New Cooking toy:
Sous Vide Immersion Circulator
Got this as a Xmas gift, and have been cooking steaks, chops & chicken with it.
You can cook food to an exact temperature (to rare, med rare, med, done, well done) every time. So far, everything I cooked this was delicious: juicy and tender.
To use it, you put the food item into a zip-lock bag, push out the air by submerging it into the water filled pot, then seal the bag and cook it in water preheated to the required temperature. For meat, after it's done, you sear it in a pan for about a minute each side. It takes anywhere from forty minutes to a few hours to cook this way, depending on what you're making. But the HUGE advantage is that the food will not overcook. Even if you leave it in the pot for 12 hours or more, it will remain the same degree of done-ness and tenderness.
Chefs at gourmet restaurants have been using industrial sous vide cookers for years. They pre-cook steaks before lunch or dinner-time rush, and have them ready to plate minutes after receiving an order.
I tried this prepping-ahead method with a 2-inch thick sirloin steak yesterday, immersing it in the water pot at 11:00 am, at 135-degrees F for medium-rare. I left it there until 6:00 pm, and it was perfectly medium-rare and juicy after searing and serving.
My next experiment will be to slow-cook tougher grades of meat, and see how that works.
_________________
The problem with putting two and two together
is that sometimes you get four,
and sometimes you get twenty-two.
-Dashiell Hammett