I've been interested in sous vide for about a month now, and I finally got the tools and the nerve to do it. The experience was rewarding because the meat was superb and the cooking was—believe it or not—easy.
First, I found a cooler at Costco for $25. You'll probably have one of these around the house. Costco also sells good meat, so I bought 3 pounds of USDA Choice flank steak.
Flank steak is hard to cook normally. I've burned my share of these. Usually I'd butterfly the steak so that there isn't much meat left in the center, so that it cooks a little easier. None of this is necessary with sous vide.
Instead, I seasoned the steak as per usual, and then I rinsed the salts off and dried the steak with paper towels. Then we put the steaks into gallon-size ziplock bags. We used the immersion technique, and some massaging to get all the air out.
The next step is to put the meat in the cooler full of 134ºF water for 3 hours. We could have cooked for less time, but we decided to do 3 hours to be safe because this was our first attempt.
Maintaining the temperature while waiting is pretty easy. I put about 120 cups of water into the cooler to begin with. The formula for raising the temperature is to heat a 15-cup pot full of water to 10 times the desired change in temperature. So if my cooler is at 132º and I wanted 134º, then the difference is 2º and I'd need to heat 15 cups to 152º, and then remix the water. I hope that makes sense. To be clear, I took 15 cups of water from the cooler, heated it on the stove, and then recombined the water into the cooler.
The cooler normally drops temperature at approximately 1º every 30 minutes. As luck would have it my cooler was positioned in the sunlight and actually maintained perfect temperature for the entire two hours. However, when the steaks were introduced the temperature dropped and I needed to add more heat a few times fairly quickly, but that period passed and the following period was maintenance-free. So it was even easier than I expected.
When the steaks are cooked, we pulled them out and dried them off. Rob seared the steaks in an iron skillet using clarified butter. Chris cooked some fantastic spinach and veggies. Nealon played on the porch in the sunlight. Nicole slept. Perfect.
The flavor was really good. This method of cooking can be extremely easy, especially once you develop a process. As the summer months come, I'm sure that temperature can be regulated by opening and closing the blinds.
Natasha helped clean up. I think we ended up using every utensil and pan in the house, and we had to run the dishwasher twice that day. The guys are good at keeping clean while they worked, but Natasha deserves special mention for all of her hard work.
Thanks to everybody who participated! And thank you to the scientist-chef who invented the technique. Please try it yourself too, it is easier than it appears.
