Sous vide, a French term meaning "under vacuum," is an incredibly easy method of cooking. A cook loads ingredients all together in a cooking bag, draws the air out so that the food is vacuum-sealed in the pouch, then places the sealed bag in a warm water bath where it cooks slowly and evenly over a long period of time. It's a perfect cooking method for food service that requires large batches— or for busy home cooks who want to set everything up in the morning and arrive home from work or school to find dinner ready to serve.
Sous vide cooking gives you dishes with amazing flavor and texture. It can even help lower your energy consumption, because the warm water bath is relatively low temp and cooks gradually, and reduce waste, since all the food is pre-portioned before cooking.
And since sous vide foods are cooked under vacuum seal, they have an extended shelf life. Without oxygen in the package to break down the food, sous vide packages can keep for an exceptionally long time, compared to foods pre-cooked using traditional methods.
So you've heard about sous vide and are interested in seeing how it could save you time in your restaurant or manufacturing facility— you just need to test it out first. Now, you just need to find a few sous vide recipes to try.
Relax, we're here to help.
There are many excellent sous vide recipes on the Internet. Entire sites are dedicated to it, and we'll give you a look at a few of the best.
So where can one find sous vide recipes?
You can always Google recipes, but there are blogs and aficionado sites that it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and bookmark, if you're getting into sous vide cooking. Some of these offer just recipes, but several offer cooking tips and reviews, as well.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Bag Soak Eat
Bag Soak Eat— a concise, apt description of the sous vide method — is a sous vide blog that features user submitted recipes. The recipes are categorized by main ingredient. They're easy to follow, with clear temperature settings and times. They can be as simple as the recipe for Salmon (cook 20 minutes at 50C), or as complex as our favorite, Espresso-Rub Steak.
Once registered, a user can hit easy-click share buttons to post recipes they like to Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. You can even click a button that will automatically e-mail the recipe out to contacts you choose. The site looks great, is easy to navigate and has a fun, Japanese anime-inspired motif.
Nomiku
Nomiku, is a compact, clip-on heating element and water circulator that can turn any pot of water into a sous vide cooker. It's the perfect appliance addition for both the novice sous vide cook and the professional sous vide chef.
The company behind it is in the late development stage for a wi-fi connected Nomiku, which will enable remote start-up of the cooking process for sous vide cooks on the go. This will truly maximize sous vide's potential as the ultimate cooking solution for busy home cooks or for restaurant chefs who want to use their mornings and early afternoons for fresh ingredient shopping.
The Nomiku site includes a blog with video demonstrations of sous vide prep for various dishes.
Stefan's Gourmet Blog
Stefan's Gourmet Blog isn't solely dedicated to sous vide, but it does include a robust sous vide section, including recipes, tips and how-tos, like what a cook can do with the leftover juices after a sous vide cooking cycle is complete. One of our favorite recipes is that for Sous Vide Duck Leg Confit.
What is particularly interesting is that Stefan, the blogger behind the site, is not a food industry insider— he works in the financial sector in the Netherlands. He's purely an aficionado, so his perspective is particularly helpful for sous vide cooks who are just starting out!
And while your sous vide Gnocchi di Patate al Gorgonzola are cooking, if you want to give a more traditionally-prepared dish a whirl, Stefan has you covered.
Sous vide cooking isn't a great mystery— it's a great food innovation.
There are many more online resources for finding recipes and getting started. Order your cooking bags, get your water bath set up and start experimenting with your own sous vide recipes today.
