Simple Sous Vide

November 6, 2017
Having self-published several previous sous vide cookbooks, Logsdon, an avid home chef, now teams with Castle Point for this useful collection. As he explains, time and temperature are the key variables in cooking sous vide, which requires vacuum packing food in plastic and then submerging it in a hot-water bath—generally at low heat for a long time. And, since overcooking rarely occurs in sous vide, the acceptable cooking time for any dish can be varied according to one’s needs. Two to four hours is the typical range for most of the beef and chicken dishes here, but the meat for the skirt-steak quesadillas can stay in its bath for a full day if necessary. And two pounds of seasoned, sliced pork butt need 18–24 hours before being ready to be shredded for carnitas. Though the sous vide is, indeed, simple to use, many of these offerings require additional steps that add a layer of complexity. French-dip sandwiches, for example, call for a cooked roast to be quick seared in a pan while hoagie buns are topped with Swiss cheese and toasted. Chicken thighs are browned over high heat before being flavored with a 16-ingredient jerk paste. The book closes with an exploration of 17 different infusions in which a mason jar can replace the plastic bag for concoctions such as black-cherry rye and apple-pie bourbon. Home cooks who already use sous vide as part of their routines will want to give this a look.