Experiments in Sous Vide Part I

For some time now I have had an interest in the technique of cooking sous vide. In sous vide, food is vacuum sealed in a plastic pouch and then cooked in a water bath (I prefer water oven) at the exact temperature at which it is to be served. This allows the food to be cooked slowly and evenly without concern of overcooking and in theory preserving the integrity of the ingredient. This is in contrast to say grilling, boiling, etc where food is cooked at significantly hotter temperatures resulting in a temperature gradient from outside to inside. With sous vide cooking becomes less time sensitive - a steak should be able to be cooked for hours and end up perfectly medium-rare the whole way through.

Sous vide is all the rage and has been for some time (see: Under Pressure - New York Times), but has been slow to trickle down to the home cook because of prohibitive cost. Earlier this week I was salivating over descriptions of Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold et al (40 lbs. of cookbook for just under $500, see Modernist Cuisine - review NY times) when I started to get excited about sous vide again.

A quick trip around the internet alerted me to a variety of 'poor man's sous vide setups' (nicely reviewed here Sous Vide Setups - Cooking for Engineers). So I purchased a Polder probe thermometer for $20 and decided to test out the cheapest sous vide possible. Below: First Experiment 63 Degrees Eggs.

Here is the new probe thermometer which seems pretty nice for the price.

And here is the setup which consists of only a pyrex container, a probe thermometer and a pot of
boiling water. Basically I just put the eggs in warm water and added boiling water until I reached a temperature of 63 degrees Celsius.

All I did was add small amounts of boiling water every time the temperature dropped to 62 C. Truthfully, I got nervous after I started that the eggs wouldn't be cooked so I started aiming for 64 C. All in all the bath temp ranged from 62 C to 65 C, spending the majority of the time at 63 or 64 C. My role in this is to act as the thermostat which is where most of the savings comes in.

Covering my vessel in foil seemed to reduce the frequency of having to add hot water.

I cooked the eggs for ~1.5 hours during which time I watched episodes of The Daily Show, Shark Tank and Celebrity Apprentice on Hulu. Cracking the egg was harder than I anticipated... but I found cracking it with the back corner of my knife got it started.

Then I just used my fingers to pry off a piece of shell and the whole thing slid out.

The egg had an unexpected appearance with a custardy/runny white and a perfectly spherical yolk. I was worried that the white would be underdone and disgusting and the yolk over cooked, but I was pleasantly surprised when I gained the courage to eat it. Although the white looked like it might not be done it tasted done and I found the texture quite pleasing. Similarly the yolk had the texture of a perfect ganache and I enjoyed it thoroughly though it might have been better slightly runnier.

Realizing what a stellar ingredient I had in these eggs I quickly set about making breakfast. First I made some grits, which I have never done before.

Then I sauteed some onions along with wild boar sausage (a gift from my good friend Justin who recently shot a 220 pounder).

I layered the grits in the bottom of a bowl and topped them with two 60 something degree eggs, wild boar sausage, adding some Cholula Sauce and finally a little pistachio cream I had made just for some extra experimentation in flavors.

Pistachio Cream

The result was fantastic in both flavor and texture. I found that the texture of the grits went well with the silky smoothness of the egg whites and kept trying to save bits of yolk til the very end of the dish. The Cholula was good, but the pistachio cream may have been a little overboard since I think having too much going on may have detracted from the egg as the star of the dish.

Conclusions:

1) Cheap sous vide setups can work, at least for eggs. However this one was pretty labor intensive and you can't really leave the stove even to go to the bathroom. Even without leaving the stove, there was significant temperature fluctuations from 62-65 C. A more advanced setup would be more precise and might lead to better product with less effort. 

2) Wow - sous vide eggs! The texture really is something special on these eggs and cannot be achieved any other way. I'm starting to be a believer in the ability of this technique to revolutionize textures. See soft boiled egg test - cooking for engineers, for a comparison of what can be accomplished without temperature control.

3) I will have to rethink the best use of my pistachio cream as an ingredient. 

From here I will definitely be further researching ways of cooking sous vide on a regular basis without shelling out $1000 on a scientific grade immersion circulator. Ciao! -S

Recipes:

Grits:

2 cups water

1 1/4 cups milk

1 cup quick grits (not instant)

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 cup butter

Boil water, milk and salt. Stir in grits. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until smooth (20-30 minutes). Add butter at end to taste. 

Pistachio Cream:
Shelled unsalted pistachios
Heavy whipping cream
Salt or sugar to taste

I tried to peel off all the membranous bits, but good luck... Soaking the pistachios seemed to help, but in the end it didn't seem to matter how clean they were. Put pistachios in cream and let them soak it up for a few minutes. Blend together and add more cream and salt or sugar to desired texture and taste depending on application (savory vs. sweet).

Links:
Under Pressure - New York Times
Sous Vide Setups - Cooking for Engineers
soft boiled egg test - cooking for engineers
Modernist Cuisine
Modernist Cuisine - review NY times
Cholula Sauce

Dinner

I just got home from my ceramics class and it's too late to cook a nice dinner, so I thought I'd reminisce about a dinner we had last November. Scott got home early and decided to cook us a delicious meal.

We started with a plate of different spreads, fresh black berries, cheese and crackers

Next we had an heirloom tomato 'steak' with fresh mozzarella

Then scallops with rainbow pickled beets

Next came poached salmon with butter poached carrots (my favorite)

Finally, we had braised chicken thighs with a green sauce (I forget what was in it)

And then we were too full for dessert.

And here I am deciding what to eat next while Scott works hard in the kitchen:

Thanks for reading.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I recently read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This book is a memoir of a year in Barbara's life during which she and her family only ate locally grown foods, most of which they grew themselves on a small farm in Virginia. In addition to being beautifully written, Kingsolver's memoir is full of information. Each chapter ends with several recipes that use seasonal vegetables. Interleaved within the chapters are short essays written by Kingsolver's husband, Steven Hopp, which describe issues about current farming practices in the United States. Finally, AVM has a wonderful website  with a recipe archive and links to many resources to help you eat locally and support sustainable farming, such as local harvest.

Here is one of my favorite images from AVM:

Since reading Kingsolver's book, I decided to try to eat as locally and sustainably as I could. I have given up eating all meat that comes from large animal feeding operations such as CAFOs. Animals living in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) are forced to live in cramped conditions where they have minimal mobility and are force-fed unnatural foods including corn and slop made from parts of other farm animals, including cows. Cows are ruminators - they use a neutral pH digestive organ that is full of microbes to digest all the grasses they eat. There are several advantages of cows eating grass. From the perspective of the grass, cows can spread, plant, and fertilize seeds. Cows also prevent other plant species from invading the grass' territory, especially bushes and trees that block sunlight. From the perspective of the cow, grass provides a form of nutrition that cows can uniquely benefit from due to their designated digestive system. From the perspective of people, cows turn arid land into meat. Still, farmers discovered that feeding cows corn can make them grow at a much faster rate so they are ready for slaughter sooner. The problem is, cows aren't designed to digest corn. The rumen produces a huge amount of gas normally since the microbes inside ferment the food that passes through. With corn, there is not enough fiber mixed in with the starch, so the rumen can get clogged and stop working. Furthermore, the corn acidifies the rumen and can cause acidosis, which is uncomfortable and can even cause death (see "Power Steer" Michael Pollan, NYT Magazine, 2002). In addition to cutting CAFO meat out of my diet, I also started getting a weekly CSA box which is full of seasonal vegetables from a local farm.

Along with learning about local and sustainable farming practices, I also like to cook and take pictures. I plan to keep updating with recipes and pictures documenting my experiences in the kitchen. For now, here is a photograph I took on our recent trip to the grand canyon.
- L

Cedar Ridge, Grand Canyon, AZ

Burdock Root and the Invention of Velcro

Raw Burdock Roots

The other night we were at our favorite local Mongolian hot pot restaurant, Little Sheep Hot Pot, in Clairemont Mesa (San Diego) with some friends, when I decided to try to identify some of the oddities floating in our broth and giving it such an enticing flavor. The first which I have been able to identify is Burdock Root, of which there were two small versions floating in our soup.

According to Wikipedia, burdock is a thistle native to the old world and whose greens can cause a contact dermatitis in humans. It is widely used in Asian cooking and imparts a, "sweet, mild, and pungent flavor with a little muddy harshness." It is also of course ascribed a number of medicinal properties as well in oriental medicine (magic).

Burdock Burr

The burdock burr, which hooks into the fur of animals as a mechanism of seed dispersal, apparently inspired the invention of velcro. The Swiss inventor George de Mestral, while on a walk with his dog in the 1940s, investigated this evolutionary adaptation and the hook and loop system of velcro was born.

A great example of inspiration from nature!

-S

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to our food blog, I'm Scott and I'm the one about to bite Laura. I'm not a really big fan of the name of the blog right now, since hens are girl chickens... Still, we had to get started somewhere.

We both love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, sometimes on our own and sometimes together. We are both scientists and documenting comes second nature at this point so we might as well put this stuff out there.

I hope to have quite a bit of variety in what we post and potentially have some guest bloggers and additional contributors.  ~Ciao for now. -S