When it comes to the question sous vide cooking, the average person asks: Why Sous Vide?
I’ll give you my Top 17 Reasons to Cook Sous Vide and why you should be cooking sous vide.
Nutritious food and amazing restaurant-quality meals are just a couple of the reasons to cook sous vide. From easy preparation of food to steady temperatures for long periods of time, sous vide cooking is packed full of benefits.
Table of Contents
1. Sous Vide Cooking Is Easy
Despite the fancy-sounding French science behind it, sous vide is very easy to do at home. All you need is a sous vide cooker, a sous vide container, a vacuum sealer, and some sous vide bags.
- Seal the food in bags
- Set the cooker to the precise temperature you want your food cooked to and place it in the water bath in the container
- Drop the bags in the container
- When the time is up, give the food a little seasoning or sear if it’s meat
- Last step is to Enjoy the Food!
2. Top Restaurants Are Already Cooking Sous Vide
Sous vide is a cooking technique that has become huge in the culinary world. One of its best features is giving professional chefs precise control over doneness, which makes it easier to make quality food and give customers what they want: perfectly cooked meat!
If restaurant chefs are using it for gourmet cooking, this method of cooking is good enough for your dinner party.
Learn More: Do Restaurants Use Sous Vide?
3. No Undercooked Food
Food safety is important and with sous vide, you have an increased safety level, because you don’t have to worry about whether the chicken breasts have been cooked enough.
You know exactly how long the meat has been cooked for and at what temperature. So you know what to expect out of the chicken and don’t need to guess if it was cooked long enough.
4. No Overcooked Food
On the flip side, sous vide won’t overcook your food because you’re cooking in a temperature-controlled water bath. Even if you leave your food in for an extra 15-60 minutes of cooking time, you’ll know that the temperature never went higher than your target temperature.
With conventional cooking, your pan gets extremely hot due to the flames. It’s hard to control the hot temperatures of the surface or the boiling pot of water. That’s why your food can get overcooked. You can cook your meat for a long time without it getting overcooked or dried out.
So if you want that perfect, medium-rare steak, you’ll get medium-rare.
5. Uniformly Cooked Food
Sous vide won’t give you undercooked nor overcooked food, it gives you evenly cooked food all around, no matter the cuts of meat you have.
Precise cooking due to consistent temperatures is one of the best things about cooking with immersion circulators. It’s something that traditional cooking methods and kitchen appliances have a hard time giving home chefs.
Home chefs don’t have to go to years of cooking school and training to get a perfect restaurant steak. They’ll be making five-star meals for their weeknight dinners with guests.
6. Sous Vide Works With Almost Any Food
Sous vide cooking is perfect for fresh meats, vegetables, seafood, and even desserts. Pick your favorite cuts of steak, expensive steaks like wagyu, and salmon steaks, they’re all great to sous vide.
Check out the sous vide recipes that I have. Here’s a sample:
- Sous Vide Roast Beef
- Sous Vide Wagyu Steak
- Sous Vide Lobster Tail
- Sous Vide Keto Egg Bites
- Sous Vide Chocolate Pot de Creme
7. Sous Vide is Healthy
Sous vide cooking is also a great way for people with dietary restrictions, like gluten-free, Keto, Paleo, and vegan! You can cook your meat without any added fats which will make it healthier than other methods of preparation that contain oils/fats.
Grilling can release carcinogens into the air and also make your food taste like smoke. The sous vide method is a much healthier alternative to grilling because it doesn’t produce any carcinogens or give off that smoky flavor. You can still get those grill marks on meat if you want them, but they won’t be from high heat – just give it a quick grill or sear.
Souse vide also has a lot of health benefits, as it’s much healthier than other methods for preparing food because there are no added fats or oils needed in order cook your meal! It will be cooked evenly and thoroughly without any risk from harmful bacteria.
- Read More: Top Health Benefits of Sous Vide
8. Sous Vide Saves You Money
Sous vide will save you money because it’s cheaper to buy a vacuum sealer than it is an expensive pressure cooker. Sous vide cooking also saves money because you can cook with less oil, and the food will still be flavorful without any added fats or oils!
You’ll save on money from dining out at restaurants, because you can get a restaurant quality meal from home. Sous vide cooking is also a great way to save money on groceries because you can buy in bulk and freeze the food for later use!
9. Sous Vide Saves You Time
Sous vide cooking will save you time, because you don’t have to watch the food. Sous vide cooking is hands-off, so you don’t need a timer or anything. You just set it and let it do the cooking for minutes to hours. It’s perfect if you’re busy with work during most of the day because there are no concerns that something will burn on a skillet.
If you have a sous vide cooker with Wi-Fi, you can also start it before you leave the office and it could be done after you’ve arrived at home.
With sous vide, there’s also no need to defrost and thaw frozen food. You’re able to sous vide frozen steaks and other meats as if they were fresh. Think about the time you’ve just saved from the extra steps.
10. Sous Vide Dishes Taste Better, Have More Flavor
The food you cook in a slow cooker or oven can overcook and dry out whereas with sous vide it stays moist and flavorful. When food is precision cooked as it should be, you’re unlocking maximum flavor from the food.
For beginner home chefs, sous vide provides them the ability to learn to cook without worrying about internal temperatures or other possibilities for errors. They’ll be able to deliver delicious steaks in no time.
11. Sous Vide Cooking is Convenient
Cooking sous vide is easier than you might think. You can cook your food in the comfort of you own home without having any complicated equipment. Besides electricity, you just need an immersion cooker and water to get started.
You can cook on the go too, you don’t need to have a full kitchen with sous vide. Bring your sous vide stick to your friend’s house, on the road with road while traveling, and to any hotel room.
12. Sous Vide is Fun and Creative
Sous vide cooking is also fun. You can try different recipes and experiment with different flavors. Sous vide cooking is also fun because you can try out new recipes, or just make your favorite dish in a way that it’s never been done before.
Since food is vacuum sealed in individual pouches, you can have different seasonings for each steak. You can have differently marinated steaks all cooking in the same water bath for the different taste buds for family dinners. Imagine trying that with traditional methods.
13. Sous Vide With Kids
Working hands-on with food is a great way to begin and help set the stage for healthy daily choices for kids. With this in mind, parents can cook with their kids side-by-side, from safely preparing meals that are also safe to eat.
There are no hot oils that can spray from the pan and potentially cause burns. No undercooked food either.
14. Sous Vide Is Great For Batch Cooking / Large Groups
Sous vide cooking is also a great way to cook food for large groups of people. It’s perfect if you’re hosting an event or party and need something that can be cooked in bulk – just throw it all into the water bath. You don’t have worry about overcooking any dish because everything will be perfectly cooked.
15. Sous Vide Meal Prep and Planning
Cooking sous vide is an easy yet time-saving method. Food can be prepped up to a week or even months in advance without spending all of your quality time cooking every day.
The time-savings from not needing to defrost frozen meats makes meal planning even easier too.
All you need to do is:
- Meal Preparation – Portion individual servings of meats, vegetables, or other meats into individual freezer-safe, sous vide bags. Add seasonings if you’d like.
- Vacuum seal the bags of food and put them in the freezer.
- Take out and sous vide cook whenever you want to cook. Add 50% to the normal non-frozen cooking time and you’re good to go.
When it comes to meal prepping food this way, no matter the kinds of food, flavor is sealed in and when you’re ready to eat, they come out as delicious meals still.
If you need help knowing how many servings you’ll get from a cut of steak, read How Much Steak Per Person – Steak Sizes & Portions By Cut.
16. Sous Vide Cleanup is Easy
There won’t be any sous vide containers or pots soaking in soapy water after dinner when you use this method, because all the food is cooked in bags. All the fats, oils, and seasonings used are all in the bag.
The sous vide cooker also doesn’t have any food residue that needs to be washed off. You can rinse and dry in less than a minute.
- Read More: How to Clean a Sous Vide Cooker
17. Flawless Steaks
Learning time for beginners is minimal. A couple of minutes maybe to see what temperature to set the cooker at and for how long.
Think about the food waste from potentially burning a steak. If it was a cheap steak, it might not hurt as much. But if it was a Filet Mignon or Wagyu steak, it might sting a little.
With a constant cooking temperature, you’ll be glad to know your medium-rare or rare steak will stay that way, even if you left the bag in the supply of water in the container for an extra 20 minutes. Zero-to-little chance of it turning into a bad steak. You won’t be as lucky if you forgot to take the steak off the grill.