Before starting this experiment, I thought the only people who could sous vide were professional chefs.
But after making steak with a sous vide precision cooker, I don't think I'm ever going back to the stove top.
Sous vide literally means "under vacuum" in French, and it refers to the process of cooking food in a temperature-controlled-water-bath environment for longer than normal cooking times.
For example, some recipes call for one to four hours to sous vide a chicken breast while a typical recipe to bake a chicken calls for about half an hour of cooking time or under 15 minutes on the stove top.
The idea is that by cooking food at an even temperature over a longer period, it will ensure the inside is cooked evenly while retaining all its moisture. Think of it like cooking in slow-motion, with the ability to keep the heat even and constant throughout the food so that you never overcook what you're making.
Though I thought the process would be arduous, I had heard that making a sous vide steak was transformative. So when Anova, one of the leaders in the cooking-technology industry, reached out to me about testing its precision cooker, I took the company up on its offer.
"The biggest secret is that it's simple," Stephen Svajian, the cofounder and CEO of Anova, told Tech Insider. "The technique, while it sounds complicated, makes it incredibly easy to make restaurant-quality food."
The idea of making a "restaurant-quality" steak was too intriguing to ignore.
I knew I had to give it a try.
For my sous vide experiment, I bought two beautiful cuts of ribeye steak — one for me to sous vide and one for my boyfriend to cook on the stove top.
I used the Anova precision cooker, which retails for $179.
The Anova comes with two apps — one that connects to Bluetooth and one for connecting to Wi-Fi.
Svajian, the cofounder and CEO of Anova, said the company will eventually merge the two apps, something that should make reviewers quite happy.
I used the Bluetooth app, which includes temperature and timing guides from Serious Eats. I chose the steak category, obviously.
I could select how rare or done I wanted my steak to be, and the app told me the ideal temperature and cooking time.
The instructions were simple: Cook the steak for an hour and finish with a sear in a pan.
The Anova app lets you choose your preferred temperature and cooking time, or you can do it directly on the sous vide cooker.
After choosing my cooking time, I had to wait for the water to heat up. It took around 20 minutes for the Anova to heat up my pot.
The Anova has a clamp that hooks to any sized pot and will tell you if your water is too low.
I used the time to season my steak.
And bagged it up.
Though you can use a vacuum sealer to pack your food, I used the displacement method — by slowly lowering your bag into the water, it pushes out the excess air.
It ended up working pretty well. Once the water reached the perfect temperature, I set my timer to an hour and went into the other room.
You can see the water swirling in this picture — Anova works by circulating the water so the food cooks evenly.
In the meantime, the second steak was seasoned and cooked the old fashioned way.
The stove top steak formed a really nice crust on its exterior.
Meanwhile, the Anova app, which has various alert settings, told me when my sous vide steak was finally done.
Those settings include alerts that the water has been pre-heated or, if you're starting from an ice bath, when you should start cooking your food.
After an hour, my steak was cooked.
The stove top steak, in comparison, cooked in under 15 minutes. Because I don't have a meat thermometer, it was hard to tell when it was done or if it had cooked evenly.
I still had to sear the sous vide steak. Unfortunately, you won't get quite as thick or crusty of a sear or caramelization on your meat as you would normally.
You could use a propane torch to finish the meat, as Serious Eats suggests. I didn't have one.
Here's the side-by-side comparison. The stove top steak is on the left and the sous vide steak is on the right.
As you can see, the stove top steak had a much better sear.
And here's what it looked like on the inside. While the exterior of the stove top steak looked nicer, the inside of my sous vide steak was restaurant quality.
It was a beautiful pink and it was much more tender than the stove top steak, which was fairly chewy.
Overall, I would certainly try sous vide steak again, especially since the results were so even. Unless I bought a meat thermometer, I doubt I could achieve the same evenness of cooking on the stove top.
When I'm feeling braver, I'll also learn how to set up the sous vide in an ice bath to keep the meat cold while I'm gone.
The Anova sends an alert if the water reaches unsafe levels above 40 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature when food-borne bacteria starts to grow) so you can start cooking. The app also lets you control the temperature and time of cooking remotely.
But for now I'll revel in the fact that I made a better steak than my boyfriend.
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