And so it begins...

Sous vide (French for under vacuum) is a way of cooking that uses temperature controlled water, with the food in a vacuum sealed bag. We were invited to a sous vide meat night at Melanie's brother's home for her birthday dinner earlier this year, and it was superb. The meat is perfectly cooked and then seared to give a nice surface texture. Well, to our surprise they gifted us a sous vide machine this Christmas, and we are excited to share our journey as we enter the sous vide world.

Step 1: Realize you need stuff

We thought we could use our pots, but quickly realized that it was too short to even attach the device to it. On the sous vide machine, there's a clamp to solidly attach to the container. When attached you fill the container with water between the marked min and max levels. 

So first off we needed to get a container that would work. Jacob went hunting at a local thrift store yesterday, but was not able to find anything useful there. Instead, he went to Walmart and found a tall pot at only about 6 USD.

Step 2: Set things up

Time to test the device! We were able to connect it to our WiFi, with a little trial and error (yes, there's a manual, but who cares). It fits well in the pot, and it looks like we will be able to put in an appropriate amount of meat for us two. It's nifty to control the device through the app, there's of course controls for the temperature and times but also recipes, and a calculator. You tell the calculator what meat you will cook, how thick it is, and how well done you want it, and it will tell you the temperature and time needed. It took less than five minutes for it to heat up to 145°F.

Step 3: Prepare the food

We are starting out with two pieces of steak that we had in the freezer. We put salt, black pepper, and garlic salt on it. Then, we put it in BPA free plastic sandwich bags and removed the air from them. To remove the air, you can put it down into water without letting water in. This pushes the air out.

Step 4: Cook it

The sous vide device circulates the water, so it's a good idea to attach the food to the side of the container. We didn't have any clips, but Melanie was creative and we ended up using some bobby pins. Now we can just leave it there until it's done. To prevent too much evaporation we put a little foil on the top. We used the calculator to decide the temperature and time to have it medium well. It needs to cook for one and a half hour, but one of the beauties of sous vide is that it doesn't matter if we leave it a little longer.

Since it's done, all that's left to do is sear it. It's nice to use a torch for it, but we don't have that so we're just using this cast iron pan. We forgot to dry the face of the meat first - if it's really wet, it takes more to sear it. Next time we'll remember this.

Step 5: Eat it

The meat turned out really well, though it was more well done than we had imagined. Though the temperature was supposed to be set for medium well, it seemed more like it was well done. But, it was really tasty and well cooked all throughout.