Recent Modernist Blog Posts

Recently I was lucky enough to speak at the International Sous Vide Association and I gave a talk all about how temperature affects meat.

I covered how temperature affects food safety, then dove into what I call the "Temperature Tentpoles" to help you cook what you want, every time! My presentation got a great response, so I thought I'd share it here. You can watch the video, or read through the transcription below.

Letting your food rest after you cook is a critical part of maximizing the flavor and juiciness, but when it comes to sous vide, does it actually matter?

In this article, I'm going to dive into whether you need to let meat rest after sous vide. A lot of people are curious about this because with traditional cooking, you almost always want to let your meat rest.

There's a lot of discussion about how to maximize your sear when you're done sous viding your food, but do you even need to sear? I'm going to dive into that question.

This article looks at whether or not you actually have to sear after sous vide. Many people are curious and often ask "Do I need to sear sous vide food or do I not need to sear sous vide food? And when is it important to do it and when is it not?".

What the heck is going on with taking your cooked food out of the sous vide machine and cooling it off? What is the point of that?

Yes, there really are some good reasons to take your hot sous vided your food, chill it down and then reheat it before serving! We're going to look at a few of them.

One of the rites of passage that most sous vide cooks have to go through, it's setting off every smoke alarm in their house. There's one reason why that happens to most sous viders.

I want to talk about how to not set off every smoke alarm. However, this is not foolproof. I live in a small New York apartment and I still occasionally set it off after sous viding for over a decade! But this is something that's going to help you a lot - searing in an oil with a high smoke point.

I wanted to dive into something that I see a lot of people do wrong when they're trying to sear their food after they've sous vided it...and that's forgetting to dry it off.

They wonder why they always smoke out their apartments and still don't get the sear they were hoping for. Drying off the sous vided food is such a critical component of getting a great crust on their food. The biggest goal you're trying to accomplish when you're searing your food after sous vide is to keep it as quick and as hot as possible.

Some people say that sous vide is boring. You just take your food, put it in a bag and it comes out perfectly cooked. But these people have never used a blowtorch to finish their sous vided food! I'm going to show you how to do it.

One of the best ways to sear food after sous vide is by using a cast iron pan. But which cast iron pan is best? After a decade of sous viding, here are a few of my favorites!

Great food, enormous yachts, wonderful people and sun, sand, and water! And even a bit of sous vide! What better way to spend a week in December!

I recently was lucky enough to be invited to participate as a judge for the 60th Annual Antigua Yacht Chef's Competition. The Chef's Competition is part of the overall Antigua Charter Yacht Show. Chef Elizabeth Lee was the organizer this year and asked me to come participate.

The show takes places on the small Caribbean island of Antigua, which is near the British Virgin Islands, and it was my first time in the Caribbean outside of Jamaica.

Welcome to my guide to the perfect sous vide Thanksgiving! It'll help remove stress from your holiday so you can focus on spending time with your family!

Below are a lot of recipes, but if you want to dive into the how and why, you can read why to sous vide a turkey or you can dive right into the best way to sous vide a turkey. I also have guides for sous vide turkey dark meat and sous vide turkey breast.

And if you want to go really deep, I do have a comprehensive Snippet|thanksgiving_course_inline_ahref that talks about everything you need to know to cook perfect turkey every time!

There is enough pressure and stress around the Thanksgiving holiday that cooking the dinner shouldn't contribute to it. Luckily when you use sous vide there are several things you can do to simplify your Thanksgiving Meal Prep by splitting up the work.

There are several options for how to split up all the sous vide prep work for your Thanksgiving turkey. I highly recommend spreading it out over a few days to help reduce your stress.

Here are a few sample sous vide Thanksgiving Day schedules to give you some timing ideas from. Feel free to mix and match as it suits your needs.

And don't forget, you can cook all the meat ahead of time and refrigerate it until a few hours before you are ready to eat.

Welcome to the final lesson of the free Sous Vide Quick Start Course!

We've gone through a lot of content over the last several days and I hope you're feeling excited and ready to continue along your sous vide journey. Sous vide has transformed my cooking and I know it can transform yours as well!

Welcome to lesson eight of the free Sous Vide Quick Start Course! Today we are going to be diving into sous vide steaks and some of the details surrounding them.

Steak is often the first thing people turn to when they get their sous vide machine, and sous vide does make it easy to cook perfect steaks every time!

Instead of a simple recipe for a sous vide ribeye or a sous vide strip steak, I wanted to share one of my go-to steak recipes that will highlight the power of tenderization through longer sous vide times.

It's for a chuck steak, cooked around 36 hours, that comes out tasting almost like a much more expensive prime rib. It's like nothing you can make with traditional methods!

Welcome to lesson seven of the free Sous Vide Quick Start Course! Today we are going to be diving into some common sous vide mistakes people make that I want you to avoid!

As we get close to wrapping up the course, I thought I'd address some of the most common sous vide mistakes I see people making. Hopefully it can save you from some mishaps in the kitchen as you get started with sous vide!

Sous vide does wonders with steak, chicken, and other meats, but it's not ALL about the meat. Over the last year or two, one of crazes sweeping the nation and pushing sous vide into the spotlight has been the Starbucks Sous Vide Egg Bites.

These egg bites are simple, tasty delights that people love to eat for breakfast or snack on during the day. As the name implies, they are made using sous vide...and are really easy to make yourself.

So watch out Starbucks, here's an easy egg cup bite you can make at home!