Sous Vide for the home cook

If you watch any cooking shows or cooking competion shows, you know about sous vide.  I have also had the great good fortune to be treated to some sous vide lamb chops by a local chef and restauranteur; Malcolm Craig executive chef at BeerBros and partner owner of Willow on Wascana.  I did an episode of my City Sleuth show on mustard this year and we featured Malcolm doing a sous vide rack of lamb.  I also had the pleasure of dining on that very same lamb just a few short weeks ago, just before Christmas.

































If you know me, you know I was dying to try my hand at this cooking technique but the equipment used to sous vide in a professional kitchen is very expensive and it's equipment that would get used infrequently around any normal household, including mine despite the fact that we are anything but normal.  So I wrote to Santa and asked him for a vacuum sealer, which is step one in any good sous vide.  Now vacuum sealing dry or semi-dry ingredients is pretty simple but for my experiment, I wanted to sou vide a pork loin chop, slathered in mustard and sage and then doused in Maudite (a rich strong beer).  Herein lay the problem.  How to get the vacuum seal on the bag without sucking all the beer away with the air in the bag!
After several failed attempts, using paper towels to block the flow and much profanity, I was about to give up when I tweeted Malcolm Craig for some advice.
My attempt:

























Chef Malcolm tried unsuccessfully to explain certain points to me in 140 characters or less and then finally gave up and called me on the phone to walk me through it.  He was very patient while I made several attempts with the none-too-quiet vacuum sealer grinding away on my end of the phone.  I final got the seal with the liquid that I was looking for, though!  THANK YOU MALCOLM!  The mark of a good chef is attention to detail but the mark of a great chef is one who teaches with patience.

Finally:

























It's a tricky process and one that I will no doubt keep practicing until I can make it seem as effortless as Malcolm did in our video.  That stinker had me fooled!  You need to have plenty of extra bag at the top and minimize the size of the opening you are sealing.  Gravity plays a big part too.  In keeping the bags as low as possible beneath the vacuum, less of the beer ended up in the vacuum reservoir!

Next step is to cook the bad boy.  I know, you're tired already right?  Me too.  here I was starting a 5 hour sous vide at 3:00PM.  I told hubs to have a snack, I was busy.  I don't have a sous vide machine or even one of those handy dandy stick circulators..yet, anyway.  I don't have a crock pot and refuse to buy one, so I rummaged through all my cooking gear and came up with the deep fryer.  It has a deep enough reservoir for water, has temperature control and a basket to keep the plastic bags from touching the heating element.  Perfect…so off I went:

Now the lowest temp I could manage was about 150 fahrenheit, which is about 15 degrees hotter than I would have liked but for a first stab, it would do!  Upon removing my pork from the water bath, I reserved the marinade and gave the chops a sear in a very hot pan - just long enough to get some crust and color since they were already cooked.  I then reduced the marinade and added a couple of pats of butter for a sauce and we were finally ready to eat!

It was a little over cooked for my liking since I prefer my pork pink in the center but all in all a great first effort.

Let me know if you've done sous vide in a home kitchen, whether your sous vide bath is DIY or if you are using some cool device that I simply must have!