Holiday & Christmas

Makes about 2 cups

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons (60 ml) butter
• 2 tablespoons (60 ml) finely minced onion
• 1 cooked turkey liver, well minced
• 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt
• 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) ground sage
• 1/4 teaspoon (1.3 ml) garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon (1.3 ml) onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon (1.3 ml) black pepper
• 2 tablespoons (60 ml) Wondra Quick Mixing Flour (or plain flour)
• 2 cups (480 ml) chicken or turkey broth (use the broth from cooking the giblets if you have it.)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and sauté the onion until translucent.
2. Add the minced turkey liver and continue to cook for another minute.
3. Sprinkle the seasonings on the liver and stir to combine.
4. Sprinkle the flour over the liver and onions and stir to coat well, cooking just a minute or two to cook the flour.
5. Add the broth, whisking constantly, and cook until thickened.
6. Serve immediately.

Makes about 1 ½ cups

Ingredients

• 12 ounces (340 g) fresh cranberries
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 orange for zest only

Instructions

1. Fill and preheat the SousVide Supreme to 183F/84C.
2. Put all ingredients into a food-grade cooking pouch and vacuum seal.
3. Submerge in the water oven and cook for 1 hour.
4. Remove the pouch from the water bath and gently smash the berries through the pouch to make the chunky sauce.
5. Quick chill the pouch, submerged in an ice water bath (half ice/half water) for 20 minutes and refrigerate up to several days.
6. Serve chilled.

Serves 6 to 8

INGREDIENTS

• 24 to 30 small potatoes, peeled (if desired) and cut into quarters
• 2 tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 6 ounces (about 170 g) Boursin Garlic and Herb cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Fill and preheat the SousVide Supreme to 180-185F/82-85C.
2. Put potatoes and butter into cooking pouch(es), evenly distributed in a single layer without overcrowding.Sprinkle the potatoes with salt and pepper and vacuum seal the pouch(es).
3. Submerge the pouch(es) in the water oven and cook for 1-1/2 hours, until quite tender.
4. Open the pouch(es) and drain the accumulated liquid away; pour the potatoes into a food processor work bowl or a blender, add the Boursin cheese, and puree until smooth.
5. If not serving right away, put the mashed potatoes into a large zip closure cooking pouch, remove as much air as possible and quick chill in the pouch, submerged in an ice water bath for at least 20 minutes. (Reheat, in the pouch to serving temperature along with other foods you may be cooking or reheating.
6. Transfer the warm potatoes to a serving bowl and enjoy.

You have probably heard it all before: it’s French for under vacuum. It’s pronounced soo-veed. It was pioneered in France. It’s favored by gourmet chefs the world over. You’ve seen the glamor shots of raw foods vacuum-sealed in appealing arrangements. You’ve marveled at the edge-to-edge medium rare steaks lovingly photographed on food blogs. But the question still lingers: what is sous vide cooking?

What is sous vide cooking?

Funny you should ask; we just so happen to have a video featuring co-founder Dr. Michael Eades explaining that very thing.

Dinner That Waits Up For You

One of the most convenient things about sous vide cooking is that it keeps food perfectly cooked, at serving temperature, until you’re ready to eat it. Although the popular explanation for this is witchcraft, the truth is simple: if you never heat the meat past 134ºF, it will never overcook. It can be difficult to imagine keeping food at cooking temperature without overcooking it, so let’s work with something other than food for a moment.

You can sit in a Jacuzzi (~100ºF) for hours, and as long as the temperature remains constant (and below 134ºF), you will never end up medium-rare. Pruney? Yes. Overcooked? No.  The water isn’t warm enough to raise the temperature of your muscles to 134ºF/57ºC.  This is just one of the reasons we do not recommend using your neighbor’s hot tub to prepare the Thanksgiving turkey.

You can, however, use a SousVide Supreme as a hot tub for miniature cartoon turkeys.

The same principle applies when you leave a steak in your SousVide Supreme for several hours (or, more specifically, the overcooking part applies; the cooking pouches keep food from becoming pruney). Once the steak has been heated to 134ºF throughout, the water will keep it at that temperature. If you never raise the temperature of the SousVide Supreme past 134ºF, you can’t raise the temperature of the steak past 134ºF. What that means for you is you can put your food in hours before you’re ready to eat it. Even better, tough cuts of meat become more tender the longer you keep them in the SousVide Supreme. The chewy flank steak you were going to feed your family becomes fork-tender after 8 hours. Sous vide cooking isn’t just good for creating gourmet meals at home; it’s also good for finding a new weeknight standby from a budget-friendly meat you might have overlooked.

Check out our Weeknight Meals in Minutes feature for easy weeknight meal planning!

“I Want To Say One Word To You. Just One Word.”

The hardest subject to broach is the issue of cooking in plastic. It might not be the best idea for us to bring it up – after all, why bring up a fear that affects our product? But, as many of us have SousVide Supremes in our own kitchens, we understand how important it is to address the subject head on.

There have recently been studies regarding the dangers of plastic (Mr. McGuire from The Graduate would be so disappointed). If you’ve heard about these studies (or read some of the more hyperbolic blog posts out there), you’ve probably wondered what this means for sous vide cooking.

We can only speak for our own products when it comes to this matter. Our cooking pouches are made from food-grade plastic that has been rigorously tested. We stress-test our pouches for four hours with boiling water (a higher temperature than is used during sous vide cooking). We use alcohol, olive oil, and distilled water in the pouches to simulate types of food that would be cooked. Even under stressed conditions, plastic components did not migrate into the “food” in the pouches. Our bags also do not contain phthalates or BPA.

Essentially: Our sous vide pouches aren’t just fancy sandwich bags (speaking of: you absolutely should not be using sandwich bags, designed for storage or the freezer, for sous vide cooking). Our pouches are designed for the rigors of sous vide cooking.

We don’t plan on resting on our laurels. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us or leave a comment. We’d hate for you to miss out on Wild Salmon Sous Vide with Lemon Wasabi Aioli because of unanswered questions.

If on New Year’s Eve, with its rich food and drink, honking horns, and confetti streamers, we bid a last hurrah to the old year, then New Year’s Day is the polar opposite: a day devoted to setting a new tone for the year to come. After a night of revelry, everybody could use a little peace, quiet, and simplicity to let them ease into the new year. And we think good nutrition (and maybe a hair of the dog) is just the ticket to dispel the hangover of the indulgences of the night (or week) before. Some quality protein is in order and what could be more comforting than Eggs Benedict? And what could be easier than making the poached eggs a la sous vide!

Here’s a simple recipe for The Perfect Sous Vide Eggs Benedict.  Best of all, when you may be struggling to clear the cobwebs on ‘the day after’, careful timing is not required to get a perfect egg, .Just preheat the SousVide Supreme and gently drop the eggs in their shells onto the bottom perforated grill of the water oven. Set the timer for an hour and go have a Bloody Mary and watch the Rose Bowl Parade or take a brisk walk while the machine does all the work. If you don’t get back to them right at the stroke of an hour, at this temperature it won’t matter. They won’t overcook.

If you’re in a bit of a rush, you can use the quick cook method. Simply crank your SousVide Supreme up to 167F/75C and you can poach the eggs in their shells in about 15 minutes (if you like a runny yolk) or 20 minutes (if you like it a bit more cooked.) A word of caution here: quick cooking the eggs does require paying attention to the timer when it beeps. At this temperature, you’ll end up with hard boiled eggs after about 45 minutes. But hey, if you do, just make egg salad and go have another bit of the hair of the dog!

Happy New Year to all!

If the hustle and bustle of last minute holiday shopping, baking, wrapping, and shipping has left you so frazzled you’ve been opting for dinner from the drive through lane, let the SousVide Supreme lend a hand! While you’re out hustling and bustling, the SousVide Supreme quietly cooks your food to perfection and has it waiting for you when you arrive!

We asked stand out MasterChef contestant, Sharone Hakman to share with us a few of his secrets for keeping things simple and home cooked during the holidays.  He was happy to oblige with a pair of ultra simple (but ultra yummy) recipes for this busy season:  Sous Vide Leg of Lamb and Buttered Brussels Sprouts…a la Sharone!  And here’s the man himself with a little holiday greeting.

Nothing says ‘It’s Christmas’ quite like eggnog.  The quintessential holiday drink begins showing up in carton form in grocery stores even before Thanksgiving nowadays.

And while it’s easy to just pick up a carton of it, it’s also easy to make in the SousVide Supreme or Demi.  And you don’t even have to stir it!

Here’s a quick recipe for a fantastic Easy Eggnog (which you can spike with a cup or more of bourbon and/or brandy or not at your pleasure) that’s made right in the cooking pouch.  It’s just one of the scrumptious recipes from the Sous Vide Holiday cookbook.

But inventive molecular gastronomists, such as Chef Richard Blais, have taken eggnog to a whole other realm, using liquid nitrogen to turn it instantly into ice cream. Take a look at this video of Chef Blais on CNN showing us how. Rest easy: those of us without a supply of liquid nitrogen or the know how to use it can always apply tincture of time, less cold, and a crank to do it the old fashioned way.  Not nearly as cool, but just as delicious.

Doing the holiday bird sous vide is the ultimate in effortless cooking and transforms what can be (and often is) dry and stringy breast meat into something quite sublime. We’ve posted on the wonders of sous vide turkey before and we included our favorite recipe for sous vide turkey in the newly released Sous Vide Holiday cookbook, along with sous vide recipes for all the traditional trimmings.

A recent post on the inuyaki blog took a slightly different take on it (see his photo, above) in a preparation a bit Deep South with an Asian twist and then making turkey rinds (chicharrones) from the skin. We thought it sounded delicious. Try them both and you be the judge!

If you have a favorite holiday sous vide recipe and would like to share it (in the spirit of the season) please do so, here.