This is a boy toy post, I just got myself an Anova Precision Cooker. The thing comes with Wifi & Bluetooth connectivity, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? To top it off, it also comes with a mobile app you can download to basically, cook.
You need to have a container that can fit the thing when cooking. I had an unused plastic container and it did the trick perfect.
For the steak, I have an australian rib eye steak I ordered yesterday. It’s relatively cheaper and it tastes great when I cook it on a pan. I want to know the difference between pan cooked and sous vide. Before that, here’s the steak still wrapped.
Looking at the marbling, it doesn’t tell much other than it’s adequately marbled. Don’t be fooled, the flavor is out of this world. I don’t mind some resistance when biting into my steak. If you’re in Jakarta, you can order this beauty here. Have it delivered to your doorstep.
Because this would be my first try with sous vide, I’m keeping the seasoning simple. Only 4 ingredients:
- Olive Oil - If you don’t have a vacuum sealer (like me), the oil will help fill air gaps
- Bali sea salt
- Black pepper from Kendari, Sulawesi
- Thyme
You have to get that salt and black pepper, it’s authentic Indonesian produce, sourced responsibly and they’re organic if that matters to you. Both packaged and sold by East Java Co. If you live in BSD, go ahead to Aeon’s supermarket.
Long story short, I seasoned the steak and put it into a ziplock bag. Tip: pad the steak dry first before seasoning.
I’m cooking this for myself so I can use all the seasoning I want. Not gonna be cheap with it. The next step is firing up the Anova cooker. I set it to 130 degrees Fahrenheit because I haven’t set it to Celcius yet. Should be around 54 degrees Celcius.
I opened up the Anova app on my phone, select the temperature, duration and just click start. It preheated the water to the desired temperature which is cue for me to put the steak in the water before the preheating period is over.
I don’t have a clipper so I did the next best thing. I drowned a tea cup to anchor the steam to the bottom. If you let it be without an anchor, even though there’s no air, the steak will move around. I don’t want the ziplock bag to touch the Anova’s heating element.
And it’s prepped for a 2 hours bath, sous vide style..
A few lines of code later churned into Visual Studio Code, I got a notification on my phone that the steak is ready for finishing. The next step would be to stop the cooking, take the ziplock bag out of the water, take the steak out from the ziplock bag and pad the steak dry.
I opted not to remove any salt and grounded black pepper at all from the steak. I like it like that. Those black pepper will taste great after being seared on the pan.
Put a little olive oil into the pan and preheated it until the smokes are rising from the pan. Don’t forget to slice a few blocks of butter. You can never be wrong by the amount of butter you use to baste the steak. More butter is always butter. I use 2 kinds of butter, a regular unsalted butter and a salted garlic butter.
Put it to high heat for the pan to smoke and here’s how it looks after searing the steak.
You can’t see it clearly from the picture but there was an overload of steak juice when I rested the steak.
You can see the juices now right? THE JUICE WAS HEAVEN! The steak was VERY JUICY! It tastes the same like any other steak I cooked with a pan but the juices man, it was AMAZING AND DELICIOUS!
The doneness of the steak was also uniformed in all parts of the steak. I might have seared it a few seconds too long but all is good.
I ended up putting all the juices into a spoon after I finished the steak, yeah it was THAT GREAT!
So my first sous vide experience was out of this world, I really enjoyed every single bite of the steak. I do notice that cooking sous vide although it’d take a long time, it’ll actually save time. In the morning I can prep 2 steaks for lunch and dinner. The first goes in the water as is while the second is chilled in the refrigerator for dinner. Turn on the Anova at 10 AM and 4.30 PM.
This will be fun!