Bringing Sous Vide to the Home Cook

They just are what's being used in laboratories (or, at a larger scale, in industry) for keeping temperature. No need to evolve anything.

http://www.lauda.de/shop/en/temperiergerate/warme-und-kaltet...

Probably my family will complain if I bring the huge Lauda cooler/heater from the lab to the kitchen, though...

Agreed, but if you did it right (that is, heat the meat through and through at the correct temperature[0]), really you shouldn't sear it for more than 15-20 seconds on both sides. The meat is already done, searing is just for the Maillard reaction creating a browned crust on the outside, adding flavour. Any additional heating beyond that just increases the size of the transition between (hot) brown crust outside and (less hot) perfectly done meat inside, and it is that transition layer that makes a steak tough. Which is exactly the (somewhat) hard thing about cooking a proper steak, the very thing you're trying to solve with sous vide.

That is the reason why they sometimes attack a sous vide steak with a butane torch. It's not only because it's cool :)

[0] 53 degrees Celsius is for rare steak. Rare should not be "undercooked" (flesh proteins denature at about 50C) and with sous vide you can make sure this is indeed the case.

> And then, after you've had your perfectly cooked eggs that you presumably had to hop out of bed and rush to retrieve before they overcooked,

But they won't overcook. That's the point of sous vide. It heats the water temperature to a very specific point. The food will heat throughout until it's uniformly at that temperature. A few minutes extra won't make any difference because it's the temperature that determines the texture of the food (for most dishes), not how long it's been at that temperature[0].

Boiling water is 100 degrees Celsius and egg-white denatures at what, 40-45C? So your eggs will overcook, the sous-vide ones won't.

(edit: turns out it's more like 60-67C, before anyone runs out to try it based on my post, I'd have looked this up before trying)

> in your busy morning you're going to vacuum pack a steak? Seriously?

I never quite understood why it needs to be vacuum packed, actually. If you drop it in a plastic baggie, submerging into water will push the airbubbles out nicely.

> Or you can turn your oven to 200F. Toss a cast iron pan on your grilltop and sear at high heat, then move the whole thing to the oven. You'll quickly have a perfect steak without blowtorches or extended water bath time.

Ummmyeah... that would work. If you had gotten it right :) Steak goes into the oven first, cast iron skillet after (and then of course rest for five minutes before cutting it), and 200F is way too hot, that's like 93C, firmly beyond "well done" and into "shoe" territory. You can take it out before that happens obviously, but your steak won't be heated uniformly, in particular if you seared it before, you'll get an unnecessarily large transition layer (which the tough layer on the outside of a non-perfect steak) between the perfectly rare or medium inside (which is the part you want most of) and the brown crust outside (which you also want, but just for extra flavour and appearance).

It's just chemistry and physics.

> As with the soylent thing, it's like basic skills are now lacking so people looking for a lot of menial work to replace trivial undertakings.

I can accept the cynicism about the Soylent thing, but sous vide cooking is not just for "basic" cooking skills or to replace "trivial undertakings". Hey if you just want to cook a pretty good steak, go ahead and do that oven/skillet thing, mess it up like in your description if you like, because if you practice enough you'll get the timing just right and probably end up with a pretty damn good steak nearly all the time nonetheless. If you want a perfect steak, you want sous vide + blowtorch.

And in fairness, I do want to point out that a "pretty good" steak made from good quality meat will totally blow away a "perfect" (not) steak made from shitty meat (e.g. cheap frozen steaks). I tried and sous vide doesn't help at all. In fact overcooking it the traditional way might even help to cover up the shittyness. I do feel for the cow, whose life destiny was to end up as mere shitty frozen steak .. :-/

Anyway, in addition, the workflow of sous vide has a few benefits with regards to attention and timing. However I grant that certain traditional ways cooking can have other benefits. You may probably also take comfort in the assumption that people that invest in a sous vide machine really love cooking, and that for that reason they will probably invest in a good cast iron skillet first. Because if you love cooking you simply need one.

Finally, and I get a hunch you were thinking this but not saying it, I think the hacker / geek-factor of applying chemistry and physics concepts to the kitchen should not be dismissed either. It's a gadget with a thermostat and you even get to use a blowtorch after! You can quite easily build your own from basic electronic components (also check tropical fish aquarium supplies) and learn stuff about feedback control systems! You can experiment with crazy weird ways of preparing food! (what happens to cubes of marinated pork belly after 24 hours at ~55C for 24 hours is not just amazingly heavenly, but also impossible to achieve without sous vide) (try and find it at a restaurant if you don't care for the DIY, worth it).

 

[0] Now if you keep it at that temperature for more than a few hours, some "interesting" things may happen. Certain meats will become unnaturally tender (which may or may not be desirable), I dunno what happens to eggs though. This is presumably why he wants to set it to "refrigerate" for the large part of the night.

> A "six minute egg" has been a benchmark for literally centuries.

That's just the name, it's never exactly six minutes because it depends on the cooking equipment, initial temperature of the egg, size, etc. The exact time is usually found after experimentation in one person's specific kitchen.

Recall that you were the one who first said that I am an "enemy of quality". Somehow on HN your smiley-disclaimed trolls -- posts that are almost always the "enemy of quality" -- get a pass. So yes, accept it as some aggression: When you dare pass judgment on my opinions in such a vapid, haughty way, expect a negative response.