Do you need to buy special equipment to get started with sous vide? You absolutely do not. There are [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cook-sous-vide-tonight-what-you-ll-need several approaches to sous vide cooking] that require zero gadgetry. But once you’ve begun using the method regularly, **you may find yourself lusting after equipment to help you achieve perfect (and perfectly predictable) results with far less effort**, so you can cook more delicious food, more often—and with none of the pesky tinkering that can complicate improvised methods.

Time was, if you wanted a sous vide tool at home, you’d have to shell out about a thousand bucks, minimum. But as sous vide’s popularity has surged among both restaurant chefs and household cooks, a crop of new reasonably affordable products have popped up. We’re obviously partial to our own lovely device—the sleek and powerful [link https://www.chefsteps.com/joule Joule]—which is currently available for preorder. But below you’ll find an overview of all your options. Got questions? Hit us up in the comments. We’ve tried every sort of sous vide product that’s out there, and we’re happy to help.

Tools for Cooking Sous Vide

Beyond Steak and Salmon

Bags and Other Packaging

Mastering Sous Vide: What You’ll Need

Preparation

Packaging

Cooking

Finishing

Storage

Tips & Tricks for Sous Vide Success

Want something super tasty to serve your friends or family but short on time or inspiration? Enter this **crazy-easy dish, featuring fork-tender, flavor-packed black cod** and a simple, slightly pungent sauce with soy, garlic, and lime. Served atop a bed of steamed rice garnished with scallions and shallots, it’s as delicate as it is delicious and an excellent option whenever you need a no-fuss, no-fail recipe designed to delight a crowd. 

Never tried black cod? You’re in for a treat. A creamy-white color when cooked, this buttery, firm-yet-tender fish is in fact neither black nor cod—a member of the Anoplopomatidae family, it’s more properly referred to as *sablefish*. Depending on your whereabouts, however, you might also see it listed as *candlefish*, *coalfish*, or our personal favorite, *beshow*.

Black Cod With Soy, Garlic, and Lime

Here’s a new seafood technique: **combine herbs with a traditional salt-and-sugar brine to infuse your fish with bright, fresh flavor**. In this dish—an easy recipe that’s well suited for lunch or dinner year round—we brine filets of halibut in a dill-enhanced solution, then cook them gently in a sous vide water bath. We serve them chilled atop a simple salad of farro, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and lemon juice. A dollop of crème fraîche contrasts deliciously with the intensely dilly fish and the earthy, briny salad. Best of all: **you can do most of the steps ahead of time**. If you’re one of those cooks who likes to make multiple meals on Sunday, this is a great candidate for your recipe repertoire. Don’t like dill? You can swap in other herbs. It’s your kitchen, after all. You do you.

Dill-Brined Halibut With Farro Salad

Dressed in a pretty salad of fresh herbs and crispy shallots, this Thai green curry dish is the kind of easy dinner **you can master quickly, then whip up whenever you want to treat your family to a flavor-packed feast** featuring fork-tender halibut steaks. Steamed rice is the go-to accompaniment, but noodles would be great too. 

The halibut takes on a nice, crusty exterior, with an incredible, fudgy interior, kind of like the seared ahi tuna you eat at Japanese restaurants. To accomplish this, we cook it sous vide—but with a twist. Here, **we intentionally cook the fish above the targeted core temperature, for a shorter amount of time**. The exterior of the fish cooks completely, while the inside remains soft and lush. It all adds up to a killer eating experience, one your family will request over and over.

Halibut and Thai Green Curry

Inspired by bagels and lox, New York City’s most venerated brunch dish, this refreshing combination makes an amazing **one-bite snack at a passed hors d’oeuvres party or a refreshing first course at a sit-down dinner**. Heck, you could even invite a few friends over and serve it mid-morning on a Saturday. They’ll provide the mimosa makings, and you’ll give them a pretty piece of pink salmon filet coated in a tasty rub and accompanied by softened Philly cream cheese, pickled onions, and a sprinkle of toasty bagel crumbs. Sounds like an even trade, *non*?

We brine the salmon in salt and sugar, apply the flavor-packed rub, then cook sous vide. The result: delightfully firm-yet-tender fish, with a vibrant color and exquisite flavor. We serve this beauty along with cream cheese gently heated in a water bath. (We use Philadelphia brand, not just because we so closely associate its tangy flavor with the bagel breakfasts of our youths, but also because it contains stabilizers that give it a nice texture when warmed—perfect for piping onto the plate.) The crumbs offer a crunchy counterpart to the melt-in-your-mouth fish and softened spread, while pickled onions offer a hit of sour pungency. The result? A dish that’s **at once novel and nostalgia triggering**. Think of it as everything you love about NYC’s culinary classic, only subtler, lighter, and far more elegant.

Everything-Bagel Salmon

So you want to cook a whole fish sous vide, do you? We wholeheartedly support that, but keep in mind that size matters. Prepare a *big* guy this way, and the exterior of the fish will be overcooked before the interior is done. But something smaller, like trout, will work great—in fact, this is one of the best ways to prepare this flavorful fish, especially if you follow up by **dunking it in the deep-fryer to create a crispy, golden-brown skin**. Serve the whole shebang atop a bed of mustardy spinach studded with onions and salty lardons, and you’ll find yourself with a tableful of very happy eaters. 

A note on removing scales: Since this recipe calls for deep-frying, we just leave the scales on—they give the skin the really nice, crispy texture we love. If you intend to sous vide the fish but want to skip the frying step, we suggest you go ahead and scale that sucker. How? Using the back of a fork, scrape the trout from tail to head until all the scales are removed.

Crispy Whole Trout With Greens and Bacon

**Rich in flavor, with an amazing snappy texture**, these crispy-fried beauties will forever change the way you feel about fish sticks. The secret: plain ol’ table salt. We blend it up with fresh fish, then let the mixture chill in the fridge, where the magic happens. **The salt binds naturally with your seafood**, so you get a soft, uniform texture that has a satisfying bite to it. (Those cafeteria sticks you endured in grade school were likely bound with starch, which can make them bland and watery.) We also use a little STP—sodium triphosphate (aka sodium tripolyphosphate). You can skip that if you must, but we highly recommend it if you like your sticks snappy and moist. (You’ve had it before in a Butterball turkey, and look, you’re doing fine.)

The technique will work with pretty much any fish, but we found in our trials that mild lingcod—with its firm-yet-tender meat—worked best. (You can buy fresh filets or use scraps leftover from another seafood project to make your mix.) After we chill the fish, we cook it in a sous vide bath, bread with panko and egg, and then **deep-fry for a gorgeous, golden-brown crust.** Cooking for a group? Prepare your sticks ahead of time and freeze them for later. Then prepare your friends for frozen fish sticks like they’ve never had before.

World’s Best Fish Sticks

Recipes: Sous Vide Fish

Why we love this recipe: It uses the transformative power of sous vide cooking to turn one tough, homely cut of meat into **tender, flavor-packed snacklets** worthy of the world’s very best gastropubs. Or tailgating parties. Or poker nights. Or, you know, anywhere **a bunch of discerning bros get together to eat perfectly fried food and drink hella beer**. Which isn’t to say the ladies won’t get into this deeply flavored finger food, too—great pub grub is something we can all get behind.

Here’s how this works: Start with a hulking beef tongue—a super-cheap cut that’s not all that pretty but **has an incredibly deep, rich flavor**. Cook that sucker slowly at a consistent temperature and, **amazingly, it takes on the tender texture of a great steak**. Then peel and portion into bite-sized pieces. (Go with nuggets, fries, cubes—whatever makes you happy). Bread those suckers, fry ’em up until they develop a golden-brown crust, and serve. 

Dipping sauce options abound, but you can’t go wrong with decadent [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/201-update-brie-fondue Brie Cheese Fondue], plus tart [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/green-apple-relish-201-update Green Apple Relish] for a little acid to contrast with all the richness. Got a bunch of dudes coming over for the game this weekend? Serve up a big pile of these, wait until your guests have destroyed them, then reveal they’ve just chowed on beef tongue. Best-tasting prank ever, bro.

Rich and Tender Beef Tongue Fritters

We get this question all the time: What is pork belly? Here’s the answer: it’s a boneless, fatty cut of meat that comes from the belly of the pig, and yes, it’s what bacon is made from. So when you order a big chunk of pork belly all layered with delicious, melty fat and chewy, porky deliciousness, what you’re really eating is an enormous piece of bacon. Oh yes, lucky you. 

Our cured and sous vide–cooked pork belly is a fairly simple preparation that capitalizes on the many virtues of both brining and sous vide cooking to yield a firm-but-tender, rich, salty slab of pork belly that pairs beautifully with anything from a simple salad to funky kimchi. The key is to serve it alongside something with plenty of acid—pomegranate seeds, perhaps, or [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pickled-apple-slices pickled apple slices]—to balance the richness of the belly.

Fat Duck–Inspired Ultimate Pork Belly

Looking for a flavor-packed new way to play with your pork? Spicy-sweet, with a gooey glaze freshened up with peanuts, lemongrass, and green onion, **this knockout preparation is our new favorite treatment for spareribs**, the long, fatty cut of pig sourced from the lower part of the ribs and the breastbone. Whether you’re seeking a pretty plate for a sit-down dinner or throwing a sloppy rib party complete with cans of cheap beer, this Asian-inspired centerpiece dish will do the trick. 

Before we slowly cook the ribs sous vide, we lightly dust them with salt, which helps the meat maintain a little firmness even as it transforms into a succulent, melt-in-your-mouth wonder. Just prior to coating this perfect pork in a **glaze-garnish combo inspired by the kung pao dishes at our favorite Chinese-American restaurants**, we deep-fry the ribs to achieve a crispy, golden-brown skin. No deep-fryer? You can roast them in the oven instead or just skip this step, sauce them right after you take them out of the bath, and serve. Whichever way you go, you’re going to be thrilled with the flavor-packed, exquisitely textured results.

Kung Pao Ribs

Here it is, the easiest, most incredible carnitas recipe you’ll find anywhere—the exact right thing to serve at your next tailgating party or backyard birthday bash. We begin by transforming an inexpensive shoulder cut into **tender, flavor-packed pork** by gently cooking it sous vide for 24 hours. And here’s the fun part: you can choose to cook your pork to either a succulent, fall-off-the-bone braise texture or a sliceable steak texture. It’s up to you.

To amp up the flavor, we top that meat with a six-pepper [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/mole-sauce 30-Minute Mole]—cooked not on the stove but in a pressure cooker, which allows us **to drastically cut down the cooking time** while still developing complex, well-melded flavors. Prep some garnishes, heat your tortillas, and get ready for a taco party that will delight your nearest and dearest.

Carnitas Tacos With Mole

Wine-drenched, rich, and homey, boeuf bourguignon is the sort of deeply flavored comfort dish at which the French excel. Though Grandma’s throw-it-all-in-a-pot approach is delicious—and convenient—we wanted to elevate the dish into something completely elegant and modern, with all the flavor and character of the original but none of that mushy-brown-stuff-in-a-bowl thing.

How, then, to get those savory, low-and-slow flavors but also offer guests vegetables with some bite to them and beef that’s yielding and tender but not *too* soft? Like this: Start with beef chuck—a delicious but tough cut that requires time to transform into the sort of **decadent meat you want to build your dish around**. We cook ours sous vide, customizing the time-and-temperature settings to get beef chuck with the texture of a premium steak but with deep, beefy flavor. We slice it up and serve it with rich demi-glace and vibrant baby vegetables for a glamorous take on the rustic dish.

NOTE: We served this dish as part of our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tasting-menu-spring **Tasting Menu: Spring**] feature, where we rolled out a 14-course tasting menu one dish at a time. Here are the details for this dish:

**Our menu description:** Beef Bourguignon. Charred Scallion. Turnip. 
 
**But really, what’s in there?** Impossibly tender, sous vide–cooked beef chuck drizzled with rich demi-glace and plated alongside a medley of baby root vegetables. 
 
**Plating suggestion:** A white bowl-plate. 
 
**Pair with:** 2011 Chevillon Nuits-Saint-Georges “Vieilles Vignes” Pinot Noir
 
**Wine note:** Chevillon is a benchmark producer of the Nuits-Saint-Georges appellation in the Burgundy region of France. This pinot noir is nutty and brooding, with classic pinot aromas.

Boeuf Bourguignon

Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books you read when you were a kid? Well, this is like that, except instead of reading about deep-sea diving or time travel, you’re cooking a beef shank—a delicious, delicious beef shank. And how you cook it—the time-and-temperature settings you choose—will determine how your meat turns out. 

Want fall-off-the-bone, super-succulent meat? We can show you how. (And you don’t even have to babysit the meat as it cooks—just bag it up, toss it in the bath, and go about your business.) But let’s say, instead, you’re looking to cook a beef shank in a way that *you’ve never experienced before*. Let’s say you want to transform it into a rosy-hued beauty with a texture that rivals a porterhouse or rib eye but with deeper, richer, *beefier* flavors. You can do that! And it’s easy. Just follow the instructions below, slice, and serve.

We like to serve beef shank of either texture with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-demi-glace Demi-Glace] and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/gribiche-puree Gribiche Purée], but whatever carnivorous adventure you choose, your outcome’s bound to be favorable.

PSST: Wondering why this works? [link https://www.chefsteps.com/classes/cooking-sous-vide-beyond-the-basics#/manipulating-time-temperature Right this way for a little geekery].

Beef Shank Two Ways

When you think of pork shoulder, do you think of steak? No? Oh man, you should. We talk a lot about why [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities-what-is-sous-vide sous vide] is awesome, but this may be the tastiest technique of all—not to mention the most economical. You just grab a large, cheap cut at the butcher and use sous vide to slowly cook down that meat at a low temperature so that after you chill it, cut it into individual steaks, and sear it, **it takes on an incredible juicy texture that rivals that of a premium steak or pork chop at a pricey restaurant**. You can freeze your meat, stocking your kitchen with delicious proteins to pull out at your convenience. Reheat those steaks and whip up some sides, and a delicious dinner is served. 

Here, we walk you through the steps with pork shoulder, but beef chuck, sirloin roasts, short ribs, and brisket—plus the aforementioned shoulder—will all work great. If you want to get these transformative results with a whole roast you plan to serve immediately, you can do that too. Simply cook the roast sous vide and finish by roasting it in the oven to brown and crisp the outside, then slice and serve!

NOTE: In some countries, we use “steak” as shorthand for “beefsteak”—a tender cut of beef. When we think of tender pork cuts, on the other hand, we think of things like tenderloin and chops rather than “steaks.” But you can also do like Merriam-Webster and define a steak as “a thick, flat piece of meat and most especially beef.” That leaves room for other animals, doesn’t it? (Also, aren’t words fun?) Here, we slowly cook a pork shoulder and portion it into pieces that are similar in shape and texture to what we usually think of as steaks—thus, Pork Steaks! Tasty, tasty Pork Steaks.

Pork Steaks

Want to create a super-succulent ham that puts store-bought stuff to shame? To make this showstopping, flavor-loaded centerpiece dish, we brine a pork shank for three days, then cook it, glaze it, roast it, and serve. Golden-brown and gorgeous, this homemade ham will bowl over guests, who will henceforth revere you as the meat master you always knew you could be. 

Cut from the upper leg of the pig, shanks are small enough that you can serve them one per plate (personal hams!) at a decadent dinner party or prepare one or two for your family as part of a special Sunday supper. Don’t be afraid to brine a bunch at a time—leftover ham comes in handy when you want a delicious sandwich filler for a tailgate party or some salty meat to pork up your breakfast omelet. Also, you can always prep in advance, then reheat whenever you’re ready to serve—cooked shanks will last for two months in the fridge, good to go when you need an incredible weekday dinner in a flash. However you use them, we think you’ll love showcasing your newfound shank skills. Because this here is a dish that tastes as good as it looks. And damn, does it look good.

Homemade Honey-Glazed Ham

Recipes: Transforming Tough Cuts

Similar to [link https://www.chefsteps.com/classes/sous-vide-201#/creme-brulee crème brûlée], but richer and more unctuous in texture—it has almost twice the number of egg yolks—a pot de crème is a rich, showstopping end to a meal, making it an excellent option for a holiday or other celebratory dessert. Cooking the custard sous vide makes this easy to achieve, because **you can make as many servings as you like at the same time** and feel confident that they’ll turn out perfectly. 

As much as we love firing up the torch to create the crisp layer of caramelized sugar that tops a crème brûlée, it does require a bit of attention—and that’s not always practical for parties when you’re playing host. Our favorite, super-easy way to serve this pot de crème: **topped simply with good maple syrup and any flake salt**. It’s such an alarmingly delicious combination, your guests may not even remember what you served before dessert. Don’t be offended; be newly empowered by how easily you managed to rock their world.

Pot de Crème

Creamy, buttery chicken liver pâté—it’s the stuff you order at the all-organic, farm-to-table establishment in the trendiest neighborhood in town. Making it at home has maybe never crossed your mind—it’s just one of those foods that seem to exist outside the domain of the home kitchen, its liver-y beginnings perhaps better left a mystery. So imagine your friends’ surprise at your next dinner party when you serve up **grilled bread topped with a gorgeous rose-colored smear of the stuff, drizzled with honey and topped with mounds of flaky salt**. One bite, and they’ll think they died and went to that trendy neighborhood, minus all the beanies and attitude. With nothing but a simple sous vide setup, a blender, and some super-cute mini mason jars, the previously unattainable chicken liver pâté is yours to master.

Chicken Liver Pâté

Introducing... the ChefSteps approach to homemade yogurt. Topped with bright berries and crunchy granola or **drizzled atop slow-cooked lamb chops**, this creamy concoction will make your [link https://www.pinterest.com/chefsteps/ Pinterest] followers go sage green with envy. Little do they know it’s also incredibly easy to make. 

It all begins when you heat and stir some milk. You do this to alter the whey proteins, which helps produce a finer, denser product. (Commercial producers often use a thickening agent, but we’re going full Brooklyn on this business—no additives whatsoever.) The milk then cools to a temperature at which, when combined with bacteria, it will ferment into the tart treat we call yogurt. The bacteria or “starter” we use here is simply a small amount of leftover live-culture yogurt. **Yup, yogurt begets more yogurt.** This is some serious circle of life sh*t right here. 

Provided your conditions are on point, the bacteria will ferment the milk sugar (lactose) and produce lactic acid. The milk proteins coagulate and set **in just five hours**, **creating the product we all know and love**. Seasoned yogurt-makers will know you can make yogurt at room temp over several days; the beauty of the sous vide approach is that you can precisely control the temperature to optimize culture growth, meaning you get homemade yogurt in your mouth a whole lot sooner. (But hey, if you want to let that yogurt hang out in the bath for a whole 24 hours, you can do that too. Nothing bad will happen.)

Fresh and healthy, homemade yogurt will serve as a great snack base for the week ahead or an **amazing host or hostess gift to tote along to tonight’s dinner party**. If you forget to post humblebraggy photos on Instagram, fear not. You can always make more yogurt tomorrow using *this stuff* as your starter. The next day: more yogurt! And so it will go, day after yogurt-filled day. We’ve seen the future, and it’s chockablock with one very tart and tangy treat.

Easy, Delicious Sous Vide Yogurt

What is a custard, anyway? It’s a delicious dessert, yes, but technically speaking it’s a liquid that has been thickened or set via the coagulation of egg protein. The key to perfect custards is to keep the internal temperature of the mixture below [c 85]—above that point, they have a tendency to curdle. And curdling, dear friends, is the bane of any custard baker. 

Enter sous vide. By cooking custards in a sous vide bath, we can precisely dictate the temperature to which they are heated, thus eliminating the risk of a curdled dessert. We prepare our Crème Brûlée—along with other delightful eggy treats that you’ll find if you scroll down—in small mason jars so the desserts emerge individually portioned, each in its own adorable vessel. Before serving, we add a golden-brown layer of caramelized sugar using a blowtorch. (Don’t worry if you've never tried it; we’ll walk you through the technique.) The result: a sunshine-hued dessert with a deliciously crackly top and a whisper of elegant sweetness, easy to whip up (even if you’re serving a large group) and eminently satisfying.

Crème Brûlée

If there were an Iberian equivalent to the expression “as American as apple pie,” it could very well be “as Spanish as flan.” Those guys really love their caramel-enhanced custard, y’all. And why shouldn’t they? Closely related to crème brûlée (its French name is crème caramel), flan is an egg custard that’s as decadent as its crackle-topped cousin but that distinguishes itself in a few key ways: The custard **cooks atop a layer of caramelized sugar**, which forms flan’s signature syrupy sauce. And unlike crème brûlée, flan can stand on its own outside the vessel it sets in, thanks to a higher egg-to-dairy ratio—using whole eggs in addition to yolks helps give this sturdy custard its structure, along with a distinctly eggy flavor and snappy texture. Best of all: it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to make than a decent apple pie, especially if you use the foolproof method we share here.

A quick note on equipment: We cook our sous vide custards in eight-ounce canning jars. You can use bigger jars, but your cook time may be longer.

Flan (Crème Caramel)

Lemon curd—everyone loves the stuff. Like edible sunshine, it brightens pastries and adds awesome zing to tarts and parfaits. Its intense flavor demands attention, charming whoever eats it into a moment of focused appreciation. While fruit curds are often associated with sweet dishes, we like to work them into savory preparations—like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/salmon-crudo Salmon Crudo]—as well. 

To make this soft, oozy curd, we cook the ingredients sous vide, then blend them together until they emulsify. To use it in a layered dessert, add gelatin—in an amount equal to 2 percent of the total weight of your curd—for a more jamlike texture. If you plan to pipe your citrusy spread atop desserts or other dishes, removing air bubbles will make applying it easier; see the video below for tips on how to do this. Of course, you can  just store the curd as is and spread it atop toast and scones or package it up prettily and bring it along to to a dinner party. Homemade curd as a host or hostess gift? That’s a classy look.

Lemon Curd

Recipes: Working With Mason Jars

Mole—a notoriously time-consuming sauce—is in fact any number of sauces in Mexican cuisine. Iterations of this legendary liquid are endless, and even those recipes closely associated with a particular region—such as Puebla, birthplace of the chocolate-laced *mole poblano*—vary from household to household, generation to generation.

Seeing that mole’s rich history involves so much variation, it’s not all that iconoclastic to cook it in a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pressure-cookers pressure cooker]. **We love using pressure cookers to develop deep flavors quickly**, so we figured, why not use one to cut down on the total time it takes to make this most mesmerizing sauce? From our first batch—complex and delicious after only 30 minutes on the stove—we knew we’d landed on the right equipment. The recipe took a little more tweaking, as finding the right combination of peppers and chocolate is no easy task, but we eventually landed on that too. 

Use this mole for Carnitas Tacos (recipe available as part of our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/courses/cooking-sous-vide-beyond-the-basics/landing">Cooking Sous Vide: Beyond the Basics</a> class) or enchiladas, pour it over **leftover chicken thighs or pulled pork**, or mix it with black beans and rice. However you serve it, this lip-smacking, sweet-and-spicy sauce is sure to impress. 

PSST: A note on ingredients before you begin. The weights of the chili peppers in the list below are the amounts that should go into the recipe *after* the chilis have been trimmed and cleaned. To make sure you have enough, buy a few extra grams at the store.

30-Minute Mole

You know those farm-to-table dinners where people drop big bucks to eat a chef-cooked meal in the middle of a vegetable field? There’s an easier way to get that **dramatic, straight-from-the-soil feel**. You can order baby veggies online from [link http://www.chefs-garden.com/ the Chef’s Garden], an Ohio-based company that sells seriously gorgeous wee plants to give your dish a dazzling, fresh-from-the-garden look. 

The selection of “petite” root vegetables on offer varies by season. When we needed a selection of dirt candy to go with our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/boeuf-bourguignon Boeuf Bourguignon] this spring, we went with **baby carrots, turnips, purple onions, and buna-shimeji mushrooms**. Plan to serve each guest about 15 root veggies and—if you’re using them—about 15 tiny mushrooms too. 

Preparing these youthful beauties isn’t hard, but you need to handle them gently. In this two-step process, we parcook *only* the roots by dipping them quickly and carefully in water. Then (again, quickly) we steam the whole shebang in a pan just before serving. This ensures that the plantlets will be tender all the way through but never overcooked. Healthy, vibrant, and unspeakably adorable—these will make the loveliest side dish ever at your next special occasion.

Baby Root Vegetables

Rich in malic acid, green apples have a sharp tartness that comes in handy when you want to **contrast a rich or fatty dish with bright, fresh flavor**. This relish—which we pair with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/brie-cheese-fondue Brie Cheese Fondue] to make a dip duo for fried foods—also makes a great topper for a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-pork-chop pork chop] or sausage. Healthy and fresh, it also works well in vegetarian, dairy-free, and vegan recipes—waking up the palate without weighing those dishes down. 

Couple of options here: We start by making a vinaigrette dressing that’s strengthened with a bit of xanthan gum. You can leave the xanthan out if you like; the relish will still be delicious. If you’re short on time, you can also skip the [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pickled-mustard-seed Pickled Mustard Seed], which takes about an hour, but go ahead and make it if you can. For one thing, you can prepare the seeds in advance—in fact, you should, as their flavor develops over time. For another, they last for months in the fridge and taste freaking phenomenal in [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/potato-salad Potato Salad], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/red-coleslaw Red Coleslaw], and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pastrami-bites Pastrami Bites]. Whether or not you use the seeds, you’re going to want to bookmark this recipe right away—it’s destined to become the go-to solution whenever you need a tangy fix to perk things up.

Green Apple Relish

French fry lovers, consider yourselves warned: these crispy treats are a category-shattering work of wonder. And once you’ve tried them, the oil-soaked sogsters at your local diner may no longer pass muster. Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal and his team put serious elbow grease into developing a technique that changed the fried potato game, achieving a crisp, almost glasslike crust that conspires with an ethereally fluffy interior to make sure you’re never satisfied with ho-hum fries again. But truth be told, making Chef Heston’s [link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Cooked_Chips Triple-Cooked Chips] is a complicated and time-consuming proposition.

Here, we simplify things with the aid of a brine and a sous vide bath. After [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/finding-perfect-french-fry-potatoes carefully selecting] and peeling our tubers, we combine them with the brine (water, salt, and glucose syrup or granulated sugar, plus baking soda to slightly elevate the pH) and gently cook the combo in the bath for 25 minutes. This helps create those super-soft insides and also helps ensure the potatoes don’t fall apart. As with most things sous vide, it’s also quite convenient, allowing you to cook up some <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/classes/burgers/landing">burgers</a> as your side dish softens. Remove the potatoes from the bath, cool and let dry, then “parfry” to form what’s known as a “protocrust.” (Geeky, we know. Go ahead and steal our lunch money). After that, you can store them for later or fry ’em up on the spot. Finally, get ready to freak out as you experience the marvel that is a perfect fry. These bad boys may make a mockery of the “chips” you once loved, but you’ll add a seriously spectacular side dish to your repertoire. Seems like a fair trade, right?

Thick-Cut French Fries

This simple, sexy technique was inspired by early trials we conducted while creating our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/boeuf-bourguignon Boeuf Bourguignon] recipe. We started by marinating the meat in wine and then roasting it. The texture and flavor of the beef fell short, but **we deeply admired the dark, gorgeous sheen that developed on its surface**, a result of all that bathing in wine. We ended up cooking the meat sous vide instead, but marinating was no longer part of the process. How could we skip that step but still get that beautiful black look?

Our solution: coat the meat in a roasty Scallion Ash—**a glimmering crust that can quickly transform any hunk of meat into a sparkly beauty** fit for a fancy dinner party.

Simple as it is, making Scallion Ash does take a hot minute. You’ll need to **dehydrate your alliums in a low-temp oven for 10 hours**—about as much time as it takes to get a good night’s sleep or binge-watch a season of your favorite HBO show. The good news is Scallion Ash lasts for months. So plan accordingly, and you’ll be good to go next time you need a chef-level coating for your favorite meats.

Scallion Ash

More like a party trick than a full-on recipe, this three-ingredient dip boasts that inimitable brie cheese flavor and a creamy, melty texture. Next time you find yourself hosting an impromptu neighborhood get-together, slice up some apples and whip up some of this stuff. You can also pour it over a crunchy [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/microwaved-radicchio-salad chicory salad], drizzle it atop a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-steak sizzly steak], or serve it alongside ripe strawberries for a decadent dessert with a savory edge. Or do like the ChefSteps kitchen and use this frenchified cheese sauce as a dip for leveled-up fried treats such as [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/rich-and-tender-beef-tongue-fries Rich and Tender Beef Tongue Fritters]. 

How’s it done? Simple. Heat up some whole milk, brie, and salt. Let the cheese soften and the milk warm up. Blend it all together, strain if you like, and use whenever you need a cheesy sauce in a pinch.

Brie Cheese Fondue

Recipes: Sides, Sauces, and Garnishes

Most of us begin the journey into sous vide cooking by memorizing a handful of time-and-temperature combinations that we prefer for particular proteins—a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/steak-with-red-wine-sauce 135 °F / 57 °C steak], perhaps, or a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/salmon-104-f 104 °F / 40 °C salmon]. But when you’re ready to level up, it can be difficult to access time and temperature information for different types of dishes, and because there aren’t a ton of recipes for sous vide food out there yet, it’s not as simple as cranking up your oven to whatever temperature Epicurious dictates.

Creating your own recipes is even harder: sous vide just hasn’t been around long enough for home cooks to have developed an intuition about what things cook at what temperatures. This problem also extends to people trying to serve two sous vide–cooked items in one meal—why do steaks cook at [c 57], when asparagus cooks at [c 85], and how do you deal with that difference when you’re trying to put both things on the table at 7 o’clock?

These are conundrums we think about every day at ChefSteps. How do we help people adopt this revolutionary cooking method when starting from scratch is so challenging? Here’s our crack at a solution—a Map of Sous Vide Cooking that gives a high-level view of most of the items you would want to cook in a water bath and shows how the times and temperatures we cook them at relate to each other. Here, your [c 57] steak and [c 40] salmon are specific coordinates on the map, small cities that exist within countries where steaks and salmon can be prepared all kinds of ways. 

Grouping foods by type allows us to visualize the Wide World of Sous Vide, where fish cook in cooler waters down south, while succulent braises can be found in the northeast, where cook times are longer. If it’s vegetables you want, head up north, where temperatures are highest. As you’ll see, there’s no one way to cook a steak, or salmon, or asparagus, just general times and temperatures that work. (And since steak and asparagus cook at such different temperatures and times, you really can’t successfully cook them simultaneously. The solution: cook the steaks, then turn up the heat and cook the asparagus. Easy.)

Use this map when adapting traditional recipes for sous vide, and when experimenting with new ingredients. We hope this discovery will alter the way you think about sous vide—and cooking in general—forever. Bon voyage!

A Map of Sous Vide Cooking

Understanding the basic anatomy of one mammal—a cow, a pig, a woolly mammoth, or a rabbit—will help you develop an instinctual sense for which cuts of meat to use in almost any situation. Most of us already have a general awareness of how animals move, and in order to determine which cuts are which, it’s helpful to think about how certain muscles may have had to work throughout the animal’s lifetime: Was it a hardworking, high-activity muscle (legs, cheeks), or a lazy, low-activity muscle (back, loin)? If you can answer that question, it will help you determine how long to cook the meat, and at what temperature, in order to achieve a whole range of results. In general, muscles that work harder will be tough, while muscles that work less will be tender. Read on to familiarize yourself with tough and tender cuts so you can head to the butcher confident in your protein-picking prowess.

Decoding Tough and Tender Cuts

Transforming Tough Cuts is the first update to Cooking Sous Vide: Beyond the Basics, our advanced sous vide class. After launching the class, we loved following along with your successes as you set about **mastering sous vide techniques** such as [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/creme-brulee foolproof custards for a crowd]; luscious, ridiculously easy [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/chicken-liver-pate Chicken Liver Pâté]; and game-changing [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries Thick-Cut French Fries]. From the start, this endeavor has been about using a remarkable cooking technique to create textures and flavors you could never achieve with traditional methods—and food cooked so incredibly well, you’d impress even yourself. 

At the same time, you told us you were hoping for *even* more sous vide recipes and techniques to help you find stratospheric successes in the kitchen. And, fellow sous vide fanatics, we heard you. In this Beyond the Basics update, you’ll find an exciting new group of recipes designed to help you **master cuts like pork and beef shoulder, ham shanks, and that famously tough customer: tongue**. You’ll be transforming these flavor-packed, inexpensive cuts into either (a) the best braises you’ve ever experienced or (b) the most flavor-packed, steaklike meat you’ve ever served. That’s right: with sous vide, you can take a pork shoulder and turn it into a memorable meat that rivals a porterhouse for texture but far outweighs that pricey piece when it comes to flavor. As you learn to transform tough cuts, you, too, will be transforming—into the kickass cook you’ve always known you could be.

Transforming Tough Cuts

Have you already harnessed the predictive power of sous vide cooking to make some seriously delicious fish dishes? That’s so great!  This class, however, is all about taking your sous vide skills to the *next* level, and here that means fish with incredible, firm texture, more intense flavor, and the most vibrant color you’ve ever seen. We’re sure your loved ones are loving that tender, **perfectly cooked sea creature**. Now let’s up the awesomeness factor a little more. 

How do we get there? With a little bit of salt, a little bit of sugar, and a little bit of science. Here we walk you through the theory behind brining and curing—ancient techniques that have been used for ages to preserve and improve whatever the village fishermen hauled in that day. When you combine them with sous vide cooking—which we do in the six fish recipes you’ll find in this update—you’ve got **easy new ways to make amazing dinners each and every night**. Read on for everything you need to know to apply the techniques to any sea-caught dish you fancy.

Brining & Curing Fish

Meats: Doneness and Texture

Plant Primer

Nerd Out! How Sous Vide Works

Discussion

More Resources

Crackle-topped Créme Brûlée and creamy homemade yogurt. Cheap meat cuts transformed into flavor-packed steaks. Impossibly rich Chicken Liver Pâté. Time to become to the best sous vider on the block.

Cook smarter with ChefSteps classes.

Buy this class à la carte or unlock access to all classes with a Studio Pass subscription.

Already a Studio Pass member? Sign in