Healthy sous vide recipes with #anovafoodnerd Jen Stone (2024)

FAQs

What is the best thing to make in a sous vide? ›

Also, as the food is cooked in a water bath, you don't need to add fat before vacuum sealing it. More nutritious. Researchers say that food cooked sous vide holds more nutrients than food cooked using traditional methods.

For those who don't know, sous vide is a cooking method where food is vacuum sealed and cooked in a water bath under low temperatures, making it extremely tender and perfectly evenly cooked.

With sous-vide, you get the benefits of poaching (extremely tender proteins), but you lose out on the delicious flavor compounds that develop when searing and roasting. For this reason, some chefs recommend searing your meat or chicken before cooking sous-vide, to enhance the flavor.

Steak is held up as the best example of just what sous vide can do, so it's probably one of the things that you'll want to try first. It's heartbreaking when you leave an expensive piece of steak just a little bit too long and wind up making it tough and dry, but thankfully, sous vide takes away all the guesswork.

Sous vide products are exposed to the same risks as other foods during preparation, cooking, cooling and reheating. Risks that could lead to food poisoning include: food held in the temperature danger zone (5°C–60°C) for long periods could allow harmful bacteria to grow.

Direct heat can render fat quickly but risks drying out meat if not monitored. From my experience, patience pays off with methods like sous vide, where beef gently comes to temperature, rendering its fat without losing precious moisture.

So, while it's certainly very difficult to overcook your food using sous vide, to say that it's impossible is a little bit of an overstatement. Just remember that while you technically can't 'overcook' your food, the quality could start to decline if it's left to cook for a lot longer than is recommended.

It requires more equipment. Cooking a steak sous vide requires a precision cooker and a plastic bag or vacuum sealer, in addition to all the tools required for more traditional methods.

Sous vide is healthier.

Cooking with your Anova Precision® Cooker requires less oil, fat, and salt than traditional cooking methods. Slow-cooking preserves and makes nutrients more accessible, helping to accommodate special diets like Keto, Paleo, gluten-free, and more without problem.

Is sous vide chicken worth it? ›

When tasted, all of the chicken came out relatively juicy, though the juiciest were those that were cooked the least. Even at 150°F, chicken cooked sous vide comes out juicier than chicken cooked to 150°F using conventional methods—the wonders of gradient-free cooking!

Sous Vide Chicken BreastTop

One of the things that sous vide excels at is cooking chicken breasts. Chicken becomes tough and overcooked so easily and it's so hard to do properly. Using sous vide makes cooking chicken breasts so easy and they turn out moist and tender every time.

Look for bags made from high-density or low-density polyethylene and/or polypropylene. They can't be boiled, but are food safe (and won't melt) up to about 195F. (You wouldn't sous vide at that high a temperature anyway.) Ziplock and Glad brand bags are made from polyethylene plastic, and are free of BPAs and dioxins.

Proper sous vide cooking (time-temperature) will destroy all of the foodborne illness bacteria except for three (Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium perfringens, and Bacillus cereus).

Sous vide precision cooking is a great method for cooking any type of steak, whether it's a tender cut, like the tenderloin, strip, ribeye, or porterhouse, or a butcher's cut, like the hanger, flap, or skirt.

For proteins like beef and lamb, sous vide cooking can get your meat to its ideal temperature, and then hold it there for hours, ensuring that your meat is cooked edge-to-edge at that target temp, with no risk of overcooking. A quick sear for color on the exterior and you can slice and serve with no need to rest.