Sous Vide Update

June 6, 2019 2:57 PM

What are your favorite at home sous vide recipes? You love your sous vide and use it all the time. Or you use it once a year for a special thing. Maybe you got it from serious eats, or the precious sous vide catch all a few years ago.

Mostly I use it for a pork tenderloin or thick pork chops. As CSA season descends upon me and my partner I want to use the sous vide for more advance prep proteins, bit ALL suggestions are welcome. Of course, sous vide vegetable suggestions are especially welcome as well.

posted by bilabial to Food & Drink (19 answers total)

I love my sous vides, i currently have 3. Salmon and steaks are incredible in them. I just did a dinner with teres major steaks cooked sous vide that were fantastic. I've done apples (with just a little vanilla and cinnamon) to pair with ice cream.

My favorite sous vide recipe by far is french toast. The thicker the bread, the better. Saturate the bread with eggs, cream, and vanilla, vacuum seal, cook at 147 for at least an hour. Sear in a hot pan and serve with syrup or whiped cream (add some lime zest too). I've done the same recipe with cinnamon rolls instead of bread and served it as a dessert and that was mind blowing.

I'm planning on using it to make fried chicken next. I don't care for sous vide chicken, but i was recently talking with someone who recommended cooking the chicken sous vide, then breading and frying. I think i can get behind that.
posted by August Fury at 3:17 PM on June 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

I like to make mini cheesecakes in mason jars. Also the Sous Vide subreddit is raving about smearing red meat with peanut butter before cooking. I believe they wipe the peanut butter off when it comes out of the bath? Not sure.
posted by mattholomew at 3:19 PM on June 6, 2019

I use the modernist cuisine recipe for sous vide salmon a lot, it's delicious.

Also if you're organized, you can make a great medium rare roast that is like, an amazing texture, from a cheap roast sousvided for at least 24 hours. The meat from this also freezes great, and then can be thrown into like a beef + broccoli stir fry and the texture of it stays amazing.

We also use ours for pork tenderloin and chops a lot like you - this chefsteps recipe for pork chops with romesco sauce and carmelized carrots is excellent.
posted by euphoria066 at 3:57 PM on June 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I will routinely make bisque-ish soups by par cooking the vegetables overnight or while we’re at work. It breaks them down but doesn’t give you weird cooked flavors. We do this with carrots (and carrot+ginger!) constantly. It’s really nice to have the entire contents of a soup in a bag, and all you have to do is (maybe) sauté some aromatics, blend everything and sieve it. I have yet to find a bisque-ish soup that this doesn’t work with.

I’ll often do tomato sauce largely the same way; toms (whole), onions (large dice), garlic (whole), and a couple anchovies go into the bag and bath. Cookemups while at work, then blend, sieve and then add in any greenery like basil you want. It tastes real weird; totally coooked but super fresh vibes.

All hail sous vide creme brulee!! (Pot de creme is fine too!) this is our go to with deserts for a crowd. Everyone likes this shit and it’s so remarkably easy to make and scale up or down.

Also, chefsteps seems to be the go-to spot for the best sous vide recipes. Serious eats does an okay job with the basics, but if you’re really looking at how far you can flex your circulator, that’s the spot.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:25 PM on June 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I cook eggs. So many eggs. Hard cooked or soft cooked it is my egg-in-shell cooking device.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:46 PM on June 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I rub slabs of pork belly in five spice and salt and let that soak in for two days. Then sous vide for two days. Chill. Chop them into cubes and toss them in a hot cast iron with hoisin sauce. So good.
posted by advicepig at 6:05 PM on June 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I also do leg of lamb for Easter every year. My mother in law loves it so much, she bought her own Anova.
posted by advicepig at 6:06 PM on June 6, 2019

poached (or soft boiled) eggs. perfect every time. And the only good way I know for serving lots of eggs Benedict to a hungry brunch crowd.

pork shoulder. Shredded and used for pulled pork one night, carnitas another.

Turning the cheapest slab of beef into something so delicious and tender that I doubt I could afford its equivalent in a restaurant.

Also, the most carroty flavored carrots that ever existed.
posted by Chrischris at 6:09 PM on June 6, 2019

Oh!! I forgot!! You can pasteurize eggs at 57c for two hours.

You can’t eat these eggs right away; they’re effectually raw, but we use raw eggs in all sorts of applications at our house (namely mayo/aioli because once you make it at home with a stick blender you don’t go back) but this has certainly Lu been the clutch Sous Vide utility move.
posted by furnace.heart at 6:12 PM on June 6, 2019

Oddly, I use it to make cheese, soft things like chevre and ricotta. Never have to worry about scorching the milk!
posted by aramaic at 6:14 PM on June 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Duck breasts are my favorite sous vide trick. You can bring them straight up to rare and hold them there to render out the fat beneath the skin (I usually do 130° for 3-4 hours usually), then crisp the skin off in a pan and they're perfect. The #s on time (to pasteurize)/temp from Modernist's tables:
Rare: 126°F for 5h15m
Med rare: 129° for 2h17m
Pink: 136°F for 30m
posted by j.edwards at 6:16 PM on June 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Sous vide soups can be amazing and you can use the Archimedes method for bagging but to get it really right for long cooks you need a chamber vac and good ones that don't spit pump oil are pricey. But the things you can do with them, especially infusions, are wondrous.
posted by bz at 6:37 PM on June 6, 2019

Salt some boneless chicken-breast tenders & sprinkle with dried herbs (such as Italian seasoning). Sous vide them @145F for 2 hours. Eat them right out of the bag over the sink. Yum.
posted by mono blanco at 8:13 PM on June 6, 2019

Faux confit chicken leg quarter is my go-to. I bag salted-and-peppered leg quarters with some olive oil, crushed garlic cloves, and thyme and sous vide for 4–6 hours at 165°F. Then decant to a shallow baking dish and refrigerate until ready to sear and serve. The garlicky-herby rendered fat is a nice byproduct worth saving.
posted by mumkin at 8:52 PM on June 6, 2019

Make preserved lemons in like 2 hours instead of months! There are million recipes if you google!
posted by Grandysaur at 9:39 PM on June 6, 2019

I don't have one but Claire Lower wrote about a bunch of sous vide experiments in a column she called Will It Sous Vide on Lifehacker. She has a pretty good variety of recipes - they're definitely more "here's how this went" and not so much "1, 2, 3, dinner is served."


Sous-Vide Shrimp Are Almost Impossible to Mess Up
You Can Sous Vide Bespoke Liqueur in Mere Hours
Sous Vide Your Root Vegetables With Fruit Juice
posted by meemzi at 10:40 PM on June 6, 2019

Medium rare 24-hour brisket is a revelation. Salt and pepper, maybe a gravy with bag juices, homemade stock, and a roux. Finish under the broiler.
posted by supercres at 6:34 AM on June 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Scrambled eggs at 130 for 30 minutes gives an interesting texture.
posted by tayknight at 7:49 AM on June 7, 2019

I love my sous vide machine and use it several times a week. Current favorite is onsen eggs. But looking at some ideas upthread, I should note that it is really not that safe to cook meat sous vide for more than, say, 3 hours at lower than 130 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're going to do it, you should definitely do a pre-sear.
posted by AceRock at 12:31 PM on June 10, 2019