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Cooking with science!
I am definitely NOT #AltonBrown but I am definitely a HUGE Fan Girl! Have been watching Good Eats since I was able to afford cable back in the day.
Became a family favorite show to watch and drool at and then the perfect Christmas gifts when he published his books.
Honest to goodness I am still a person that NEEDS a cookbook or printout of a recipe. It drives my husband CRAZY that I don’t use my iPad or phone.
Obviously he doesn’t hang out with me and my sloppy self in the kitchen enough to know I don’t want to muck those up!
So when our friend, who is also a big time foodie, introduced us to the Anova sous vide, I was a little grossed out LMAO!
But I put on my big girl panties and tried the steak that our friend had prepared for us.
Our friend vacuum sealed the seasoned meat and placed it in the water bath.
I stared in disbelief that this wasn’t going to be something that I would want to get involved in.
I listened in awe and the science behind it was explained.
Still unconvinced, I waited.
4 hours later, our friend takes the gray meat out of the bath and the bag, damp mops it with paper towels and then goes to the grill for a finishing sear that made the steak instantly transform into steakhouse perfection.
OMG!!!
Melt in my mouth NY strip that was so amazing, Janice was the only thing that seemed to fit the emotion
And now I cannot talk about this enough
Our grocery store quite often has NY Strip and Porterhouse Steak on sale for anywhere between 4.99 and 6.99/pound. That’s when I know I can plan a fancy meal for my guys for under $30 instead of a fancy chain steak pub!
Our local butcher in Centereach marinomeats.com has such a fantastic menu, I love to stock up on their filet mignon (which when timed right, is also a free bonus) as well when I buy their packages.
Now several years and MANY cuts of meat later, the Anova Sous Vide is my go to choice for cooking – mostly my steaks – but we have definitely tried other meats as well.
Now for the science part. Boiling meat. Yeah – like I said earlier, SUPER unpleasing to the ears.
But, what happens is, once the meat comes to the temperature of the water (which we like our steaks pink so I generally cook between 128 – 130 depending on the thickness of the cut) it’s cooked.
What happens after that though is magic! (Technically science, but for salivary glands, MAGIC!)
For every hour that you leave that hunka hunka love in the sous vide, the meat proteins start to “break down”. There is science behind that.
Our “golden window” is 4 hours for our ribeyes, ny strips and porterhouse cuts.
Things like corned beef (we are THE HOUSE to be at for St. Patty’s day) go for as long as 10 hours.
Once we did a prime rib and well, that didn’t work out quite as well but definitely a lesson learned AND still edible. LOL!
If you’ve been looking to try something new with your family, the products here at Anova are going to turn you into a gourmet chef almost instantly.
Their website is FULL of wonderful recipes and tips on how use your sous vide for so many meals.
Here’s some pictures from the last time we used our sous vide – PS – these pictures were 10 days before Christmas. Here in the northeast, we had a 60 degree Sunday – hence the grillin and chillin – and 2 days later had a snowstorm that gave our kids a snowday.
And for all you BBQ charcoal purists – we bought that gas grill for 2 reasons only. Convenience for a burger patty for lunch on the weekend and for the sear station on the side that is specifically for soud vide-ing.
My Anova cooking method for NY Strip Steak
Even though in these pictures I was getting chilly and wanted to get everything done at once.
Here is our Anova sous vide in our kitchen. We have taken a cooler and drilled a hole in the top of it so we can cook larger cuts of meat more often. I have the stove top cover that can easily be used with many other products
Our pretty pickins for dinner – 3 NY strip cuts. Personally, I prefer to vacuum seal them once I purchase them with no seasonings. I buy in bulk. As adventurous as we are with our meals, our steaks have us eating as purists.
Our very unappetizing gray meat. This is cooked to 129. These are 3/4 in. cuts. I mopped them up with a paper towel and then seasoned both sides with salt and pepper.
OK – so maybe I focused on the right thing at the wrong time – this was actually the picture I took to send to my brother that lives in AZ to show that we CAN BBQ in the winter if we really wanted to! LOL
And there we go – still working on my grill marks. Keep forgetting to angle the meat. Whatever – my kids hoover is so fast, they don’t notice. I just take these pictures for you!
I hope this convinced you to give Anova Precision Cooker a try! Here’s link to their website to check it out!
Anova Precision Cooker – Get Inspired in the Kitchen
