Scouted: Sous Vide Precision Cookers Make Food — And Wine — Better
Last night, I ate a steak at a perfect temperature: 135 degrees — and I couldn’t have done it without using a sous vide, an absolute must for anyone who wants to actually control the temperature of the food they cook.
Otherwise known as an immersion circulator or a precision cooker, the sous vide (under vacuum in French) you’ve been meaning to buy forever lets you choose the desired temperature and cook food to that exact temperature — it can also keep it at that temperature for some time. For my steak, I set the Chef Series sous vide that Dash had sent me to 130 degrees over 90 minutes — intuitive buttons at the top of the device let you change the temperature and time to whatever you want.
The circulator rests in a large pot of water, set up straight by a clip that you attach to the pot’s wall. While it began spinning the water and warming it, I finished getting my steak ready: After generously salting and peppering the inch-thick slabs of ribeye, we threw some cracked garlic cloves onto the filets and a few sprigs of rosemary. Dash’s sous vide comes with bags of various sizes and a manual pump to vacuum seal them. Both of our steaks fit into one of the larger bags and vacuum-sealing it took about a minute.