sousvidegeek

Court Bouillon Stock Recipe

 
If you are cooking sous vide at home, chances are that you are using a Foodsaver or similar device to vacuum pack your foods.  One of the downsides of using a Foodsaver that you can't include liquid in the bag easily.  The usual outcome is a messy Foodsaver, and over time a ruined gasket.  The simple way to get around this limitation is to freeze your liquid and then toss it in the bag with the food before vacuuming.  During the cooking process, the ice will melt and bathe your food in the cooking liquid of your choice.  Freezing liquids was a simple tip I picked up while kicking around on the web and it seemed worth sharing, but it doesn't really merit a full blog post....unless I include a useful and simple recipe for a stock that goes extremely well with seafood.

Court Bouillon is a really flavorful and quick stock to make.  The photo above depicts everything required (and a little extra - those chives snuck in there by mistake).  Click here for the full recipe and some photos explaining the process from start to finish.

SVS infomercial air dates

Sous Vide Short Ribs

Being the BBQgeek, I am no stranger to low and slow cooking.  In fact, I think low and slow might be exactly what drew me to buy a SVS and launch this blog.  It's familiar territory.  As I did my research on sous vide cooking, one cut of meat seemed to hold holy grail status - short ribs.  Thomas Keller even included a tremendously sexy recipe for short ribs in Under Pressure.  Keller goes to the extreme by cooking his short ribs for 72 hours.  That's right, he cooks them for 4,320 minutes.  Setting whole hog aside, the longest cook time for a cut of meat you will find in the BBQ world is roughly fourteen hours for a beef brisket.  So, three days is seriously low and slow cooking.  Sous vide short ribs appealed to me immediately. I've never anticipated a whole bunch of hurry-up-and-wait so much in my entire life.  Continue reading Sous Vide Short Ribs here....

Sous Vide Supreme - Day 1

It was barely a week before Christmas when my Sous Vide Supreme arrived at the house.  With the holiday craziness looming - an impending family trip to DisneyWorld, incoming relatives, Christmas Day dinner, Santa Claus - there were so many other things that should have been on my mind .  But I found myself preoccupied with the whereabouts of my UPS delivery man.  Where was my Sous Vide Supreme ?  What was taking so long?  When the long awaited knock finally came at my door, I knew the waiting was over.  I wanted to kiss the handsome guy in the brown step van, but I didn't.  He gave me my brown box and I retired to the kitchen to see what Santa had brought me (just a little early).  What I found you see above.  A water oven.  Sounds oxymoronic, but I'll go with it.  If I was in charge, I think I might have named it The Amazing Perfect Cooking Machine....but whatever.  Marketing is not my speciality.   So, I began to unpack my water oven and see what was what.  Continue reading Sous Vide Supreme - Day 1 here....

Geek part deux

So, I've been running a BBQ blog for going on three years now called BBQgeek .  Recently, I purchased a Sous Vide Supreme to embark on a new chapter in my culinary explorations.  For years now, I've been watching chefs on TV reality shows and talking to local chefs who all sous vide frequently.  They all describe the process as revolutionary in terms of the control it allows over food temperature.  A year or so, I purchased Thomas Keller's Under Pressure .  As fun as it was to look at the pictures and read the recipes, the book itself was out of my reach.  I didn't own an immersion circulator, and judging from the prices I would never own one.  Sous vide was just out of my modest suburban budget.

But a few months ago, I caught wind that Heston Blumenthal (of Fat Duck fame) was getting involved with a sous vide unit targeted at the home cook.  After a modest amount of Googling, I learned that sometime in fourth quarter 2009 the Sous Vide Supreme would be entering the market at a sub $500 price point.  Huzzah!  I could easily slide that one past the wife without too much work.  So, in December I made the decision to purchase a SVS and embark on a new adventure.  I've explored just about every dark corner of BBQ and have been hankering for a new obsession.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to expand my horizons and possibly start a new blog.  Our local molecular gastronomy whiz kid, Richard Blais, was apparently contacted by the makers of the SVS and asked if he would function as an endorser/spokesperson.  Since I follow Richard on Twitter, I learned that he was offering an online promo code that you could enter (Blais) and save yourself $25 off the $449 list price when ordering the SVS.  So (without even asking permission), I ordered my SVS and began doing some reading.  Interestingly, I learned that sous vide doesn't have a strong online presence.  This confirmed my suspicions that this new toy would be worth blogging about.  While BBQ has thousands of sites with resources, recipes, pictures, reviews etc., sous vide is in its infancy.

So, the idea for this blog is simply to share my successes and failures along the way.  I'll document everything along the way with pictures, links, and the like.  Hopefully, you will find it interesting.  If you do, please let me know and please feel free to comment.  My BBQ blog, while well visited, feels like I'm out there on my own.  I don't have a lot of comments, contacts, or suggestions flowing from the readers. My hope is that this community that is emerging around the SVS will appreciate the opportunity to share thoughts and ideas and make suggestions for future posts.  I'm very excited about this new project, and I hope you are too.