Dry turkey and overcooked steaks don’t have to be a staple of your holiday dinners or homemade meals. Sous-vide is a cooking method that uses immersion in hot water to cook food over long periods, low and slow, resulting in some of the most succulent and tender meat you’ve ever tasted, and an easy, hands-off cooking process that anyone can do. Sous-vide has gotten a bit trendy but it’s for good reason. It’s surprisingly easy, not nearly as fussy as it might appear, and the results speak for themselves. Here’s a primer to what sous-vide cooking is, why it’s incredible and you should try it, and how you can get started on the cheap.
What Is Sous-Vide, Anyway?
Sous-vide (
/suːˈviːd/; French for “under vacuum”) is a method of cooking food sealed in airtight plastic bags in a water bath for a long time—72 hours is not unusual—at an accurately determined temperature much lower than normally used for cooking, typically around 60 °C or 140 °F. The intention is to cook the item evenly, not overcook the outside while still keeping the inside at the same ‘doneness’ and to keep the food juicier.
Sous-vide cooking involves cooking food in sealed plastic bags immersed in hot water for long periods of time. Depending on the cut, type, an thickness of the meat or the type of food in question, cooking sous-vide for several hours is not out of the ordinary. The key is managing the temperature of the water so it stays hot enough to cook the food thoroughly and evenly, and long enough to kill any food-borne pathogens that may be in the bag along with the food. Cooking in sealed bags (usually vacuum sealed) at lower temperatures also results in juicier food, since there’s no substantive transfer of moisture from the food in the way there is with a more moist cooking method like poaching or broiling, and the cooking temperatures don’t get so high that the food starts to dry out.
Meat and fish are best suited to sous-vide cooking. You can cook vegetables, but because they usually require higher temperatures than cooking meat does, they can be a bit more difficult (although not impossible—more on this later.) Almost any type of meat takes well to to process, and since sous-vide doesn’t significantly alter the texture, you can cook delicate fish that’s sensitive to high temperatures or usually dry and difficult meats like turkey breasts and flank steak and end up with a flavorful, moist dinner.
