My Sous Vide Valentine

I may have mentioned that Mr. Devilish Dish ordered a Sous Vide machine as a gift for our wedding anniversary back in December.  As the model he ordered is part of a Kickstarter program, February is here and it hasn't arrived yet.  Now I thought I was the impatient one in this marriage, but it turns out he is.  He ordered ANOTHER machine for my Valentine.  Now some women might not think culinary gadgets are a suitable expression of love, but when you're a complete food geek like me, well that's better than diamonds and pearls.  If you aren't familiar with the technique, sous vide is a method of cooking in which food is sealed in air-tight bags and placed in a water bath.  The temperature is accurately controlled resulting in food that is cooked evenly,  ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside, retaining moisture.  Being the food nerds we are, we decided preparing our entire Valentine meal via sous vide technique would be the ultimate Valentine dinner. 

Here's our gifts to each other...
Food nerds in love.
The Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker....

Nothing says, "I love my wife" more
than a big slab of heart-shaped meat.

In keeping with his Sous Vide gift theme,
I gave Mr. Devilish Dish boxes of the vacuum-sealingbags that are used in this preparation.  A roll of Copenhagen
(I know so gross and bad for him.  That's an entirely
different blog post...) and some Valentine Rolo candy.
We're On A Roll...
Get it?!?
I really love bad Valentine puns.

We made sous vide Smashed Fingerling Potatoes.
Here they are about to go into the water bath.
Fingerlings, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, olive oil,
salt and pepper.  Once the cooking is completed,
the potatoes were placed on a baking sheet, "smashed",
and crisped under the broiler.

Here's the steak ready to go in.  Simply seasoned with
salt and pepper and a pat of butter. 

Once the steak finishes cooking in the water bath,
it gets a quick sear in a very hot skillet.

Look how juice and evenly cooked it is.
It was so tender.  It was literally melt in your mouth.

Who knew you could sous vide a cheesecake?
We we did.  Actually you sous vide cook the cream cheese
filling and then assemble and chill as you would a normal
cheesecake.

This was so much fun.
I look forward to many more culinary adventures
with my Valentine!

All in all it was a great experience.  This is only the third time we've used the machine, so we are learning a lot about the technique as we go.  For example, we used rib-eye steaks as that is one of our favorite cuts.  The technique for grilling a rib-eye usually involves searing at a very high temperature to melt the fat, resulting in a juicy steak.  With the sous vide method food is cooked at a low, slow rate to seal in the juices.  That fat did not melt.  It didn't need to as the sous vide method provided an accurately juicy steak.  Next time we'll select a cut that doesn't have any fat.  I'm still really excited for this new culinary adventure.  In fact we have a roast in the sous vide machine that we started this morning.  It will cook until Tuesday evening for French Dip Sandwiches.  I'm really anxious to see how that turns out.  Stay tuned, I may be adding a Sous Vide tab to my cooking labels!