Saturday, January 18, 2020

Sous Vide Tuna

For Christmas, our son Rhett wanted to gift us something we would need for the kitchen, which is a major challenge, since we have plenty of stuff and I don’t like most kitchen gadgets but he actually came up with a good one.  One of the popular cooking methods these days is Sous Vide which means “under vacuum” in French and refers to the process of vacuum-sealing food in a bag, then cooking it to a very precise temperature in a water bath.


He gave us the Anova Precision® Cooker Nano which circulates the water in the bath and keeps it at the desired temperature and I decided to use it on some tuna steaks for its maiden voyage.  I had cooked sous vide once before using a pan of water on the stove but had to keep a close eye on it to control the water temperature so I was looking forward to using this set-and-forget device.


I added 82.4F water to my pan so the machine wouldn’t have to work so long then set it on 95F which it got to pretty quickly.
 

I let the tuna set out of the fridge for about an hour again to make the cooking process quicker.


Then I added it to the 95F circulating water and the info I had read said it should take about an hour to cook and when I pulled it, the internal temp was 91F, so it needed another 15 minutes or so, but we went on to the searing process anyway.


After removing from the package, I dried the steaks well with paper towels and seasoned the top with S&P.  In the meantime, I heated a cast iron skillet with peanut oil to lightly smoking and added the tuna seasoned side down. I cooked for about 45 seconds, seasoned the top, and flipped for another 45 seconds.  When I plated, the internal temp was 100F  (about where we wanted it) and it had a light crust on it.

This is my plate which included a very nice Cindy salad with creamy feta dressing.  As expected, the tuna had pretty even temperature across the thickness of it.


The meal was delicious and this was a great way to try out the sous vide process as it was pretty quick and I really liked what it did so I'm looking forward to the next time – pork chops.  And to top it off, clean up was a breeze - dump out the pan of warm water and wipe out the skillet with hot water.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

1/8/20 event date

6 comments:

  1. What an interesting cooking device. I never heard of this. I like this idea . Thanks for sharing never had tuna except as an appetizer raw. Thanks for posting

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  2. My son swears by the sous vide though I have not tried one yet. I might have to though.

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  3. Larry, Clean up sounds like a winner but I miss the char on the tuna and more especially when cooking pork chops. I'm looking forward to feedback when you do the chops. Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

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  4. That is one gadget I don't own. But have been tempted. We used it a few times in Culinary School and it was used in a cooking demonstration I attended this past week ... for pork tenderloin. Seems to work good. Some restaurants, like Outback, use these to get steaks to a certain temp and then quick grill and brown to serve the masses a perfectly cooked steak - consistently.

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  5. Tuna looks good, great that you like the cooker! Absolutely no more gadgets here! I've gotten rid of most of them, one way or another, and wish now I had the money I spent on so many useless things!!!

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  6. My daughter in law has a sous vide, and she really enjoys it. My son (her husband) says there's no better steak than one cooked by the sous vide method. I'm still acclimating to the air fryer and instant pot they bought me, so I'm glad they didn't give me another gadget for Christmas this year. Your tuna steak looks great!

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