A Fistful of Bacon

Sous Vide Cooking

2018-04-05T20:43:57-05:00

Sous vide, a fancy way of saying “slow cooking plastic-bagged food in hot water,” has grown in popularity in reccent years. In fact, if you’re a new restaurant describing itself other than fast casual you need to have a $27 sous vide hanger steak on the menu before they’ll issue your occupancy license. If you’ve had one of these delicous albeit over priced steaks and want to try the same kind of thing on the same $10 piece of meat at home, there’s some good news. Sous vide is much more accessible now than it was just a few years ago. Here are some things you ought to know if you want to dive in.

What do you actually cook with it?

I use my sous vide about once a week for something. Chicken breasts for chicken salad and pork tenderloins or pork chops can be made in advance for use later in the week. Yes, you still need to reheat the food in the water bath and give it a sear before you eat, but it’s low drag at that point. I’ll walk in from a day at the office, turn on the water bath, toss in the food and then go about my business for a little while. Whenever I’m ready to finish it up, it’s ready to go.

Vegetables, especially carrots, are pretty good and I’m looking forward to experimenting with some fruits later this spring.

What’s the stuff taste like?

This is all about moisture content and retention, so any time you want to cook something for a while without it drying out then it’s a good candidate for sous vide. Chicken breasts, which are generally my least favorite part of the bird, are consistently juicy. Pork, which can be almost excessively lean if you’re buying normal stuff from the meat case at Costco, is incredibly tender and can safely be cooked at a lower temperature than normal. This yeilds a different texture than you might normally get.

Alright, I’m sold. Which sous vide dingus should I buy?

I’ve got the Anova Bluetooth-only model and it’s super. Sous vide cooking is a lot like using a slow cooker. Turn it on, walk away, in a few hours your stuff will be ready. If you’re a half hour on this side or the other of the initial target time it’s no big deal. Therefore you don’t need to worry about how connected this thing is. In fact, I only mention Bluetooth as a way to differntiate it from the one that has 812.11 wireless networking built into it. The Joule takes this one step closer to insanity by being controlled only via a phone or iPad. That’s crazy and a reason to avoid the thing. Think about how much fun you have with a wireless printer and then translate that into the cooking experience. No thanks.

With the Anova, you actually only interact with this thing via the start/stop button on the top and the wheel that sets the temperature.

How Big is This Thing?

It’s not exactly small. If you’ve got a stick/immersion blender it’s about as long as that probably is when it’s assembled.

What Else Do I Need?

There are tons of accessories sold and showcased along with sous vide circulators when you’re shopping or watching videos about it. How much of that stuff do you need? Almost none of it.

In addition to your sous vide dingus you’ll want the following:

A large stock pot
Quart and gallon sized Ziploc freezer bags
Chip clip
Spoon

Do you need a vacuum sealer? No. I’ve got one and every time I use it I come away fairly frustrated and the pressure and the texture on the inside of those special bags presses a funny pattern into the food. You also don’t need one of those food-service looking plastic tubs unless you don’t already have a fairly good sized pot sitting around. Nor will you require a lid for your water bath. Evaporation isn’t a big deal at the temperatures you’re typically going to be cooking at and if the water level does happen to dip too low the Anova will let loose with a piercing noise that makes a smoke detector seem like a whisper. How about a blowtorch? Well if you want a blowtorch, you’re a grown adult, treat yourself. A screaming hot broiler or cast iron pan has done just fine for me.

Sous vide steak

So here’s the thing about steaks. If you like steaks, you likely know how to cook a steak in a cast iron skillet with salt, clarified butter, and fresh thyme that’s as good as anything you’ll pay $100 for in Las Vegas. I like my steaks rare and my experience, you don’t achieve a whole heck of a lot from cooking a nice strip or a ribeye sous vide. If I were more of a medium rare to medium person I might feel differently. I’ll assume that there isn’t anyone who likes their steak well done isn’t reading a website about good food.

Now if you’re cooking a big hunk of meat like a rib roast or a beef tenderloin where you want it to be cooked medium rare throughout and don’t want that overcooked grey ring then sous vide is the way to go. I made a sous vide leg of lamb at Christmas¹, which is easy to overcook if you’re not careful, and it came out perfectly.

Where can I find more?

The Food Labis the go-to source for cooking times and temeratures.
ChefSteps, the makers of the Joule, have a great collection of recipes. I didn’t go with their recipe for that leg of lamb though. The cook seemed just way too long.
Modernist Cuisine at Home introduced me to the sous vide concept a few years ago. I thought that the whole thing was bizzare with this bag food and pressure cooker nonsense. Now I’m trying to decide whether I want to buy a blow torch or a whipping siphon next.
Under Pressure by Thomas Keller is kind of fun too. The problem with both these books, though, is that the ingredients are so far up their own asses that neither one ends up being as useful for the actual recipes contained therein.

I don’t actually recommend using a one gallon bag for a whole leg of lamb, but it’s doable. How do I know this? It turns out that it’s fairly difficult to procure two-gallon Ziplocs on Christmas Day. Go figure. ↩︎

Caprese Salad

2017-09-10T20:43:57-05:00

Fresh caprese salad is one of the best parts of the summer. Whether you grew the tomatoes yourself or you just paid $5 a pound for the funkiest looking heirloom you could find at the farmer’s market while having your ankles smashed by aggressively shopping yoga moms, you deserve a good salad on the patio.

The most important thing here is the ingredients. Get tomatoes when they’re in season and grow your own basil. We had some incredible basil this year after planting it in the ground instead of in a pot.

Quantity	Ingredient
1 pile	Fresh ripe tomatoes
1 handful	Fresh basil, roughly chopped
2 Tbsp	Salt, as fancy as you’d like
Some	Mozarella, the best you can find
4 Tbsp	Extra virgin olive oil, the best you’ve got

Assembly

Get started by either chopping or slicing the tomatoes and putting them out on a platter
Get the mozarella into bite size chuncks or slices
Cut or tear the basil leaves and lay them out on top of the tomatoes
Drizzle with olive oil
Salt the tomatoes and let everything sit for a couple minutes

Now you may be thinking, “What about the balsamic vinegar?”. No need for it if the rest of the ingredents are good enough. The salt helps bring out the sweetness of the tomatoes and once you ditch balsamic you won’t go back for it later.

The Aeropress

2011-12-12T19:43:57-06:00

Working at an office can be a sad and soul sucking experience, especially if there’s an illusion of coffee in the break room. The AeroPress is the perfect way to free yourself from the shackles of terrible bean juice without dropping tons of money or spending half your day doing dishes.

So what is the office worker with taste to do? Fleeing to Starbucks might get you by, but it serves as a slow drain on your bank account and you have to deal with long lines of people with 10 syllable coffee orders when you just want some decent coffee. There’s the option of bringing in a thermos, but that means having to remember to carry it back and forth. Add a lunch, your laptop bag and suddenly you look like a homeless sherpa on the elevator every day.

You could buy one of those Keurig machines for your office, but that coffee sucks too…just not as much as the standard stuff. Perhaps the Chemex. They make a smaller version that might work well. Alas, there’s no grinder at the office and half the fun of the Chemex is watching the bloom. A French press seems like a viable option, until you have to spend 15 minutes cleaning the thing.

Maybe tea? That introduces a whole other world of complication and frustration.

Enter The AeroPress

The Aeropress is similar to a French press without the frustration. The parts include:

A cylinder to hold the water and the grounds
A plunger to push the water through
A tray for the small paper filter
Paper filters
A funnel to help dump your grounds into the cylinder without making a mess
A coffee scoop
A stirrer

The process for brewing is more simple than it seems.

Put the filter in
Add your grounds
Add some water and stir
Wait
Push the water through
Remove the filter tray
Push the grounds into the trash (or compost bin if you work for hippies)
Enjoy The whole process takes less than 5 minutes for me, which is great. Let’s break down the details.

There are a number of challenges facing every cup of coffee. First comes the beans themselves. At home, we can grind our own. Not as easy at the office so you may need to compromise by grinding at home or at the store. 1 I keep my grounds in one of those little Ziploc tubs that are about a dollar a piece. You want the grind to be perhaps a little more fine than you’d use for drip coffee.

Next comes the water. If your office is like mine, then the Bunn spits out hot water in addition to bad coffee which eliminates the need to boil or heat your own, which is important if you’re in close quarters or don’t want to spend half your day making yourself coffee. What might be tough is finding water that’s hot enough. When I bought my AeroPress I got a little thermometer for a couple dollars more. I’ve found that the Bunn on my floor isn’t the best…putting out water that’s closer to 150 than 170. It will still work fine at 150, but if I’ve got the time I’ll go to a different floor where the water is hotter.

Even if you’re going to make a couple compromises with water temperature and grind freshness, what you’re going to get out of the AeroPress is going to be superior to both the office crap, Starbucks or carrying your own back and forth.

Other Notes

As you research the AeroPress you’ll read about the “inverted” technique. While I’m not sure that it makes a big difference in the output it is nice to have more control over how long the water stays in contact with the grounds.

Preheating your mug is a great idea. It will help your coffee stay hot and doesn’t add any extra time to the process. I like to use the decaf coffee that’s in the Bunn to do this. Not only is it effective without depleting the store of hot water, it does those poor poor decaf drinkers a service by using some of that coffee so that if they come back at 4:00 they aren’t pulling off the same pot that was made at 6:00 that morning.

The AeroPress is a conversation starter. They’ll be curious about what it is, how it works and will probably want a demonstration. Then there’s the appearance of the AeroPress itself. Let’s not beat around the bush…it looks a little like you’re carrying a bong from your office to the break room.

The Chemex

2011-06-27T20:43:57-05:00

My kitchen has an absurd number of implements for making coffee. I’ve got my automatic Cuisinart (which I love for the insulated carafe), an Italian moka pot (takes me back to my travels in Europe), a French press (the only way I made it through college) and of course a cappuccino machine that is jammed into the back of my cupboard. Each creates a slightly different cup. At this point, I’m standing by the Chemex as the best contraption…if you want to take the time.

The Cuisinart

The Cuisinart Grind and Brew is a solid day to day coffee pot. Having the ability to just dump the filter, pour in water and push the Program button to have fresh ground coffee in the morning is great. I’ve got a couple of beefs with this thing though. The grinder is incredibly inconsistent. What ends up in the filter basket is too course for the drip method and there are fine grounds that need to be cleaned out of the hopper each time that you add beans. There is also the issue of the filter itself. It’s a flat bottom contraption instead of a cone, which I think is inferior. I also have a suspicion that the boiler doesn’t heat the water enough…a common complaint over at the Amazon reviews. The combination of these three things means that you don’t really get that strong of a cup and you go through tons of beans.

Back on the positive side of things, having a thermal carafe makes all the difference in the world. Without a heating element and with great insulation you can make coffee at 5:30 and still have piping hot coffee at 11:00 without any degradation in flavor.

All in all, though, it’s a great everyday machine but not something you want to use for that extra special batch of coffee that demands some attention.

The Italian Moka Pot

This little guy is nice if you’re in the mood for espresso, but don’t want to drag out the gigantic espresso machine that’s in your cabinet behind the hand blender and the stand mixer. When I was in italy’ this is how all the espresso we drank was made so there is a lot of nostalgia associated with it. It’s easy to clean, but doesn’t crank out a lot of volume making it impractical if you’ve got guests. Over time, you’ll probably accumulate some calcium deposits in the lower unit which means it has to be replaced after a while. On the upside it doesn’t take up much room, and looks nice enough to leave on the stove all the time and makes a great cup of espresso.

The Espresso Machine

This staple of the 1990s kitchen is a workhorse that probably should be relegated to storage depending on how much counter space that you have. I’ve got one, but it probably hasn’t come out of the cupboard for a few years because of how easy the Italian pot is. On the upside, it will steam milk but it’s a hassle to clean once you start down that path.

The French Press

The French press is probably my second favorite method of making coffee. It’s always nice and strong and extremely convenient. I wont drink that garbage that comes out of a Bunn-o-matic so in college I used nothing but a press. The traditional size makes enough for two people and takes under 10 minutes to make. Clean up is a huge pain, though, and the coffee can sometimes be overly acidic. That second cup probably has sat in the beans for a while resulting in over extraction and you’re guaranteed to have a little grit in the bottom of each cup. Not that this is always a bad though. It’s part of the experience.

Overall, this comes in at a close second.

The Chemex

I picked up a Chemex for my wife to filter her cold-steep coffee just a few weeks ago. Little did I know that this would emerge as my favorite coffee implement. I also bought one for my dad for fathers day, and his reaction was probably typical.

Making coffee with a Chemex isn’t a quick affair. I made a batch this morning and it took about 20 minutes for four large cups of coffee. But much like the extra time it takes to use a charcoal grill instead of a gas unit, it’s worth spending the extra time. The coffee is strong, but has no bitterness or acidity. While you’re watching the water flow through, you can see the stuff that typically ends up in your cup being trapped by the grounds and the filter. The end result is every bit as good as the French press, but without the downsides of cleaning (just drop the filter in the compost bin) or the unwanted acidity and grit.

I figure my ratios with a food scale based on one of the many tutorial videos I found online. 33 grams of beans to every 15 ounces by weight of water is almost perfect for my tastes.

I worked from home one day last week, and while I was going through email I made about 60 ounces of coffee and tossed it into the thermal carafe from my Cuisinart. It was fantastic.

Is this something I make every day? Nope…decent bean juice can be had with no drama every day from the Cuisinart. Coffee from the Chemex is good enough to be enjoyed early on a Sunday morning along with a weeks worth of articles saved to Instapaper or a copy of the Economist.