Sous Vide is a popular technique in fancy restaurants around the world these days. Sous Vide means “under vacuum” in French. I’ve been intrigued with the method for a couple of years now. Being a proud owner of my second Foodsaver vacuum sealer, I thought there must be a way for me use this method at home. Internet research turned up a lot of naysayers. Most of them are most worried about food safety. It’s a big concern of mine too. What cook wants to make people sick?

Early last week I stumbled across a blog that addressed the food safety

issue for the home sous vide cook. It put me at ease and best of all linked me to a site for the relatively inexpensive($75) piece of equipment I needed: a Ranco Electric Temperature Control. The restaurants use an immersion circulator and they run several hundred dollars. I don’t have that kind of dough for experimental cooking techniques. Both of these devices are used to keep a water bath at a constant temperature. Sealed bags of food are cooked for long periods in the water bath.

I used the Ranco E.T.C. to control my crock pot. You plug it into the wall, plug the crock pot into it, fill the crock pot with water and place the temperature sensor into the water. After you set the desired temperature the controller turns the crock pot on and off. I found it worked best with the crock pot on the high setting. I let it go for a couple of hours as a test.

I decided

to start out small and cook some tenderloin steaks. I had read about some other people’s experience and over seasoning, so I stuck with salt and pepper. The Foodsaver sealed the steaks up nicely.

Medium Rare is 130° F, so I set the controller to that. Once the water was at that temperature I put the bags in and let it go.

Frequently I checked the temperature of the water with a digital candy thermometer. The controller did a fairly good job, but is probably off by a degree or two. For the next three hours I heard the controller click, turning on and off the crock pot. As I checked on the

bags, I noticed a bit of juice collecting in the bags. I was worried about the juices coming out; wondering if I was going to end up with some dry steaks. Of course I don’t really know how much juice comes out when grilling or frying as those juices don’t collect anywhere. They either drip away or caramelize.

One of the benefits of sous vide cooking is that the meat never goes beyond the temperature of the water bath. So, meat will be uniformly medium rare from edge to edge using a 130° degree bath. However, it will be missing that wonderful caramelization.

As you can see to the left, the finished steak. This was after three hours in the crock pot. To make steak more appetizing I seared them in a hot pan on the stove. The final product is at the top of this article.

So, the big question is how did it taste? To be honest, it was under seasoned, bland. It was however, very, very tender. The steaks were perfectly medium rare from edge to edge. 

Next time, I think I’ll try a tougher cut of meat and definitely use a seasoning rub. A big roast would be nice with this method, browning it in a very hot oven at the end. I also imagine a turkey breast would be juicy and nice. It’s fun to have a new kitchen toy to play with.