook this way, but I guess it's more of a "slow cooking at controlled temperature" process than proper sous vide, maybe? I find it VERY convenient and my results are excellent. Never tried harder cuts of meat for very long periods like you suggested, I admit I learned that from your video. Never thought of sous vide for more than 3 or 4 hours was effective on doing anything (unless you're cooking something too large for the target temperature to reach the core long enough to cook/kill bacteria). I am surely going to give that idea a try.
TIL that you can use the immersion circulator to chill wine...
Sous Vide is not for everyone, but it's nice that it exists.
Yes, a method of cooking heavily dependent on single-use plastic. This is fantastic. (sarcasm)
@@dillis2188 Okay, okay, chill.
It's sad that you don't like sous-vide. I love it for meats. My steaks and chicken are always perfectly done now. I can throw it in when I go to work, then I use my propane torch when I come home to get the sear done. The food is always amazing without worrying about whether it will be done or not. By far my favorite method of cooking. Going to try the carrots today, I usually don't do veggies, but I'm make pulled pork in my slow cooker so I have plenty of time
I personally only really got one for steaks, because I really like the way they turn out. But to be honest it is only marginally better than the "reverse searing" technique (and some people even disagree with this).
I think a lot of people like it because it is one of the only cooking techniques I know of where you get almost the best possible result every time with a method that is basically impossible to screw up.
It’s great for meats that dry out easily like chicken, or Turkey breast, and boneless pork loin, Oy tenderloin. It’s also excellent at turning a cheep cut of beef in to something very delicious. It’s not the most fun or intuitive way to cook, but I find very useful, and cost saving. It can convert a $5.99 a pound chuck roast in to a fantastic thick cut steak. I’m not a super fan, mostly because of the plating waste, but I probably use it once or twice a week. Fair and accurate review, I subscribed 😁
ChefSteps called, they want to congratulate you on taking their whole channel in 8 minutes.
One of the best uses I've found is for cooking steaks... my wife likes medium well while I prefer medium rare. I pre-cook hers in the sous vide at 145⁰ then drop the temp to 125⁰ for mine (I leave hers in the sous vide). Then I pan sear both for the same amount of time to get two steaks cooked perfectly to our preferences.
The other cool thing is that you don't need to rest meat after it's been in the sous vide, making it a lot easier to have everything ready at the same time.
For me, when I’m cooking bison steak, I always use sous vide. It’s really important to not overcook bison… It becomes tough very quickly if overcooked. Cooking to precise temperature is essential, and then I follow it up with a quick seer in a really hot cast-iron pan.
Great video! Just a idea: a video on how mold affects food and if different types of molds are safe to eat
Or if the molds go deep or not
@@hackarma2072 Yeah, with what kind of food you can actually get away with just chopping a bit off and with which you run the risk of not so nice side effects
th-cam.com/video/NgduUAu8s3g/w-d-xo.html This is a video by Adam Ragusea, another youtuber I love that makes food science videos as well! This is an amazing video about mold that should answer your questions
@@be_cracked8212 given you only see a small ammount of rot vs the area the mould mycelium has grown over the food, once something has started to go mouldy its considered spoilt. A lot of moulds are toxic or straight up carcinogenic and its hard to tell which one your dealing with so never worth the risk.
Is this a spot to make requests?
Something I've wanted a video about since your video about different cooking methods and air fryers: what about steaming as a cooking method? Why do steamed veggies mostly taste so bad but everything else steamed tastes so good? What are the properties of steaming that achieve that and the pros/cons?
Another thing I'm curious about: tenderizing foods, how different methods work (eg: slow cooking, physical tenderization, baking soda, marinades, etc) and all that.
I have one and i love it. I actually got it as a response to something my dad got, a smoker grill since i have an apartment.
It's similarish, in that its low temp, slow cooking, but what he can't do in variety, I can't do in flavorings and sear.
A different method for the meats to avoid grey blobs is to sear before you bag. It also helps avoid over-cooking post bath which is a super easy mistake to make since the meat is ideally at the perfect temp already
I have a specific recipe I use sous vide for (though instead of vacuum packing, I push all the air out of a Ziploc bag with water). I throw steaks into a bag and add a "marinade" I came up with, that way as it cooks for that long period of time I'm able to infuse the steak with a lot of flavors like liquid smoke, salt, butter, Worcestershire sauce, black garlic, or umami powder (I also add meat tenderizer so it's ULTRA tender). Then I take it out and hit it on a grill with one of those flame throwers used for killing weeds (my understanding is the higher temperature and faster the searing process, the better the sear). So I get a perfect doneness, perfect doneness gradient, ultra tender, ultra flavorful, and perfectly seared steak. The process is complicated though, so I only do it when cooking for multiple people since it's easy to cook multiple steaks at once and sear them all at the end.
They're so good my mom says she doesn't get steaks at restaurants anymore because they aren't as good as mine (though there are a lot of flavors I can taste at restaurants I like that I don't get with my method). A few more things I want to try are adding baking soda sometime before the sear so that the maillard reaction more readily takes place, and dehydrating the steaks and/or concentrating the marinade so the steaks' juices don't dilute too much.
I love sous vide for meat/pork. We can buy a whole pork loin, cut it into chops, season and vacuum seal many chops at once. Throw them in the freezer, then just toss them into the sous vide bath when we want them. So easy...! And amazingly delicious.
I sometimes do a "dry" sous vide a la Alton Brown for cooking multiple steaks. You set your oven as low as it goes (ideally 180-200F) and set your steaks on a rack over a sheet pan for 1-1.5 hours, until the internal temp has achieved 125F or so. Because it's so slow, you have a large window of opportunity for pulling your steaks at the perfect internal temp, and you have barely any carryover at all. Then sear in a ripping hot cast iron skillet for maybe 20-30 seconds per side and it's perfect. For someone not ready to add another tool to his appliance garage, this has been a good crossover method for me.
With Sous Vide you have the added costs of the vacuum sealer, plastic to seal the food, and the immersion circulator.
These aren't common kitchen staples, for most people.
You don't need a vacuum sealer, just ziplock bags. Use the water immersion method to remove air. That's what I do. Even after my son bought me a vacuum sealer.
in a lot of cases you can just use a gallon bag and squeeze the air out when you put it in the water
That's why I prefer the low-tech sous vide approach with ziploc bags and beer cooler
As the others said there is no need for a vaccum sealer. Honestly, you don't even need to close the bags if you clip them to the side of the container.
@@TheGreaterGrog You need to remove the air in order for the science magic to work properly.
My immersion stick made me love pork tenderloin and roast beef. Any time I've made it or had it before, it was dry, dusty sawdust. Now I cook it all the time and it's sooooo moist and tasty. I'm both an easy of cooking AND an innovator. My stuffed pork tenderloin is to die for and it would not be possible without my sous vide.
Might be just what I need for my work schedule.
I like prepping and bagging! Could totally set up a station for this
Start up costs though...oof!
The biggest benefit is for longevity. It avoids advanced glycation end products present when food turns brown from heat (assuming you skip the searing). AGEs are a significant contributor to aging/disease.
I remember it now! After all these years! At primary school we accdintally cooked this way an entire fish tank of fish! We weren't allowed to eat the fish afterward. But maybe someone else were?
I just found this channel and I am so damn happy that Minute Physics has inspired this.
only twenty fifth !? i could’ve sworn there were SOOO many more videos on this channel ! i guess they’re all just that good ♥️
oh snap, you can chill wine with the immersion cooker....what a beautiful hack - have to try that!
My biggest issue with these is the need for non-reusable bags. I see they’re a lot cheaper than they used to be, though.
I’m tempted to try the thing though because I like the idea of being able to walk away for hours without worrying about overcooking dinner or burning the bottom of the food like sometimes happened in a crockpot.
These days I use it mostly for Partys or pricey meats I dont regulat cook like lamb. Its an awesome tool for meal prep and beginners and also cheap. Sometimes you find a sous vide stick for 30-40$, a bucket or old cooler can be used as a water vessel and the vacuum machine and bags can be replaced with a zip lock bag and the water method.
I use sous vide to do my meal preps for the week. Each vacuum sealed bag contains the same meat as the others but different seasoning and/or marinades. TBH I'm rather lazy so I don't sear them after. The point is, I get to eat different things everyday (albeit the same meat but you can easily cook different meats together too).
Fun fact: “sous vide” is actually French for “in a vacuum” 🇫🇷
It’s funny how words can change meaning when jumping languages. As native French speaker, “sous vide” refers only to the process of removing air from a container (usually food, usually before freezing). Some people store their clothes “sous vide” when travelling to save space, for example.
0:18 that voice break is adorable
For me sous vide is also fun. Toy still have to fry stuff afterwards, still prepare othe food aside from the steak or other sous vide meat. But I agree that it's main strengths are perfect results , ease of use and experiments. 😊
Your take on this, reflects exactly how I think about it. Good job.
i dont sous vide the vast majority of things i cook, but there are certain things i only cook sous vide these days, namely chicken breast and pork fillet. I also use sous vide when I bbq something like chicken for multiple people to make it super reliable and stress free.
I personally love it cause it gives me options for super easy meals that i can make whilst doing other things like cleaning a filthy kitchen, preparing another element of the dish, or just going for a nap. Its never super exciting but the reliability and ease is every now and then just exactly what i need to get a super simple but delicious meal on the plate.
Sous Vide is my favorite method for....
...pasteurizing Eggs (for use in ice creams, nogs, smoothies, etc)
...barbecue (with a cold smoke first)
...mashed potatoes (I cook them with all the cream, butter, seasonings, etc. Drain it. Mash them. Add the liquid back in. Keeps all the russet flavor so it's like eating a creamy potato chip)
...thawing a turkey when I forgot to set it in the fridge three days ago and today is Thanksgiving.
This channel has continuity gotta love it
For me, it is the perfect way to cook delicate white fish like haddock.
Put a nice marinade in the bag, start your rice cooker, come back after a while and microwave some veggies for an amazing meal.
What I hate about it is the plastic. I have not researched if there is an alternative yet, but that's my main turn off on that side
Silicone bags are also an option, and I've seen some people have success with mason jars.
@@MinuteFood Do they stay sealed? I've been lookign for some for a long time, but the sizes are wierd and they tend to open because they are more rigid
Thank you for 25 wonderful episodes!
It's so weird. I see a video about sous vide, I think "neat, maybe I'll watch it later", click away and forget it. Ten minutes later I see this video and click it instantly...
Thank you for confirming my thoughts about this, now with scientific approach.
I got one for Christmas and I love it, but it's not something I use every day. It's great for those days where I know I'm going to be getting home late. After a particularly long day at work I don't want to go through the whole hullabaloo of cooking a good meal, I just want to get home, slap whatever I've got cooking in a pan for a couple minutes, and have a nice piece of seared meat. I basically use it like an alternative to my Crockpot. A slow cooked stew or pot roast is nice and comforting on a cold day, but not quite as much so when it's 110°F out
Another weird thing sousvide can do is Clean off hard water built-up. Use a combination of water and vinegar and heat it to 140° for about 15 minutes. cleans off faucet nozzles, and various other things that have hard water buildup in record time.
Most instapots and the like have a sous vide function. It works well, holds the heat better than the open container you show.
I’ve even used a cooler with no element to do low temp items like steaks. Tap water gets to about 120F. Even with some cooling, that can get the meat to 100-110, fine for sous vide especially with a sear afterward. You can always add a little hot tap or boiled water to make temp adjustments later on in the day.
It can deactivate the enzyme that causes browning in avocados. Immersion circulate your avocados before making your guac for the next party, and it can sit on the table for hours with minimal discoloration.
Cheap cuts of meat that get fantastic results are my main uses for sousvide. Perfect juicy pulled pork that never got warmer than 60C. Roasts and steaks with bones in still get perfectly cooked near the bone. Duck leg confit without adding any fat. Do that in small portion sized bags and you'll be able to just open a bag and finish/reheat as needed any day within 2 weeks or so. Perfectly tempered choccolate or how about the most perfect creme brulee without any risk of overcooking? With a chamber vac, you could also portion out soup and freeze it and easily reheat in the bag.
I was trying to figure out how to use more plastic this year and I think sous vide might be the thing. Shoutouts on throwing just the pre-packaged meat in the box, smart move.
You can achieve similar effects to sous vide, by just packing the food in foil and put it in a convection ofen.
I do all my steaks this way, slow cook reverse sear. Its close to fool prove and always has fantastic results,
no additional equipment needed. Cheers
Use it as a tool when you need. Also, it's fun using the circulator to clean things
Ooh, enlighten us - what do you clean with it, and how?
Great for tough beef. I use my circulator and rectangular tank several times a week.
There is one food I find I want sou-vied, and that is fish. Fish VERY easily gets overcooked, but with sou vide that doesn't happen nearly as much. Particularly needed with lean/white fish like cod. More partial to baked or pan fried salmon while cod easily gets bland and mushy.
Worth noting a few things: The maillard reaction can happen at room temp and/or be sped up by other things, such as making the marinade you put in the bag alkaline with baking soda. If you are going to marinade or brine your meat, that time is instantly saved because the food can slow cook while marinading instead of sitting in your fridge for 30 minutes to 4 hours. 145F is too low for chicken breast for most people. It will be safe, but TOO soft and moist, almost jello-y. It wont taste like chicken to people. If you sous vide at 150-155F, it will have a more appealing texture and be cooked MUCH faster. Vacuum sealing is overkill. Most people use ziploc freezer bags or use a big bag that you roll up the edge and clip it to the wall of your immersion container
Sous Vide has its applications in say, a high end steakhouse where you will want to mitigate errors as much as possible and turn out the most consistent steaks you possibly can. Having tried a quickly seared sous vide and a steak cooked on a grill to medium rare (my preferred level for most steaks), I prefer the grill steak for its better char.
This is the answer. And a lot of restaurants don’t use immersion coolers, that’s a lie from the industry to try to sell more products.
You don't have to incinerate your chicken at all. So many people get hung up on the recommended temperature for food and forget what matters is TIME at temp. Less than a minute at 155 will be just as safe as 165 instantly for chicken for example.
Another usage is to prepare the meat beforehand and use it when you wish. So you sous vide more food, and without opening after that, you freeze it and it keeps the quality and safety for a long time. When you use it, only defrost it and sear it. Quick meal.
Ive always been interested in trying it myself but have come to realize that I’d most likely use the immersion circulator for photo developing chemicals
The other sciencey benefit of sous vide is diffusion of flavor. Sous vide tends to intensify flavors in the substance since the aromatics have nowhere to go. This is more the "vide" part at work. This can eliminate the need for marinating since that all happens while the thing is cooking. The danger is often *over* flavoring.
I usually choose it for ease of use - set it up and come back after doing other things for an hour or so without having to worry about watching it like i would for something on the stove top. Or I know I can get red meats and tougher cuts reliably tender. Most of the time I just want to cook something quickly and get to eating though - roasting in the oven usually takes a bit less time and often just as little attention.
With time and planning there's some things i only do sous vide, like a pork shoulder overnight that I finish on the BBQ with some wood smoke.
I like taking a top round roast and putting it in a sous vide for about 36 + hours and it comes out so so soft and tender
I do sous vide cooking all the time for chicken to salmon to beef. The only time I did it for an extended period was for freezer-burned steaks (the vacuum bag was cut open in the deep freezer). But 30 hours with a sous-vide and it was like nothing ever happened. I've had freezer burned steaks cooked normally, and they were awful. I think the sous-vide method allowed the meat to re-absorb the moisture and tenderize.