For many people, the scariest aspect of cooking is getting the right degree of doneness. What beginning cook doesn't worry about having to serve overdone vegetables or meat that's a bit too red? Experienced cooks worry about it, too.
Sous vide (French for "under vacuum") cooking is popular in professional kitchens. Food (usually meat, fish, poultry) is vacuum sealed in a bag, which is placed in a constant-temperature water bath for hours. The food gradually warms to the water temperature and can't possibly overcook.
Meat can then seared for flavor and color (and to eliminate any remaining surface bacteria).
With conventional cooking, only the center of the piece is the perfect doneness. With sous vide, it's perfect through and through, with only the outermost few millimeters exposed to the heat of the searing step.
Sous vide, à la maison?
Sous vide is not practical for most home cooks because the equipment is bulky and expensive. Even the new "SousVide Supreme Water Oven," designed for the home, is suitable only for committed cooks (or, as we are called, "food nuts"). It costs $450, without the vacuum sealer.
When food blog Serious Eats came up with the idea of using a cooler chest to do sous vide, I was intrigued. Well, first I was envious (why didn't I think of that?), but then I was intrigued. The idea is simple: A large bulk of hot water in an insulated container will hold the temperature for the hours it takes for the food to reach the right temperature throughout.
Enter the eggs
Eggs are a good way to begin sous vide experiments because they come in their own waterproof package, eliminating the need for a vacuum sealer.
Today, I tried it, with pretty good results. (Thanks to the Good Eats e-mail discussion group and member Jeremy Sullivan for triggering the urge to geek out. Jeremy was experimenting today with a slow cooker full of water and eggs.)
My goal was a very soft egg, 63° C, which is 145° F. (Subsequent temperatures in this article are given in degrees F).
I placed three eggs in a wide-mouth thermos and added hot water. My tap water is only about 125 degrees, but this step would pre-heat the eggs and thermos's interior, to reduce the amount of temperature drift. I calculated that I would need 1/2 cup of boiling water for each cup of tap water to reach the target temperature of 147 degrees. But because the eggs are large compared to the bulk of the water, experimentation showed that I needed more like a 50:50 mix of boiling and tap water.
With the water at 149 degrees (an extra couple of degrees compensate for expected heat loss), I sealed the thermos for 30 minutes. When it was done, the temperature of the water had fallen more than I expected, to 132. I sampled the eggs and they were underdone. The whites were very runny and the yolks were close to raw. I had underestimated how much the eggs would cool the water. Given that the thermos didn't hold much more water than the volume of the eggs, I should have known.
The last egg went back into the thermos with water at 149 and sealed for — well, not sure how long, but probably 20 minutes.
It was almost right. The yolk was thick and the whites still quite runny.
Conclusions
I think this method has merit. Is it easier than the traditional three- or four-minute eggs, done in boiling water? Probably not. But the method has promise and I will try, try again.
I probably can't achieve exactly what I really want, which is a set white with runny yolk, as that would probably require the yolk be a few degrees cooler than the white. A sous vide blog confirms this. But I came pretty close, and I can make a "63 degree egg" as many fine restaurants serve. I would like to experiment with herb-infused cream and the like, served atop toast or a salad. Stay tuned...
Oh, and I should mention another problem I had, which is that three extra large eggs are a tiny bit too large for my thermos, which cracked the top egg when I screwed the lid down.
Next time, I'll preheat the setup in tap water for at least an hour, start the water at 152, and leave it for a longer time. I'll also limit myself to two eggs in this particular container. I'll also try a six-pack sized cooler which should work a lot better.
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