I know most of you don’t have a sous vide, so just skip this one. But if you do, you DO need to try this recipe. It’s a winner.

Now that I’m a family of one, I don’t use my sous vide very often. My DH and I were just at the point of perfecting steak on the barbecue, but pre-cooked in the sous vide. I very rarely make steak for myself (alone), but if I did, I might try it again. Sometimes it’s just easier to use the older method (searing, then putting it off-heat in the barbecue, closed, until it reached about 120°, then quickly searing it again for a minute of so until it reached 125-128°F).

Anyway, I’ve subscribed to Milk Street, the new magazine from Chris Kimball (formerly the geeky guy from Cook’s Illustrated – he started the company many years ago). He got ousted by their board and started up his own, very similar business model. No TV shows yet, but they say it’s coming. The magazine is different than C.I. in that the articles are shorter, and it’s filled with color photos, which I like. It’s the identical format (shape, size and frequency of issues) and I also listen to the podcasts from the new Milk Street kitchens.

So, anyway, the May-June issue had a double-spread about sous vide. In it J.M. Hirsch writes that you can make a perfect poached egg in 45 minutes at 145°F. I may have to try that one. There are much cheaper sous vide instruments (using your own container) than when I bought mine. Mine was several hundred dollars. New immersion pods start at $79 (Sous Smart) and $129 (Anova). And another new one that uses a phone app to run it (they liked that one a lot, called Joules) for $199. They perfected this chicken recipe and it sounded so intriguing I just had to try it. I halved the below recipe (using one packet of boneless, skinless chicken breasts from Costco, which contained 2 nice-sized breasts) and I actually  used ordinary ziploc bags instead of digging out my vacuum sealer. You lower the filled bag in water until it reaches the zip portion (but it’s unzipped at this point), then press out all the air and zip it. Am not sure the zip tab type would work for this. Anyway, that worked just fine using Ziploc. Picture at left from chefsinfo.com.

I made one other change – I didn’t have any ancho chiles (dried) in my pantry. Anchos are dried pasilla chiles, which have such a very unique flavor. I need to get some, because I’ll be making this recipe again. So instead, I used guajillo, which are mild flavored and similar. Otherwise, I followed the recipe except for browning the chiles. Seems kind of redundant to me. The sauce you make is quite easy to do and it’s full of flavor, but hardly any heat at all. I refrigerated the chicken packets for an hour or two while I heated up the sous vide, which should have kind of marinated them. I have a rack for my sous vide and I used it to make sure the chicken packets were kept submerged completely. Timer set for 1 1/2 hours and then I made the sauce and cooked some fresh asparagus and my dinner was done.

Oh my. The chicken was SO tender, and absolutely perfectly cooked through and juicy. I could practically cut it with a fork, though I did use a knife. Loved the chile flavor, the smokiness of the dried cumin. Couldn’t taste the cinnamon. The chiles completely dissolve in the sauce (because you whiz it up in the food processor). The sauce was an absolute cinch to make and dinner was ready with a bit of cilantro on top. Don’t dilly dally once they’re done as the chicken is hot and you don’t want to eat it lukewarm. A definite make-again dish.

What’s GOOD: everything about it was good. The chicken was PERFECTLY cooked and as juicy as chicken could possibly be. Easy to do in the sous vide. You could easily make the marinade/sauce ahead of time and combine them just before cooking. I have a second packet left over and from the article I understand it will be just as tender and good as the first time. Loved the sauce – mild and very flavorful. Not hot because anchos or guajillos are mild chiles.

What’s NOT: not much unless you don’t like the hassle of cooking sous vide.

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The last time I made Chicken Tikka Masala, I said it was the be-all, end-all recipe (from America’s Test Kitchen) and that I’d probably never try another one. And then I read this recipe using the Sous Vide Supreme PSV-00144 Promo Pack Cooking System. I know that most of you don’t have a sous vide machine, so I’m also including the same recipe done in the slow cooker. And this is surely the time of year when it would be so nice to throw something in the slow cooker, a fix and forget kind of meal.

Do I get cravings? Sure. Like most people, I presume. In #1 position is chocolate. Oh how I wish I didn’t crave it. Not every day, but almost. I do my best to grab about 6 chocolate chips and be satisfied with that. Usually it works. In #2 position is Mexican food. As I’ve explained ages ago here on my blog, growing up in San Diego I went to a favorite restaurant in Old Town (called Aztec Dining Room – long ago closed after the mamasita passed away and the daughter just didn’t want to run the restaurant without her). We, as a family, went there at least once a week. My mother never cooked Mexican food that I can remember – maybe she made cheese enchiladas once in awhile – and she made Tamale Pie. But, I grew up with a craving for Mexican food. In my 20-35 age range I didn’t always live in places where I could go to a Mexican restaurant or buy the ingredients. But once I returned to Southern California, I could happily and easily ease the craving for a good taco or chile relleno (my usual Mexican meal of choice) at our local Mexican places.

Then, probably in 3rd place is Indian food. I don’t cook Indian all that often. Maybe once a month. In between times we go out to a couple of our local restaurants for it.

As a cook who likes to make all kinds of ethnic food, if I have a craving it’s usually not a big deal to just make it myself. And we have several Indian restaurants nearby that do an admirable job; this time, though, I did make it myself. And  yes, I was craving Indian food. I wanted chicken in that wonderful creamy sauce – tikka masala. Really, tikka masala is so easy to do, and as I read the recipe at the Sous Vide Supreme website, it just sounded so good – and easy!

The joy of using the sous vide is that whatever you cook, it cooks long and slow at a temperature way below what you’d get on the stovetop or even in the oven. Chicken breasts cook at precisely 146° F. I’ve made lots of different meats in the sous vide, but I’d never done chicken breasts until now. And oh, was it easy and was it ever tender and juicy. They cooked for precisely 2 hours. I vacuum sealed them with just a bit of butter in the packet, and in they went. The sauce what whizzed up in the blender and consisted of crushed canned tomatoes, half and half, ginger, garlic, honey, paprika, cumin, turmeric, coriander and salt. That’s it. That was placed into a Ziploc (freezer) bag and was also placed in the rack in the machine. It sat there for 2 hours also. When I was ready to serve dinner, I removed the packages, poured the sauce, as is, into a pitcher, removed the chicken breasts to a cutting board and cut nice-sized thick slices and placed them on top of some basmati rice and drizzled the sauce over the top and garnished with cilantro. Was that ever easy! With a green salad, there was dinner.

The only thing in the sauce to give it heat (it did have a little) was the ginger. If you or your family are sensitive to heat, use a bit less, perhaps.

What’s GOOD: how very easy this was to make. Also, love-loved the tender, juicy chicken. Even our 2 teenage grandchildren who were here for dinner commented about how juicy the chicken was. For kids, that was interesting to hear them say – that they’d even notice! You can see from the photo – look at the chicken – it’s almost pink. But it isn’t. It’s just that perfect kind of done. Also loved the flavoring in the sauce. It was so easy to make in the blender and pour right into the bag. I had not a single dirty pan to be washed! Just the salad bowl, plates and silverware. How easy is that?

What’s NOT: well, you do have to plan just a bit ahead, but only 2+ hours (or 4-8 for slow cooker). And, you do have to have a sous vide machine. Or, use the slow cooker – see recipe below. I’ll definitely be making this again.

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You really don’t need a SousVide Supreme Water Oven in order to make this salmon dish. It’s just poached salmon,  served with an easy dill sour cream-mayo sauce on top.

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Even using the sous vide, the prep work may require a couple of steps – as in this case. First I soaked the pork chops in an apple brine for 24 hours, then they went into the sous vide for several hours with some seasonings. Worth the effort for sure.

After several weeks, I’m still learning my way through using the SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. The process doesn’t come naturally like stove top sautéing, or grilling or simmering. But I’m getting the hang of it. This time I pulled some pork chops out of the freezer that I’d already prepped. I’d bought one of those big packages of boneless thick pork chops at Costco. Here’s what I did to the whole batch:

1. Soaked them in a big Ziploc bag in Tyler Florence’s Spiced Apple Brine. For 24 hours. I drained it, then . . .
2. Put two small chops each into vacuum pouches (still left open at this point).
3. Added to each pouch a little sprinkling of capers, about 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard and kind of mushed it around on one side of the meat, about 1/2 teaspoon of fresh chopped rosemary and some pepper. Then I sealed them up with the vacuum sealer.

At this point I froze them so it would be easy to prepare once they were defrosted, which I did 24 hours ahead of serving. The day of, I put them in 131° water in the Sous Vide, and let them cook for about 6-7 hours (the range is 5-8 hours – meaning they’d be done in 5 but they can hold at that temp for up to 8 hours). My DH fired up the gas grill and just seared them for about 1 1/2 minutes per side. I made a kind of a raita sauce on the side (sour cream, fresh chives, minced cucumber, lemon juice, a little jot of champagne vinegar, some fresh herbs, salt, pepper). I’d also done some of the pork in a curry kind of flavoring mix, but none of us cared for it much – so that’s why I made the raita style side. Raita goes mostly with Indian food (you can see the yellow curry in the upper pouch), but it was nice enough with this.

So how was it? Wonderful! The meat was tender as could be – it was perfectly cooked through, pink in the middle too. If you are cooking pork from a raw state the USDA recommends you cook it to 143° to kill the pathogens. But using a sous vide, several hours of that slow cooking provides the same bug-killing at 131° (according to my sous vide information). In my sous vide cookbook, it indicates that pasteurization of meat (beef, lamb, pork) occurs  after 2 hours (1 1/4 inch thick meat). Thinner meat takes less time. So even though the meat was pink in the middle, it was completely cooked and safe.

What I liked: just how tender the meat was, and how flavorful the little seasoning in it was. Brining was definitely the way to go.

What I didn’t like: really nothing. I’d definitely make this again. I’ll likely make a different sauce.

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Whether or not you have a sous vide, you could still make the deliciously spicy (horseradish) and pungent (Dijon mustard), yet sweet (honey) and herby (fresh mint) glaze that goes on the steaks. I loved the glaze and would definitely make it again. The steaks were good too!

We had offered to take ribeyes to our son and daughter-in-law. For Sunday dinner. So, I decided to sous vide them, since I hadn’t done that before, with steaks. $35 worth of steaks (3 very thick choice ones from Costco) went into individual pouches (pictured left, in the rack that comes with the SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. I cooked them at 131° for about 2 1/2 hours. The sous vide directions say you can cook these for 2 to 8 hours. What that means is they’re done in 2 hours, and you can hold them at that temp for a max of 8 hours. After 8 hours the meat will begin changing its chemistry (at least that’s what I think it means). I quick-chilled them in a big bowl of water and ice once I removed them from the sous vide and took them to our kids’.

Once we were about ready to eat I removed the pouches from the refrigerator, slathered on the glaze (more about that below), put them on a hot-hot stove-top grill and seared them. I’m still learning all these techniques – and I learned another one on this occasion. When you try to sear cold steaks that have been cooked sous vide, you need to leave them out at room temp for awhile. I seared them, cut into them and discovered that the searing (about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes per side) didn’t heat the meat all the way through, so the centers were still a bit tepid. I put them back on the grill for another 3-4 minutes total and they were just perfect. It would be ideal to open the cooked pouches (when they’re at 131°) slather on the glaze and put them directly on the grill. Next time I’ll do that.

Now the GLAZE . . . it’s so very simple to make. Stir in a small bowl the mustard, bottled horseradish, honey, mint and pepper (I didn’t add any salt). The only thing you need to remember is that with honey in this glaze, it will make the steaks caramelize very quickly – long cooking would make the glaze burn. Soooo, if you make this glaze for regularly-cooked barbecued steaks, don’t put it on the steaks until they’re just about finished – like during the last 3-4 minutes of cooking. You could also put it only on the top (glaze the top after you’ve seared one side and turned it over). The sauce is piquant. Mustardy. Spicy and herby. This recipe came from Jason Logsdon’s sous vide book Sous Vide Grilling.

What I liked: I loved the sauce. I’d have liked it served at the table too, so I could have dipped each piece of meat into it. A lot of the sauce ended up on the grill itself, stuck to it (I used a ridged grill to get grill marks). The steak was tender enough (not the most tender I’ve ever had) but it was consistently pink through the whole steak, which I liked too. The sous vide approach went fine – I’d just make sure to take them out of the pouches and go directly onto the outdoor grill next time.

What I didn’t like: really nothing specific. I could have wished the steak itself was more flavorful – seems to me like some steaks you buy just don’t have a lot of beefy flavor anymore. Why is that?

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Another experiment with sous vide cooking. This time I made pork shoulder (pork butt), cooked it at 140° for 48 hours. And I served it with a very tart North Carolina vinegar sauce instead of the usual ketchup-based barbecue sauce that’s more typical. Mostly I did that because my DH is a diabetic and very rarely eats pulled pork because the traditional BBQ sauce just sends his blood sugar skyrocketing.

At least once a week I’m experimenting with my SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. Not every dish I’ve made has made it to a post on my blog, as I’m not experienced enough yet. One pork dish I made was not very good (pork chops were too thin, I think, so it overcooked). I’m liking the long, slow cooking for more things – the less tender cuts. Not steaks and such – they are best with relatively little sous vide cooking. I had a big chunk of pork in the freezer – I’d purchased a gigantic pork shoulder a month or so ago, at a great price and cut it up into smaller cooking portions. But I didn’t have a sous vide cooker then. So the meat was just vacuum sealed with nothing whatsoever in it. I decided to just go with it that way. Nothing else in the pouch but the meat. No salt. No pepper. No onions or seasonings of any kind. I knew I’d need to doctor it up with seasonings later.

So I did some reading about barbecue sauces. Goodness, but there are a lot of different types. I knew there was a Memphis style, and St. Louis style, but that was about it. Referring to one of my Steven Raichlen books, Barbecue! Bible: Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes, I hunted through all the dozens of possible permutations, trying to find one that was low on sugar. We’re mostly tuned into such sauces containing lots and lots of ketchup. Then I read about the sauce that is the favorite with folks in North Carolina. It’s a vinegar sauce and has nary a teaspoon of tomato in it – like ketchup or tomato paste.

So here’s what’s in it – onions sliced thin, apple cider vinegar, water (not pictured), red chili flakes, sugar, salt and pepper. It’s not cooked. You merely combine the ingredients in a bowl (non-reactive) and stir it up. I made it ahead because I wanted the onions to soften a bit in there, which they did. Not only did they soften in texture, but the soaking takes away some of the fresh astringency from raw onions. I covered it and just let it sit out on the counter for several hours.

What you need to know about this sauce is that you combine it with the shredded pork and the meat just absorbs a lot of the vinegar sauce. No, it’s not sour (because the meat has a lot of sweetness to it). You’d think it would be sour. I was unsure enough about this sauce that I took a piece of pork and gingerly dipped it into the sauce to sample it. Oh my. GOOD. Amazing, I thought.

I cut up some green cabbage and put just a little bit of the vinegar sauce on it and served that with the sliders – to put onto the sandwich itself. The meat – so tender and juicy. I added about a cup of the onions and vinegary sauce to it and let it sit for about 5 minutes before I set out the slider buns, the meat, the cabbage. I let everyone make their own sliders. I also made a delicious cabbage salad which I’ll post in a couple of days.

What I liked: the texture and taste of the pulled pork. It was incredibly tender after 48 hours of sous vide. The vinegar sauce was outstanding. I loved it! For left overs I put out regular barbecue sauce (bottled) and some eaters had some of that too.

What I didn’t like: nothing. It was really, really good.

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. . .This recipe hardly even deserves an entire recipe box listing – it’s just pork shoulder, vacuum sealed, done in the sous vide for 48 hours. Done.

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Even if you don’t own a sous vide, you could make this in your slow cooker on low. And in either case, make the microwave creamy mustard sauce to serve on the side.

It seems that the only time of year I make a corned beef is in March, near to St. Patrick’s Day. Otherwise if they’re available in the markets I just don’t “see” them. I bought mine at Trader Joe’s. And if you haven’t noticed, corned beef is mighty pricey! I was shocked. My small 3-pound corned beef was nearly $17. And it would barely serve 6 people. But I wanted to try cooking it in my SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. For those of you who aren’t into sous vide, just skip down below to the sauce part if that’s what interests you.

Consulting a variety of sources about the sous vide corned beef (2 cookbooks and about 3-4 online recipes, plus a phone call to my sous vide expert, Russ), I finally decided to cook it for 10 hours close to 180°. By the time I decided what to do, it had gone past the point that I could cook it for 48 hours. I was down to 24, so obviously I did the 10-hour cook. Actually I set the temp to 178°.

To say that I had some difficulty would be an understatement. I’m new enough to sous vide that I was in alien territory when I came into the kitchen, 3 hours into the 10 hour cooking and found the lid of the Supreme standing nearly upright, tipped up at about 75°. At 8 that morning I’d pressed the corned beef into the Supreme’s accompanying rack, and placed the rack in Supreme, with the meat on the bottom rung, put the lid on top and left the house. In the interim time, somehow, fluid had rendered out of the corned beef which creates a gas, so there was a whole lot of air in the pouch. The gas/air was a lot stronger than the rack in holding the roast underwater and it had actually turned the rack upside down, hence popping off the top of the machine. So, the beef was more or less floating on top. Not exactly what sous vide is all about.

I had to manhandle the darned thing to get it turned back down-under, on went the lid and I put a bunch of book on top of the lid. No more mishaps exactly. BUT, after 10 hours I dismantled everything and lo and behold, the roast had come loose again and had pushed itself toward the top. About an inch of the roast was up above water line. Sigh. But, since I cooked it at 178° I knew the meat was done. No fluid had leaked out of the bag – at all – and no water had leaked into the roast. It’s a chemistry thing, though, about the gas. Next time I will have to figure out a way to weight-down the meat – something heavy that will sit on top of the meat and not have enough room to roll over when the gas creates inside. I have one particular casserole dish in mind that will probably work. Or maybe I’ll need to put a real honest brick, wrapped in foil and put into a Ziploc bag to place on top – except that a brick might turn on its side, so that probably won’t work. It would have to a a big cement paver just the right size as the interior of the Supreme!

The roast rested a bit while I made the veggies and the delicious mustard cream sauce. The meat was sliced (easily) and served on heated plates, along with some simmered potatoes, cabbage and onions. The SAUCE: it was quick to make – in the microwave. It’s all the usual steps to make a cream sauce (half and half and chicken broth for the liquid), but just requires opening the door of the microwave through several steps. It took about 4-5 minutes to make it, though. Easy enough.

What I liked: perfect texture, still moist, sliced easily, good red meat color. I’ll probably try it again at long, slow cooking, but I liked this one just fine. The SAUCE: oh gosh. Delicious. I liked it a lot as an accompaniment to corned beef. It was also just fine on the left overs.

What I didn’t like: nothing, really. I’d make them both again.

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MICROWAVE MUSTARD SAUCE printer-friendly PDF
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MICROWAVE MUSTARD SAUCE MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

. . .

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