Comment by Phil

Phil — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Cool!

A Duke undergrad got into sous vide cooking some years ago and used laboratory baths for the cooking. I'm pretty sure that your solution was cash cheaper (not counting time) than almost any laboratory bath that could be found, unless you got a crazy good deal on used.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30food-t.html

I was treated to an evening at this guy's place before it got shut down (again) by the food police. It was pretty good but I got a crazy upset stomach because I hadn't had that much rich food (meats and cheeses) in a long time.

Sous Vide

Ken — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:43:06 +0000

Yeah. Until recently I didn't even know about sous vide cooking. My foodie friend Eileen gave me some well-deserved crap about it. But now I get my revenge: I am doing my own sous vide cooking at home, using my $80 home-built contraption. How many people can say that?

So I already had a vacuum sealer. That's half of this technique ("sous vide" means "under vacuum"). Here are a couple of steaks I vacuumed-sealed with a basic marinade (just lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper).

The other half is a temperature controlled water bath for precision cooking. I took a $20 crock pot, a $50 temperature controller, and a $10 thermistor, and made this thing:

132°F for a little over an hour, and then seasoned and marked on the grill. Here's the amazing result.

It's a perfect medium-rare, juicy and tender. It's fantastic and foolproof. I am a happy happy man.