Mastering Sous Vide

Sous vide is a French term that literally means “under vacuum,” because traditionally food is vacuum sealed in plastic before being submerged in a temperature-controlled water bath. The technique ensures-perfectly cooked foods with no guesswork. Once at the desired temperature, dictated by the temperature of the water, food can be served right away, but since the gentle, slow cooking doesn’t impart any color to the food, there’s often a final sear on the stovetop involved.

Not really. Precision and hands-off ease-of-use are two of the most attractive qualities of sous vide for the home cook. Trying to cook sous vide without an immersion circulator forces you to sacrifice both of these attributes. The most effective “hack” for cooking sous vide without a device is to set up a large pot of water on your stovetop, fit it with a thermometer, and fiddle with your burner until you reach your target cooking temperature. But this method is imprecise and requires a lot of babysitting. An immersion circulator accurately controls and maintains the temperature of your water bath so that you don’t have to. Long story short: If you want to cook sous vide, get a device.

Nope. Vacuum sealers are helpful tools, but not necessary for sous vide. A high-quality zipper-lock plastic bag does just fine.

Follow our air-displacement method to remove the air bubbles:

1. Clip bag to container: Clip the corner of the bag to the side of the container with a binder clip, allowing remaining air bubbles to rise to the top of the bag. This step is important because air is a poor conductor of heat and too much of it insulates the food from the hot water bath. Removing air gives the food better contact with the heated water, so it cooks more quickly and evenly.

2. Remove last air bubbles: Open one corner of the zipper and release any remaining air, and then reseal the bag. To prevent cold spots on the food, make sure the bag isn’t touching the sous vide machine or cooking vessel. If cooking with multiple bags, make sure they aren’t pressing up against each other.

Covering your water bath container with plastic wrap or a sous vide–specific lid helps to prevent evaporation (and therefore the need to refill the water bath over the course of long cook times). It also helps bring the water back up to temperature quickly after adding ingredients to the bath, which is especially important when cooking delicate foods like soft-poached eggs.

You always need enough water to completely immerse the item that you will be cooking sous vide. Keep in mind the principles of displacement—if you are going to be cooking a whole prime rib roast, you don’t want to fill your water bath to the brim. Sous vide devices will either have a minimum water fill-line marked on the device itself or will display an error message if the water level gets too low.

Clip a large binder clip to the bottom of the sous vide bag, and then fit a heavy spoon into the mouth of the clip. For recipes that call for double bagging, pop a couple of heavy spoons into the outer bag. Fill a Mason jar or zipper-lock freezer bag with pie weights, and place it on top of the floating bag. Place an inverted steamer basket on top of the offending floating bag. Then place additional weights, like heavy spoons or pie weights, on top of the basket.