How to Make Sous Vide Seared Steaks and Soft-Poached Eggs

today on America's Test Kitchen we're cooking sous vide Dan makes Bridget perfect seared steaks Adam reveals his top pick for sous-vide machines and Elle and Julia reveal the secrets to perfect soft poached eggs it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen today we're talking sous vide now it's a restaurant technique that chefs have used for years and it's become available for the home cook now here's how it works you seal food inside a plastic bag you immerse that bag in a water bath set to a precise temperature now the food eventually reaches the same temperature of the water and that's very different from conventional stovetop and oven cooking methods it's precise it's consistent and it's foolproof so today we're going to show you two classic sous-vide recipes a beautiful pan-seared steak and a foolproof recipe for soft poached eggs [Music] when you're introducing yourself to sous-vide cooking it's good to start off with some basics but basic does not have to mean boring and to prove it Dan's here he's gonna show us a sous-vide prepared steak that might just be the best steak you've ever had in your entire life so I agree I think steak is actually the perfect thing to get into sous-vide with you want to cook a steak and have a perfectly medium-rare you know edge to edge not cheap they're not cheap and then you want a beautiful sear on the outside and sweet makes that really really easy great so we're gonna start with two beautiful strip steaks so these are about a pound each you're looking for one to one and a half inches thick okay the first step is I'm gonna season them really nicely with salt and pepper we did some testing to find out whether we need to do it now or afterwards uh-huh I thought it was really nice to get the salt on now in particular it gives it time to diffuse into the meat during the cooking process so there's no need to salt ahead of time we're gonna go right before we cook so I'm just gonna be really generous with my kosher salt and left a nice black pepper and get this other side as well we're gonna go into a really just classic plastic bag okay here so this is a storage bag you have at home place these steaks in this storage bag here and you can use really any storage bag that you have at home like this smaller ones work for smaller things this is a nice big freezer bag if you have a vacuum sealer absolutely this is the time to do it one of your main goals here is to get as much air as possible out of the bag air is an insulator and so if you have pockets of air it can really throw off the cooking you can slow it down in certain areas so vacuum sealer if you have it this is the time to use it next up I'm gonna add a quarter cup of vegetable oil we're gonna toss it and make sure it's nicely coated what it's gonna allow us to do is get rid of more of the air that's in there sure we're taking up the place in there it's gonna fill in those gaps which is really really nice it also helps if you are using a vacuum sealer it'll keep the stinks looking nicer so if you ever tried to vacuum seal food and you notice the edge is kind of flattened out you sure it starts to pinch the oil will help lubricate it and it'll help keep nice firm edges so my goal right now is to just get as much air as I can out I'm not gonna get it all obviously at this point but I like to squeeze from the bottom and if you have oil coming out at the top that's a good sign because it means it's kind of flow through the whole thing there which is great fold it over this way and I'm going to seal and those steaks are in a single layer too that's also important I put them kind of fat caps out but a nice single layer it's gonna cook very evenly this okay okay so that's not the final amount of air that we're gonna get out but it's a good start you know it's good when that bag is just stuck to the food exactly okay so now we're gonna head over here so you notice that we've got a Dutch oven but it's not on the stovetop and we're circulating water at a hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit this device is gonna do all of the work for us so it's gonna keep the water and it's gonna circulate it so that everywhere in the pot is the same temperature this is just a container for the hot tub exactly and you can use any container that you have at home so those big plastic containers those work great we're gonna get it into the pot now lower it in and if you notice the water starts to push any of the remaining air bubbles up and out sure that so we're using the displacement method here and that's gonna really help us get those last few little air bubbles out this waters 130 degrees which is hot but I can definitely put my hands in it huh we were working with a water bath that was at a higher temperature you can absolutely do this in a separate container keep lowering it down even after the stake is Ana keep lowering the bag you can see the air comes up and uh and then once we get to the top I'm just gonna pop open one corner oh yeah you're going all the way in there all the way and let that air out and then do my final seal on it just like that and then what I like to do is clip it to the side these are just simple binder clips you use anything that can hold it in place that's just a little bit of insurance if this were floating around freely in there and the seal opened up you could get water in the bag which is not ideal it's not gonna ruin things necessarily but it's not ideal and then I have a piece of plastic wrap here and I'm just gonna cover it up now for a short cook time it's not entirely necessary but what it does is obviously limits evaporation sure so it keeps the water level in there right it can also help the bath come up to temperature a little bit faster a little bit faster crap over top we're gonna cook this for at least an hour and a half but we can go up to three hours that water bath is the temperature that we want our steak to be 130 degrees so all we're really waiting to have happen is everything to reach equilibrium that will happen in about an hour and a half okay we've got this nice window we can go up to about three hours you start going over three hours you do run into some texture problems so one and a half to three hours and then it's many times here all right well cooking in plastic bags it's a question that we're asked often is it really safe to cook in plastic bags the answer is largely you bet while most food storage bags are actually made from polypropylene or polyethylene and those are considered food safe plastics now we're also asked about BPA an additive that sometimes made for suppleness of the plastic these bags do not contain BPA so don't worry about that in fact these bags are so safe and the sous-vide temperature is at a sub boil so it's a nice low temperature one could in theory don't do it cut up the bag and eat it it's non-toxic again do not cut up the bag and eat it but you're good but don't do it so it's been two hours with these things in the bag here so I know that they're definitely cooked perfectly all the way through so I'm gonna get them out of the bath so I'm just gonna use tongs and transfer them here to this paper towel-lined plate and we did a nice job sealing our bag this is just the fact that we added and a little bit of juices from the steaks we didn't get any water from the bath going in very little juice came out of those days yes because they are not overcooked in any way right now yeah I can tell they look great damn yeah so this doesn't look very good right now right oh no I'm not gonna win any beauty Awards that's for sure and so what we need to really think of this as is when we do a lot of reverse searing we put something in a low oven and then we sear it sure same ideas going on here this is just the initial cook so what we're actually to do is let this rest here for five to ten minutes and we're not letting them rest in order to kind of equalize and carryover cook any of that we don't need to we're allowing them to do right now is to steam a little bit you can see some moisture coming off and then soak it up on the paper towels here we want them to be as dry as possible when we go to sear and a 5 to 10 minute rest is gonna help with that so these are breasted for 10 minutes here and we've got tons of juices collecting in the bottom paper towel I'm gonna use the top here to Pat them really really dry again moisture is the enemy of browning and that can be an issue with sous-vide cooking you really want to get rid of as much moisture as possible and those really just were juices that were on the surface exactly all right I've got a 12-inch skillet here with three tablespoons of vegetable oil it is quite a bit what we found is that using a little bit more oil helps to fill in all the little crevices in the steak and get better browning it also helps keep the temperature of the oil up a little bit higher okay so when you add something if it's got a little moisture on it it can drop the temperature in their oil so having a little bit more in there as a nice buffer got a few little wisps of smoke here which is perfect so now I'm gonna go with my steaks oh that's a good sizzle that's a great sound okay so we're gonna let these go for about a minute aside I'm gonna pick the sticks up every now and then and just let that oil run underneath that's a good technique matter what you're cooking sometimes you can get a little pockets of moisture trapped under there in a gray spot we don't want that so that's been about a minute let's flip these guys over a little bit a little bit better better yes all right those look gorgeous so yeah just another 60 seconds and then we'll get them out okay look spectacular right yeah it turned around perfect yes well we're not gonna see exactly what's inside there quite yet we're gonna make a little pan sauce to go with them not that you need it but why not why not right cooking steak so I'm gonna pour off all the oil and we're gonna add back just a tablespoon of it all right nice Fon development hands we're gonna take advantage of that so I'm just gonna scoop out one tablespoon put this over medium heat now make my sauce so we can do a lot more gentle adding one minced shallot that pan is still plenty hot plenty hot yep and 1/2 teaspoon of cracked fennel seeds so we're making this really beautiful sauce that's got mustard and fennel and tarragon we're gonna cook this just until it's a little bit softened which is one to two minutes all right so that is fragrant and softened we want to get all that fond up so we're gonna add 1/2 cup of chicken broth little deglazing action there a quarter cup of white wine and 1/2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard and oil and mustard and good combination so I'm gonna stir this in and scrape up as much fond as I can there we're gonna do is cook this until it measures about half a cup gets really nice and reduced which takes about 6 minutes okay that is beautiful that's down to about a half a cup well reduce yes well reduce nice and concentrated I'm gonna turn off the heat okay we're gonna finish our sauce with a couple tablespoons of unsalted butter I'm gonna add one at a time here and whisk it in until it's nice and emulsified it's important to use chilled butter here because it's going to help to emulsify the sauce he used butter that was just too soft while it could actually create a broken sauce awesome and then finally one and a half teaspoons of fresh mint tarragon so I'm just gonna taste and adjust for salt pepper mmm that's great tiny bit of salt and a nice big pinch of pepper nice okay that looks beautiful all right are you ready to see what we got I'm gonna do nice half-inch thick slices your knife is not putting in any effort look at all those beautiful juices it is super tender super evenly cooked just look at that cook is that unbelievable that is beautiful it is just completely the same temperature edge-to-edge gorgeous browning and that's possible with other methods but it's a lot harder than what we just did this is bulletproof absolutely all right I serve a sauce please do I'm gonna give it to you on the side there so you can appreciate the steak exactly all right let's see if it's any good yeah you want to judge it just by looks alone yeah that's so tender buttery tender whatever it's just beautifully tender and if you're gonna buy a steak I'm gonna spend the money on it you want it like this mmm wants to be perfect I'm gonna take a little bit of that pan sauce here hmm nice nice it complements it doesn't overpower this was incredibly easy to cook but it might be the most tender strip steak I've ever had I agree with you it's so tender it's almost filet yeah what's also nice about sous-vide is I mean this is a great thing to serve for company huh and you're not worrying about it all right it's in the bag and you know what's cooking right and then you're doing this final stir that takes all of two minutes exactly and you're serving that is spot-on perfection instinct love it yep thank you Dan you're welcome well if you'd like to make these perfect pan seared steaks at home use an immersion circulator to heat water to 130 degrees meanwhile season and toss steaks with oil and plastic bags seal and cook covered for one-and-a-half and up to three hours rest the steaks on paper towels and then make a quick pan sauce we put together a version with mustard wine and also French tarragon so from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen dinner is literally in the back with sous vide perfect seared steaks [Music] sous-vide machines are sleeker smarter and more straightforward than ever and Adams here to tell us which brand is best was that your sous-vide saunter okay there are two types of sous-vide machines for home use there are water ovens which are generally pretty big and then they're the ones that you see right in front of you here these are immersion circulators I love these our testers have some experience with these they also did a little preliminary testing and they much preferred the immersion circulators because you can use them with a wide range of vessels they're smaller they're quick and so that's what we focused on there's a lineup of seven different immersion circulators the price range was one hundred and twenty nine ninety nine to two hundred and seventy four ninety five that's not bad it's actually not too bad especially for what these things will do now we put them through a battery of both pure cooking and performance tests the cooking tests were performed in vessels of different sizes including a four quart saucepan seven and a quarter quart Dutch oven an 8 quart plastic container and a nine and a half gallon cooler sous-vide machines are meant to cook food to a very precise temperature so accuracy mattered testers used lab calibrated temperature tracking software and thermocouples to monitor the water temperatures while food cooked and while the circulators heated an empty six quart water bath for three hours first in a hundred and forty nine degrees and later at a hundred and ninety degrees which is the highest temperature a lot of these machines will reach Chester's also tracked the time it took for the machines to heat up these water baths now most of them were accurate to within an average of a degree or two which is pretty good that is pretty good the white one down at the end was the most accurate of all at 0.2 degrees both temperatures over three hours wow that was really impressive testers also wanted to evaluate the ease of use by checking out all over the controls setting temperatures and timers reading displays toggling between Fahrenheit and Celsius noting the alerts and the alarms that the different models offered and checking the functionality of Wi-Fi pairings and companion apps if that was something that the models offered some of the machines were fairly easy to use others were needlessly frustrating and complex to use the most complex was this one there one tester said they're trying to get this thing going was like a logic puzzle because if you press buttons in the wrong order it would send off this cascade of chirps and beeps and alarms that you couldn't turn off it would switch it between Fahrenheit and Celsius or it would just turn the Machine off altogether so it's like a Mensa test exactly which is not what you want from your sous-vide machine once they got this going this thing actually turns the water wallet heated so roughly that it jostled eggs inside of the container hard enough that when they hit the side of the container the eggs crack oh goodness so testers really preferred a machine that was simple to setup simple to use easy to understand what was going on and that heated the water both quickly and gently so that you're not cracking eggs in there right no white caps no white caps now Chester's also weighed them and measured them because you want them to be reasonably small for a couple of reasons number one you can use it with a wider range of pots number two once it's in the vessel it leaves you the most room for food and number three it's easy to store yeah that's what I was thinking yeah exactly you can just chuck a small one right in the kitchen drawer and you're good to go now when you cook in a water bath if you don't cover it and even sometimes when you do if you don't cover it tightly there's some evaporation over time and you have to monitor the water level all of these machines have a minimum fill and a maximum fill and the water level has to stay between those two lines they're usually noted somewhere on the machine the minimum one ensures that there's enough water to heat and to circulate through the heater ports the maximum makes sure there's not so much that it gets close to all of the electronics at the top which you definitely don't want to do that sense most of these had about a three and a half inch span which is fine that white one down at the end had a six and a half inch span that just made it that much easier to use because you didn't have to think about refilling if the water evaporated that one is the winner that is the Joule it's a hundred and seventy nine dollars and testers loved it for a couple of different reasons number one it was the most accurate it has that really wide range between the maximum and the minimum fill lines it's sleek its small it heated the water quickly but gently now that one you have to pair with Wi-Fi and smartphone or a tablet and the companion app which isn't that hard no it's pretty intuitive it put testers off at the beginning but the more they used it the more they really came to appreciate the fact that you can set it up in the morning go to work turn it on from across town monitor the water level change the time in the temperature it's really really convenient start your dinner on your commute I love that how can you not love that now if that does put you off though and you want one that operates both with Wi-Fi and old-style buttons this is the Innova precision cooker it's $199 so it's a little bit more but you can use buttons if you want to alright so there you have it if you're in the market for a new immersion circulator check out the Joule at just a hundred and seventy nine dollars [Music] we often sell chicken and let it sit in the fridge overnight which helps dry the skin so it crisps when cooked but sometimes you forget to plan ahead so here's a last-minute alternative a hairdryer first I've seasoned the chicken with salt under the skin then I'm gonna Pat it dry with paper towels from have any excess moisture now we have a hair dryer set on high heat back and forth over the chicken for a few minutes or until the skin looks dry your chicken skin will cook a brown and crisp just like this it's the simplest recipes that are the hardest to perfect because there's no sauce or garnish to cover up your mistakes take the soft poached egg for example it's just one ingredient but they're messy and they take practice unless you have a sous-vide machine in fact poached eggs have become the poster child for sous-vide cooking because the machine does all the work and you come away looking like a rock star but it all comes down to the temperature of the water and the cooking time which is exactly the kind of testing we excel at here in the Test Kitchen isn't it out that's right we've tested a zillion and did all the testing we needed to do the nail the perfect time and temperature for cooking these eggs alright so I have here four inches of water in a container it's precise yeah its precise we usually only have enough water to cover the eggs but here having significantly more helps to keep the temperature the same because we're starting with cold eggs and if you don't have one of these fancy containers it's okay you can use a Dutch oven I like this because I can see the eggs I like seeing it yeah I love that yeah that's super fun typically sous vide eggs are cooked at about 145 degrees for at least an hour mm-hmm but the result of that is kind of that runny white and we like that we don't that's not what we want because then we'd have to poach it again and that's an extra step that we just want to skip right the point is poaching it in here in the Test Kitchen we up the ante a bit and sent that temperature to 167 degrees cooking the eggs at a shorter time so that whites could tighten faster that's a significantly higher than any recipe out there yes it is we should get these eggs in alright and start so I'm using a slotted spoon because it's important to put them in slowly and safely it's all about time and temperature so it's important to use the same size eggs these are all large and it's that they're all the same starting temperature these are all straight from the fridge that's right and they're not cracked they have no flaws and starting with cold eggs from the fridge means the whites will pull together better all right gingerly dropping our eggs down so we don't crack any of them you're trying to get them in there as fast as possible yeah they cook at the same rate it's the hardest part of the recipe so we got them all in I'm gonna cover them and they're gonna cook for 12 minutes only 12 minutes only 12 so most recipes for sous vide poached eggs cook the egg at a single temperature for a long time so that the whole egg reaches that temperature that's both the whites and the yolks but in a perfect poached egg the whites and the yolks should be different temperatures now here's an example of an egg cooked at 144 degrees for an hour and you can see the whites are gross mess but the yolk is beautiful but in our recipe we crank the temperature to a hundred and sixty-seven degrees for just 12 minutes so that as the heat cooks through the whites it gently cooks through the yolks to the perfect degree then we pulled them from the water and you have a perfectly poached egg okay so it's been 12 minutes and these eggs are ready to come out they're done dancing in the water they're done dancing and I'm gonna take them out the same gentle way I put them in using the slotted spoon you don't want to crash the shells and they're going into an ice bath for just about a minute until they're cool to touch they don't need much longer than that now using this recipe you can do a lot of eggs yeah you can cook up to 16 eggs at a time all right it's been a minute let's take these out all right so the shells have cooled off the eggs are still warm inside this is one of my favorite all-time recipes well that's good because we have plenty of eggs all right let's go although I'm eager to eat these right now you actually can make these up to a day ahead you can look for that information on our website at America's Test Kitchen calm okay so I have some very high expectations and so do i time for the big reveal we've cooked them at 167 degrees for 12 minutes which means that our whites will have settled into the eggshell and I'm gonna show you how to open it it's ready to crack my egg I'm so excited oh that's perfect perfection yeah Oh fans gorgeous and you can see that the whites are still stuck into the shell now if you're using a traditional poaching method these would be the white swimming in the water making it a big old mess but here it's nice and tidy I put a little salt on yours I'll pepper yours thank you ahh now do you like to cut it open and smear it on the toes oh yeah look at that perfect white perfect yolks well you know it actually tastes like egg oftentimes when you use a traditional poaching method the egg wines have tasted like the vinegar of the water and taste a little watery this has a very clean flavor it was worth the wait mm-hmm well these are perfect well done thank you very much so for absolutely foolproof soft poached eggs go sous-vide create 167 degree water bath using a sous-vide circulator and carefully add up to 16 chilled large eggs using a slotted spoon let them cook for exactly 12 minutes transfer them to an ice water bath to cool for 1 minute and crack and serve it's a very cool method that delivers a perfectly poached egg every time from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a recipe for foolproof sous-vide soft poached eggs you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes at our website America's Test Kitchen calm so good summer thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 93,535

Rating: 4.8800225 out of 5

Keywords: immersion circulator, sousvide, sous vide, sous vide machine

Id: djmo3ouQ3Vo

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/demoran]

This was a great episode.

I have come to trust America's Test Kitchen's product reviews, as well as their methodology for finding the "best" recipe.

I was astonished at the egg they produced near the end of this episode. Totally awesome.

[u/backattack88]

He seared the steak for too long.

[u/MrsMirage]

I have the try the egg recipe, the eggs looked great.

[u/theycallmejohnHB]

I tried the egg recipe and it came out a lot runnier than theirs 🧐

[u/FifthRendition]

Saw it last night and was glad I spent the money on the Anova. I don’t need all the features of the joule