About six months ago I finally broke down and used a gift certificate to a local cooking store to purchase a Sansaire sous vide machine and a vacuum sealer. Sous vide is a method of cooking food at very low temperature for extended time in a circulating water bath. The food is vacuum sealed in a special non-reactive plastic bag before cooking. After cooking, it is usually finished with very quick pan sear. Many chefs use a blowtorch for this final step.
Over the last few months, I've tried cooking almost everything except vegetables this way. The result is that there are some things that sous vide is absolutely perfect for, and others, well, not so much. Take chicken, for example. I bake skinless boneless breasts coated with a barbecue rub or Emeril's essence to slice for my standard workday lunch of Greek salad with chicken. I've tried it sous vide and the chicken has a strange texture. However, due to its moisture-retention abilities, I have found sous vide the absolute ideal way to cook the same boneless breasts when making chicken salad. It's perfect!
Chefs in fine dining restaurants have been using this method for years, and now that I am cooking with this method I can usually recognize its use. We had a thick king salmon filet at Bluehour, one of our favorite Portland eateries, a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that it was exactly the same medium rare all the way through, with a brown sear just on the top side. I sensed the blowtorch method!
We occasionally find top-grade Oregon Wagyu beef at our local farmer's market in Portland, sold by Pono Farms. The tenderloin filets are so amazing that overcooking them on the grill accidentally is a real risk.
Enter sous vide. Last weekend, Pono Farms' booth had the rarely seen certified A-4 grade Wagyu, the second highest grade of Wagyu beef available from US farms, according to the Wagyu grading system.
Here's how we cooked these incredible steaks. Here they are, patted dry with paper towels: (Check out the amazing marbling.)
Next, I sprinked the filets on both sides with fresh ground black pepper, added a pinch of dried tarragon leaves, and topped each filet with teaspoon pat of butter.
Next I vacuum sealed them in the sous vide bag.
The sous vide immersion circulator "wand" was then affixed to the side of a very large stockpot and pre-heated to 127 degrees, and in went the bag of beef.
You have to experiment with cooking times to find your preferred duration. Since the water bath stays at precisely the same temperature, there is no danger of overcooking in terms of "doneness." A sous vide tenderloin steak cooked at 127 degrees will be the exact same perfect medium rare if it's cooked for one hour or four hours. What changes is the texture. For 1" thick filets, I like to cook them for just a few minutes over an hour. Here's what they look like when taken out of the bath just before they are removed and thoroughly patted dry:
Next, the steaks go into a very hot skillet with a light film of high smoke-point oil (I use grapeseed oil) just until a crust is seared into the beef, about a minute per side.
When you cook meats in a pan or on the grill, or even in a high-temperature oven like the big steakhouses do, it cooks from the outside in. While the center portion might be medium rare, the top and bottom will go from brown seared crust, to well done, to medium, and then to medium rare in the middle. A sous vide steak cooked as above is exactly medium rare all the way from top to bottom.
Because of the amazing quality and texture of the Wagyu, we served it without a sauce, just a little sea salt. We accompanied the beef simply as well, with fresh-shelled English peas, boiled and buttered and sea-salted, and sautéed shallot, garlic and chopped Crimini mushrooms. The chosen wine was a Mondavi cabernet.
Perfect.
Bon Appetit!
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