SousVide Supreme Review: How To Cook From the Inside Out

[ayodele]

Sous vide is French for cooking in a vacuum, placing sealed meat or veggies in water held at an exact temperature. Because this precision requires high technology, the method was solely for chefs—until the $450 SousVide Supreme arrived.Sous What Now?Think of sous vide as cooking from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

When the Coen Brothers were making The Big Lebowski, they couldn't for the life of them figure out how to fling the ringer—a briefcase supposedly containing $1 million but actually holding Walter's dirty undies—in a graceful arc from the Dude's moving car. It sounds easy, but it's physically impossible. They were about to give up when the sage-like Jeff Bridges suggested shooting it backwards. Eureka. They filmed the bag toss, its perfect trajectory, falling into the slowly reversing automobile, and made cinematic history.

Sous vide is a lot like that. Instead of burning the crap out of your extra-thick filet mignon in a pan, perhaps tossing it into a hot oven afterwards, all with the hope of hitting a target internal temperature of 130ºF almost by chance, you vacuum seal the lightly salted raw meat and stick the bag into the "water oven," raising the temperature of the entire cut to 130º.



Once the ideal "medium rare" is reached, you sear the outside for a pleasing Maillard-effected crust.



Your steak is perfect. And you can't fail. Seriously, you can do this 1000 times and never screw up. Because of sous vide's precision temperature, you can let meat sit for hours without fear of it overcooking. Sous vide is (mostly) moron-proof—high science brought down to home kitchens that may or may not be worthy. If you eat medium-rare steak at home at least once a week, you basically need this.

In some ways, sous vide is the next obvious kitchen tool, like its predecessors the microwave, the convection oven and the induction cooktop. It's a unique tool that could easily go from exotic to commonplace in just a few years. As you'll see, the microwave comparison is perhaps most apt, since they're both self contained, make simple meal prep easier, and function on a fool-proof, "set-it-and-forget-it" basis.

Source: SousVide Supreme Review: How To Cook From the Inside Out