[00:00] Hey guys, Thomas Joseph here with another kitchen conundrum for you. Now, I am sure you've been hearing about this. This is sous vide technology. And what does that mean? And have you ever thought about buying one of these devices and trying it out at home? Well, today
[00:14] I'm going to give you a beginner's guide to sous vide and three different ways in which you can use it. What is sous vide? Well, sous vide definitively is the French term meaning
[00:28] under vacuum. And the name is kind of interesting because you do cook foods in these little bags without air. And that is kind of under vacuum. But the most important thing that sous vide cooking does is it cooks things to a specific temperature. This device here will heat up the
[00:46] water to a specific temperature. And it's not going to go any higher than that. The fear of over cooking your fish or over cooking your steak is really over if you use a device like this. Now, I'm hooking this up to this deep basin here. But you could certainly use
[01:02] a pot. You could use another deep vessel that you might have in your house. And just to get started, I want to fill this up with a little bit of water. Now, on the device itself, you're going to see that it has a max and a minimum level of where the water needs to be. You want
[01:16] to make sure that you fill it up with enough water so that you're somewhere in between. So now to set this device, I'm going to be cooking fish. And for fish, you need to set this device at about 123 degrees Fahrenheit. That will give you a wonderful tender and flaky
[01:31] fish. Today, I'm going to be using halibut here. But this would be great for salmon, snapper, any type of fish. So one of the things when you're cooking sous vide, you want to make sure that you prepare your ingredient. I'm going to drizzle this with like a little bit of olive
[01:44] oil here and season it up with a little bit of salt. Now, if you wanted to infuse this with additional flavors, you can certainly add a little bit of lemon, a little bit of herbs
[01:57] to the bag that we're going to put it in. And that will impart a really nice delicate flavor on to the fish. So I'm using a six ounce halibut fillet here. It's about an inch in thickness. And I kept the skin on because after we cook it in the sous vide device here, it's going to
[02:14] be wonderful and tender and flaky. But to give it a little bit of color, I'm going to crisp up the skin. I'm going to sear it after in a pan with a little bit of butter and we'll get a really nice color and a crunchy crisp skin. Take a little bit more olive oil and put
[02:30] it into the bag. You always want to add a little bit of oil to anything that you're cooking in a bag for the sous vide here because you don't want the fish in this case to stick to the bag or stick in any of the crevices of the bag. So one of the things that you want
[02:44] to do, you want to remove all the air. And the reason you're removing all the air is you want the bag to sit submerged in the water and you don't want it to float up to the top. So I'm just going to press out as much air as I possibly can. And the fish is going
[02:57] to take about 45 minutes to cook until it's a nice flaky texture. Now you could clip this onto the side if you want, but if your bags are sealed really well, it should be fine and no water should get in. We're going to let that cook. In this tub over here, I have
[03:11] some eggs. So you don't necessarily need to use bags to cook in. Some foods have their own vessel. And here I have some eggs that have been going for about 45 minutes. Eggs fully
[03:23] cook at 160 degrees. So we're cooking this at a lower temperature, 147 degrees so that it has a nice silky custardy, almost like a poached egg texture, but a little bit softer than that. And what I'm going to do here is just crack this guy into a bowl and you should
[03:42] have a very silky custardy. You can see how it jiggles. It's a very soft poached egg. And you can just take a spoon and gently lift this guy out and just to show you the consistency
[03:57] of the yolk. I'm going to break this guy here and show you just how creamy and custardy the yolk is as well. So this is a real treat for somebody who likes a really soft boiled
[04:09] or soft poached egg. Really, really tasty and delicious. Now what happens if you go over the time recommended for eggs? Well, I have an example of that as well because I just want to show you what that means here. And so this egg has been in the same temperature water
[04:26] for about two hours. Now the white should be cooked to pretty much the same consistency. But the yolk is going to have a stiffer, creamier texture. You can see that it's not as
[04:40] runny and that's the extended amount of time. So it's not as though the proteins in the whites of the egg are overcooking or becoming stiffer, but the fat in the yolk is actually
[04:52] jelling and creating a different consistency. A little bit of nerdy science for you guys. So last but not least, I'm going to show you steak. Soothing is actually a really great way to get your meat perfectly cooked and also extremely evenly cooked. This is a strip
[05:07] steak that I'm using here today. It's about 16 ounces, about an inch in thickness. So now for the preparation of the steak here, I'm using some herbs. This is time, but you could also use a little bit of rosemary. You could use some peeled garlic cloves. That would be fantastic
[05:22] to give a little bit of flavor to whatever you're cooking. So a little bit of olive oil here, salt and pepper. And I have my water set at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Now this is going to yield
[05:36] this temperature and about an hour to two hours of time. We'll yield a nice medium to medium rare steak. With all of these devices, the really the beauty behind it is that the companies
[05:49] that manufacture them have wonderful informational assets online. And also you can download apps to program the devices and to alert your mobile device. So there really is a lot of information
[06:01] out there about this technology. And I would encourage you that if you do purchase one of these, visit the site, do some research, find the one that you like best, and that has the most information available to you so that you can have success in whatever you're making. So this
[06:16] steak, it's going right into this bag here. I'm using a gallon size plastic bag. I'm going to add a little bit more olive oil. And now I'm going to try and squeeze out as much air as possible.
[06:29] And this is going into that 140 degree water for about an hour. And I have one that's already done. This has been in for about an hour and a half. And now it's time to finish the steak and
[06:43] to steer it. So I'm going to show you how to do that. I'm going to finish and steer this steak in a skillet. So in my skillet, I'm going to add a teeny bit of olive oil into the base. I'm going to take the steak and I'm going to place it into my skillet. High heat. You want a good steer here.
[06:59] And you're going to steer the steak for about a minute to a minute and a half on each side. So while the steak is steering, I want to talk about some other proteins that you could use in the temperatures that you should cook them at. Now, chicken breast, they're extremely popular.
[07:13] Everybody loves chicken breasts, but they're always concerned about overcooking your chicken breasts. So you can cook your chicken breasts in the sous vide method. And you want to make sure that you're using a temperature of about 149 to 150 degrees for chicken breasts. Now, when it comes to chicken
[07:28] thighs, you want to go to 165 or even a little bit above that. That temperature is totally fine because there is so much connective tissue. And the muscle or chicken thighs or legs are well-worked muscles.
[07:41] So you can take them to a higher temperature and it's totally fine. So I'm going to give this guy a good flip. It should have some nice color, which it does. Another minute on this side over here.
[07:54] I'm going to give it a little bit more salt, a little bit of pepper. Now, during the last few seconds, maybe the last 30 seconds of cooking, a really great thing is to add a little bit of butter
[08:06] to the pan. You're going to let the butter melt in brown. And what you're going to do is you're going to take this butter and base the steak with it. It will give an incredible amount of flavor to
[08:18] the steak and make this so delicious. If you wanted to add even more flavor, you can take some herbs. I have thyme, but you could certainly use rosemary. That would be fantastic here. And this is kind
[08:31] of a classic French technique of basting meat. I'm going to take the steak and I'm going to put it on the cutting board to rest just for a few minutes before I slice it up and show you guys how perfectly
[08:44] cooked this steak is. Alright, so it's the moment of truth. Let's see how this steak looks. It should be nice and rosy pink on the inside. Medium steak, which is what you're looking for. Now, if you wanted
[08:57] something rare, you guys, you could go down to 129 degrees. Again, that would be for another hour in the sous vide. But there you go, guys. A beginner's guide to sous vide cooking. I encourage you guys to
[09:10] go out by a sous vide device, whatever your brand preference might be and try it out at home. And remember to use all of the online resources that are available for time and temperatures of cooking so many different
[09:22] things. We'd love to hear from you guys and keep those great questions coming. Enjoy.