French "Sous Vide", Filipino Style

Sous vide is French for “under vacuum” and describes a method of cooking in vacuum sealed plastic pouches at precisely controlled temperatures.  This is not my key interest but one day, my hubby came home with this obsession for vacuum sealed cooking and started to toy around the idea of, what if, he makes his own sous vide steak?  


The idea of having a decent steak at home and much more, using some French method is just so Mt Everest to my cooking skills. I'm not really keen to move any finger until... the Ziploc bags arrived (thank you to my sis-in-law from the US), a new rice cooker (i'll tell you more about that later), some gadgets from China (which I do not know what for), and a temp control monitor arrived at home.  Looks like, Mr. G has a sous vide plan.


The first thing that comes to my mind is, how are we going to cook without the sous vide equipment? and never mind i cannot pronounce "sous vide" well, how affordable is getting one?  Several Google hits later, i found that a sous vide equipment could range from $300-$1200 depending of course on how sophisticated a machine you want to purchase.

So here comes the value of the rice cooker... Mr. G bought a big cauldron of a rice cooker, assembled a thermostat and viola! an improvised sous vide equipment ready for his first steak.

The days that followed is a gastronomic experiment.  It started with the search for the best (yet inexpensive) meat , followed by knowing the best way to marinade (including finding a bottle of liquefied smoke)... 

  

then comes the art of vacuum sealing the meat...

Since the vacuum Ziploc bags are not easily found here in Singapore, we wanted to make sure we can recycle.  We used the resealable freezer bag first before slipping inside the vacuum Ziploc bag...

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and finally, the patience to wait for 24 hours for the meat to slow cook under a constant temperature of 56C.  This is the temperature recommended for medium rare steak.

After 24 hours, remove the meat from the plastic bag, and pat the meat dry with paper towel.  Prepare pan for searing the meat.  Sear the meat at high heat for at least 30 secs per side just enough to brown each side and bring out the flavor.  


The result is surprisingly the most tender, juicy steak we've had and it is home-cooked, it is a SUCCESS!

Having a boost of French cooking confidence, Mr G also prepared breakfast "sous vide" style with our favorite beef steak served with egg,  


The beef steak is to die for and the egg is the creamiest i've tasted ...it gave a new meaning to the usual sunny side up:-)

Looks like the big rice cooker will be busy cooking week to week, can't wait for the next "sous vide" food surprise!