Kosher Food and Drink

I’m a gadget guy when it comes to making food, as evinced in my article about my beloved Zojirushi rice cooker. I get that there are a lot of traditionalists who don’t need more than a stovetop and an oven, and I respect that. That said, there are some technologies now that let you make great food far more consistently and with less interaction, and in my book, if I can buy an advantage in the kitchen that I’ll use a bunch, I’m in for it.

One thing that I love is my sous vide. I’ve been cooking with sous vide for nearly a decade now, and while I wouldn’t use it for everything, it is my go-to for prepping certain meat and fish dishes. However, sous vide is admittedly a huge change from how people make food, and it can be daunting. This article will review how to get started, and how to quickly become productive with it.

Sous vide is, at its core, putting food into a vacuum (in a plastic bag, generally) and then immersing it in a water bath that has a tightly controlled temperature. One of the massive advantages that sous vide has over other cooking techniques is that you can cook to the degree, and hold it there for long periods of time. For example, if you want a piece of salmon at 120f, there’s no guesswork – you set the water circulator to 120f, put the vacuum-sealed salmon into the water bath, wait an hour, and then you have a salmon at 120f. It won’t overcook – it literally can’t get any hotter. (The texture will degrade given enough time, but that’s a separate discussion.)

I find that the biggest obstacle for new sous vide users is getting over the temperatures that it uses, which are far lower than what most people are used to. ServSafe has drilled into people’s heads that you need to basically ruin every piece of food by getting it to 160f, because they assume you just have a griddle and an oven to work with. You can safely pasteurize foods at much lower temperatures if you hold them there longer. This article isn’t going to dig into those particulars, but I will say that I’ve never gotten sick from making food in my sous vide, and I regularly cook beef at 135f, and salmon at 120f. But you need to figure out what level of risk you’re willing to take – do your own research, and caveat emptor.

To get going with sous vide, you really need three things:

1. A sous vide water circulator
2. A vessel for the water bath
3. Plastic bags or a vacuum sealer

There are a few different price points for water circulators, and Anova makes options at most of them. At the time of this writing, I see the Anova Mini at under $50, which seems like quite a deal if you just want to try sous vide out. I personally use an Anova Pro, which is a lot more expensive, but is very quiet and brings water to temperature very quickly. For what it’s worth, I typically don’t find the WiFi and Bluetooth features in these devices to be of much value, and wouldn’t base a purchase around those features.

For a water bath vessel, you can use a spare pot, or you can buy a tub with a lid (with cut-out for the water circulator) off Amazon. I used a pot for a few years, but found that I preferred the 3 gallon tub I purchased later because it had a lid with a cut-out. The thing with sous vide is that it gets the water fairly hot, and this causes evaporation. Having a lid minimizes that evaporation and is one less thing to worry about… you don’t want to have to add more water mid-cook.

Finally, you’ve got to get your food into a vacuum. I think the first instinct most people will have is to get a vacuum sealer for that. It’s a good idea, works well, and it’s a generally useful item to have around. However, you don’t need one. You can actually use a Zip-Loc-style bag, put the food into it, “mostly” zip it, and then gradually immerse it into the water bath. The water will push the air out, and then as the top of the bag is going all the way into the water, just finish zipping it up. The vacuum won’t be perfect, but it will be good enough for our purposes.

You want to use decent quality bags for this, and I wouldn’t recommend it for super long (> 24 hours) cooks. But it works fine otherwise, and I still use it for some foods where the relatively harsh action of the vacuum sealer would have caused problems.

The takeaway here should be that you can get started with sous vide for under fifty bucks, and if you’re interested in trying it out, that’s not much of a barrier. Even if it’s just a once in a while thing, the startup cost is pretty small, and it doesn’t take up much room in storage.

In terms of what you can make with it, sous vide is interesting because it straddles the “low and slow” and “hot and fast” foods. The ability to hold food at a precise temperature lets you deal equally well with temperature sensitive foods (steaks) and long cook foods (short ribs). The only big limitation is that you’re somewhat limited in the size of the food that will fit in the water tub, which is to say that something like a whole packer brisket isn’t a good candidate for sous vide.

The other limitation is that you can’t get a crust doing sous vide, since the temperatures never get hot enough. This is easily resolved by using a Searzall, broiler, grill, or griddle after you’re done with the sous vide step (make sure to rest your food a bit so it doesn’t overcook when you finish it).

Burgers and steaks. You can dial in the temperature precisely, cook it to exactly the level of done-ness you’re looking for, and then give it a quick sear on the grill or broiler to get a browned crust. The ability to hold a burger or steak at a precise temperature is phenomenal for pre-cookout preps.

Short ribs and lamb breast. I’ve made so many short ribs in my sous vide, and they’ve all turned out great. You can also make some fall-off-the-bone lamb breast that will knock people’s socks off.

Salmon. Sous vide is my usual way to make salmon when I’m not smoking it; I put it in at 120f for about an hour and a half. While I will not necessarily recommend this, I have had stellar success just doing it with the sealed pieces straight from the Costco bag. All you have to do is season them afterwards.

Chocolate chip cookie dough. Making your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough and then cooking it in your sous vide at 160f for an hour or two creates a stunning dessert that is a hit with everyone, especially with a drizzle of olive oil or a slightly-salty caramel sauce.

In summary, sous vide is a simple, efficient way to make restaurant-grade food that is consistently high quality. Despite the daunting-looking equipment involved, it requires very little skill and isn’t very expensive. About the only real critique of it is that it’s situational – not every food is a good candidate for sous vide. Then again, not every food is a good candidate for a smoker, Instant Pot, or oven… a good chef uses the appropriate tool for the job. I’d encourage you to add sous vide to your tool repertoire if you make lots of meats and fish.