Sous-What?

Home sous vide model

If you've been reading carefully, you've probably noticed the phrase "sous vide" popping up quite a bit. But what is it? Sous vide is a cooking technique in which whatever you want to cook is placed in a food-grade plastic bag and vacuum sealed inside with whatever sort of sauce or seasoning you wish. The vacuum sealed bag is then placed in a temperature controlled bath for a long period of time to cook. Let's say you want your steak to have an internal temperature of 140 degrees F. Cook the steak in a sous vide at exactly 140 and a few hours later you have perfectly cooked steak all the way through! Because a sous vide cooks the meat or vegetables at whatever temperature you desire them to be served at, it is impossible to burn or overcook it.

Professional Immersion Circulator Bath (used for sous vide)

Heston Blumenthal (one of the fathers of molecular gastronomy) said that "sous vide cooking is the single greatest advancement of cooking technology in decades."And he was right. But sous vide is becoming more and more applicable to the home chef. the line of SousVide Supreme home sous vide machines  are greatly reduced in price from traditional immersion circulators like the one shown to the right. This means that home chefs can cook meat to the perfect temperature every time, just as more and more restaurants are doing today. Ever go to a restaurant and wonder how they manage to get their steak or chicken so perfectly done all the way through and remain juicy? It's usually a sous vide coupled with a minute of searing on the grill at the end. The key is that because water is used to transfer heat rather than air, completely submerging the food in the water bath means that every part of the surface of the meat is cooked at the same temperature--no hot spots like a grill may have. While the price of a sous vide still is not exactly inexpensive, the prices continue to drop due to more and more consumer demand. I use my sous vide for many experiments and it is worth every penny! Check out Sous Vide Supreme's website and Costco.com for more info!