Logsdon - Sous vide grilling: the best recipes and techniques for using your grill with sous vide cooking

S OUS V IDE G RILLING The Best Recipes and Techniques
for Using Your Grill
with Sous Vide Cooking By Jason Logsdon Copyright 2011 Primolicious LLC Smashwords Edition Part of the Cooking Sous Vide Series
Presented By CookingSousVide.com This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If youre reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Copyright 2011 by Primolicious LLC
All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information please contact Primolicious LLC at 12 Pimlico Road, Wolcott CT 06716. Cover Photo Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha ISBN-13: 978-1461135371
ISBN-10: 1461135370 Sous Vide Basics For a more detailed look at sous vide, the equipment needed, and the specifics of the process you can view our free Beginning Sous Vide guide on our website. You can find them on our website at: www.cookingsousvide.com/beginning-sous-vide-guide.html History of Sous Vide Sous vide, or low temperature cooking, is the process of cooking food at a very tightly controlled temperature, normally the temperature the food will be served at. This is a departure from traditional cooking methods that use high heat to cook the food, which must be removed at the exact moment it reaches the desired temperature.

Sous vide was first used as an upscale culinary technique in kitchens in France in the 1970s and traditionally is the process of cooking vacuum sealed food in a low temperature water bath. This process helps to achieve texture and doneness not found in other cooking techniques, as well as introducing many conveniences for a professional kitchen. Sous vide has slowly been spreading around the world in professional kitchens everywhere and is finally making the jump to home kitchens. As sous vide has become more popular and moved to the home kitchen the term now encompasses both traditional "under vacuum" sous vide and also low temperature cooking. Some preparations rely on the vacuum pressure to change the texture of the food but in most cases the benefits of sous vide are realized in the controlled, low temperature cooking process. This means that fancy vacuum sealers can be set aside for home sealers or even ziploc bags.

How it Works The basic concept of sous vide cooking is that food should be cooked at the temperature it will be served at. For instance, if you are cooking a steak to medium rare, you want to serve it at 131F. With traditional cooking methods you would normally cook it on a hot grill or oven at around 400F-500F and pull it off at the right moment when the middle has reached 131F. This results in a bulls eye effect of burnt meat on the outside turning to medium rare in the middle. This steak cooked sous vide would be cooked at 131F for several hours. This will result in the entire piece of meat being a perfectly cooked medium rare.

The steak would then usually be quickly seared at high heat to add the flavorful, browned crust to it. There are two basic components to sous vide cooking at home: temperature and time. Each one of these can affect the end quality, texture, and taste of sous vide dishes. Learning to understand how they affect the food is one of the most important things as you begin sous vide cooking. Temperature All sous vide cooking is done at temperatures below the boiling point of water and normally not above 185F. You usually cook the food at the temperature you want it served at, so most settings are between 120F and 185F, depending on the food being prepared.

While the range of temperature used in sous vide is much less variable than for traditional cooking, the precise control of the temperature is of great importance. When you set your oven at 400F it actually fluctuates about 50 degrees, sending it between 375F and 425F, which is fine when cooking at high temperatures. When cooking sous vide, the temperature of the water determines the doneness of your food, so a 50F fluctuation would result in over-cooked food. Most sous vide machines fluctuate less than 1F and the best are less than 0.1F. This precision is why many sous vide machines are very expensive. However, there are many more home machines available in the last few years, some good do-it-yourself kits, and even some ways to accomplish accurate enough sous vide on the cheap.

We discuss many of your options in our free online Beginning Sous Vide Guide (http://bit.ly/e8MvOu). Time Cooking tenderizes food by breaking down its internal structure. This process happens faster at higher temperatures. Because sous vide is done at such low temperatures the cooking time needs to be increased to achieve the same tenderization as traditional techniques. Also, your window of time to perfectly cooked food is much longer than with traditional cooking methods because you are cooking the food at the temperature you want it to end up at, rather than a higher temperature. This also allows you to leave food in the water bath even after it is done since keeping it at this temperature does not dry out the food, up to several hours longer for tougher cuts of meat.

However, be careful not to take this concept too far as food can still become overcooked by sous vide, many times without showing it externally. Temperature and Time Together The power of sous vide cooking comes from precisely controlling both temperature and time. This is important because of the way meat reacts to different temperatures. At 120F meat slowly begins to tenderize as the protein myosin begins to coagulate and the connective tissue in the meat begins to break down. As the temperature increases so does the speed of tenderization. However, meat also begins to lose its moisture above 140F as the heat causes the collagen in the cells to shrink and wring out the moisture.

This happens very quickly over 150F and meat becomes completely dried out above 160F. Many tough cuts of meat are braised or roasted for a long period of time so the meat can fully tenderize, but because of the high temperatures they can easily become dried out. Using sous vide allows you to hold the meat below the 140F barrier long enough for the slower tenderization process to be effective. This results in very tender meat that is still moist and not overcooked. Basic Sous Vide Technique At the heart of sous vide cooking is a very simple process. While there are variations within each dish, almost every sous vide meal follows the same steps.

Flavor the Food Just like many traditional methods, you often times flavor the food before cooking it. This can be as simple as a sprinkling of salt and pepper or as complicated as adding an elaborate sauce, spice rub, or even smoking the food. Depending on the type of seasoning it can either be rubbed directly onto the food itself or added into the pouch with the food. If you are using a normal home vacuum sealer and want to add more than a little liquid, freeze the liquid before adding it to the pouch. This way the process of vacuum sealing will not suck out the liquid. Otherwise, you can normally use food grade ziploc bags to seal food with liquids.

In our various food sections we give some tips and suggested recipes for flavoring your food. But remember, just like traditional cooking a lot of the fun comes with experimenting. Seal the Food Once the seasoning and food have been added to the pouch, remove the air and seal it closed. Removing the air results in closer contact between the food and the water in the water bath. This helps to facilitate quicker cooking since water transfers heat more efficiently than air. Sealing the food can be done with anything from ziplocs or food grade plastic wrap to a FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer or even a chambered vacuum sealer.