Posts Tagged ‘sous-vide’

Sous vide strikes again! This time, we’re exploiting science for perfectly medium-rare, ultra-tender flank steak.  And, since we’re throwing ethnic authenticity to the wind, why be predictable with our condiments?  Salsa and Monterey Jack are out, red onion compote and chèvre (goat’s cheese) are in.  If you’re not a sous vider (yet), you can cook your flank steak however you like: broiled, grilled, smoked, or fried.

Makes: 4 Tacos Scientificos
Total kitchen time: 30 minutes (+12 hours cooking time)
Special equipment: Vacuum sealer, sous vide water oven

Shopping list:

• 1 lb. flank steak
• 1 tsp. Mexican seasoning blend
• 2 tbsp. lime juice
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. sherry vinegar
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 four tortillas
• 1 cup crumbled goat’s cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 bunch cilantro

1. Pat the steak dry and coat all sides with Mexican seasoning blend and lime juice.  Vacuum seal the steak in a bag large enough that the meat lays flat (but still fits in your water oven).  Cut the meat into two pieces and seal separately, if needed.  (If you’re not cooking your steak sous vide, place it in a zip-top bag or a covered shallow dish and let it marinate overnight). Note: although it might be tempting to add aromatics like garlic to the marinade, don’t! Your kitchen will smell like ass by the time the meat is done.
2. Set your sous vide water oven to 56°C.  Add the vacuum sealed steak, making sure the meat stays submerged.  Cook for a minimum of 1 hour, up to 48 hours.  The picture above shows the meat after cooking for 12 hours, which was perfectly tender.
3. Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp. olive oil in a medium saucepan over moderate heat.  Add the red onion and reduce the heat to low.  Let the onion sweat 5 minutes, until it is slightly translucent, but not browned.  Add the dark brown sugar, sherry vinegar and salt and stir to combine. Simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, and making sure the mixture doesn’t boil or burn. 
4. Remove the bag from the water bath and let the meat rest, still in the bag, for 10 minutes before searing.  Remove the meat from the bag and pat dry on all sides.  Sear with a blow torch, under the broiler, or in a smoking-hot pan.
5. Slice the meat perpendicular to the direction of the muscle fibers, and on a sharp bias. 
6. Assemble the tacos: tortilla, sour cream, steak, cheese, onion compote, cilantro.  Enjoy!

Cooking the steak sous vide rather than just grilling it may sound like a pain in the ass since you have to plan 12 hours ahead.  However, the hardest part of cooking flank steak is getting your timing right. Leave it on the grill 1 minute too long and it’s overcooked and tough; take it off too early and it’s raw.  And, if you’re entertaining company, you may be more focused on your margarita than your steak.  Cooking your meat sous vide lets you be laissez-faire with your timing – sometimes I even sear my steak before company arrives and return it to the water bath to keep it warm until we’re ready to eat.

It’s been a little while since I checked in, but I thought I’d give a quick update.  I’m hard at work getting production versions of my sous vide heating immersion circulators ready for sale.  The picture above is of my current prototype, based largely off of the DIY design I published a few months ago.  As you can see, I’ve got a custom-made heating coil and a slightly prettier enclosure.  The controller I’ve selected is also far more user-friendly, and I’ve upgraded other components after months of intense testing (and a handful of literal meltdowns). 

Anyhow, I’m still working as hard as I can to bring you all a sub-$200 sous vide heating immersion circulator accurate to .1C!  If you’d like to be on the email list when the first units are ready for sale, please leave a comment below.

Having access to a laser cutter has made me think differently about food.  Although I’ve lasered more edibles than I care to mention, one of the most successful substances for laser cutting is nori – the seaweed paper used in sushi making.  Although nori cuts well, it is extremely delicate and brittle.  Inspired by that delicateness, I decided to use the nori as a garnish for duck consommé, a crystal-clear soup made from duck stock.  The potato creates a dramatic color contrast and allows the Japanese maze design cut out of nori to sit just above the level of the liquid.

Makes: 8 zen bowls
Total kitchen time: about 6 hours, depending…

Shopping list:

• 8 cups duck consommé, prepared
• 4 russet potatoes, fat and round
• 1 tbsp. rendered duck fat
• 8 laser-cut nori designs of a Japanese maze

Special equipment: laser cutter, 2” biscuit cutter, vacuum sealing machine, sous vide heating immersion circulator

1. Slice the potatoes into 1” thick discs.  Using the discs that are at least 2” in diameter, cut out 8 rounds with the 2” biscuit cutter. 
2. Place the potato circles in a vacuum bag and add rendered duck fat.  Vacuum seal.
3. Cook potatoes in an 85C water bath for 1 hour. 
4. To serve, place a potato slice in the bottom of a large bowl.  Blot the top of the potato with a paper towel to dry the surface.  Add 1bout 1 cup of consommé to the bowl.  Top with a piece of nori.

If you don’t have access to a laser cutter (a travesty!) you can try cutting shapes using a very sharp hobby knife. 

I love sous vide cooking.  Those of you who have discovered it know what I’m talking about – nothing short of a new frontier of culinary technique, and one of the first pure intersections of science and cuisine.  However, if you aren’t willing to drop $1000+ (or you don’t have a soldering iron and some patience) it used to be the case that you were excluded from the inner circle of sous vide wizardry.  Professional thermal immersion circulators are extremely expensive and, due to their scientific design aesthetic, aren’t very likely to show up on the shelves of Sur La Table anytime soon.  But, for the first time, a home cook willing to spend $450 (the price of a top-of-the-line stand mixer + accessories, for example) can experience for themselves the eye-opening, mouth-watering, religious revelation of their first sous vide steak.

I’ve blathered on for the last handful of posts about how great sous vide is, and to a certain extent, I’ve become obsessed with the method.  So, you can imagine my delight when the nice people at SousVide Supreme offered to let me test drive a unit for two weeks (there’s my disclosure).  When the unit arrived, I anxiously brought the box inside and began unpacking.  The first thing that struck me?  “Damn, this thing is big!”  So big, in fact, that there was no hope of ever storing a unit like this anywhere in my kitchen.  For the entire two week trial run, it sat on top of my stove, next to my stockpot that’s also too big to find a home.  If you can’t tell from the picture above, the unit is about the size of a large bread machine.  And although it’s handsome enough for what it does, I’m not sure I would acquiesce to the idea of making this behemoth stainless brick an objec d’art atop my precious counter space.  That said, I’ve found myself cooking nearly everything sous vide recently, so perhaps it wouldn’t be such an inconvenience to have the machine on display all the time.

Once I got over the size issue (like a blind date with a girl who has “a great personality”), it was time to put this unit through its paces.  By now, I had already been cooking with my DIY sous vide machine for a few weeks, so I had some reasonable expectations of heating time, temperature evenness (temperature measured at different spots in the basin) and temperature fluctuation (how well the target temperature holds over time).  I filled the unit’s basin with hot water from my kitchen faucet to speed up the pre-heating time.  If you haven’t been to the gym in a while, you might notice that the water-filled unit is quite heavy.  The unit features well-placed inset handles to help with carrying, but even so, it’s a precarious beast when full – especially when full of hot water!  It would be great to see a drain valve in version 2, since it’s very difficult to negotiate 30 lbs of 120° water up and into the kitchen sink without spilling everywhere.

The SousVide Supreme comes with a wire food rack (shown in the picture above) which actually does a great job of keeping your food in place and allowing ample circulation.  Unfortunately, since the unit doesn’t have circulator of any kind, you’ve gotta rely on convection currents to distribute heat evenly through the basin.  I was initially quite concerned that this would result in hot and cold spots (which it does) but the temperature differences were reasonably small – within .5°F as measured with a laser thermometer.

Heating from faucet temperature (about 110°F) to cooking temperature (about 144°F) took about half an hour – a time scale consistent with my DIY machine, and certainly reasonable for anyone who’s ever waited for an oven to preheat.  However, I was quite surprised to see the temperature fluctuations of the machine over time.  The video below shows 1 hour of cooking time condensed into 2.5 minutes.  The target temperature remained fixed at 144°F, and there were no external factors influencing the temperature (eg. I never removed the lid, opened a window, turned on the stove – in fact, I wasn’t even home!).  The temperature varies between 142.1°F and 144.5°F, and if you watch closely, you’ll notice that this variation happens in a very cyclical manner.  In other words, the machine is programmed to allow a zone of acceptable temperature that is at least 2.4°F wide.

These temperature fluctuations weren’t noticeable on beef short ribs or potatoes, where there is a wider zone of doneness.  However, if you’re finicky about your steak, and especially if you’re aiming for the Goldilocks zone on eggs, those temperature swings may make a difference.  As you can see in this invaluable guide to sous vide cooking there’s a substantive difference between eggs cooked at 146°F and 148°F. 

All in all, however, the SousVide Supreme did a fine job cooking.  Plus, I felt completely comfortable leaving the unit unattended to run overnight or while I was away at work.  The all-in-one design certainly is convenient, but the machine’s bulk means you’ll have to annex the dining room to find storage.  I’m delighted to see the SousVide Supreme bring sous vide cooking into home kitchens for the first time, and very excited at what the future may bring!

Sous vide cooking works its magic on a lot of foods, but short ribs yield some of the most dramatic results I’ve seen.  In traditional recipes, the ribs (usually cut into short 2-3” chunks by the butcher) are braised for several hours.  Although the braising method adds great flavor and makes the meat extremely tender, the meat is also necessarily well-done.  But, thanks to our sous vide wizardry, we’re able to maintain a perfectly-pink medium rare and have our meat come out fork-tender.  Feel free to experiment with marinades in the bag, but know that some herbs, like thyme, will start to reek after 3 days in the bath.

Makes: 6-8 best-of-both-worlds short ribs
Total kitchen time: 72.5 hours (give or take)

Shopping list:

• 6 lbs. short ribs (I used a 6 lb. uncut slab from my butcher, but you can use 6-8 pre-cut pieces)
• 8 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 tbsp. coarse smoked salt (I prefer Alder wood smoked salt)

Special equipment: sous vide heating immersion circulator, vacuum sealer and (optional) blowtorch.

1. Preheat a large water bath to 56C (133F).
2. If using an uncut slab of short ribs, trim off any large areas of fat on both sides. 
3. Coat all sides of the meat with salt and garlic cloves.  Place slab (or pre-cut short ribs) into a large vacuum seal bag.  If using pre-cut pieces, you may need to divide them between 2 bags, ensuring there is plenty of space between the ribs.  Seal the bag.
4. Fully submerge your bags in the water bath and cook, turning the bags every 12-18 hours.  After 60 hours, increase the heat to 62.5C (144.5F) and cook an additional 12 hours.
5. If using a blow torch: Pace a cooling rack on top of a sheet pan or jelly roll.  When ready to serve, remove the ribs from the bag and drain.
6. If using a slab of ribs, turn the ribs bone-side-up and slice through the meat between the bones lengthwise to separate out each bone.  Cut the membrane running the length of the bone and slide the bone loose (it should give easily, with a little encouragement from your knife).  Trim any access fat surrounding where the bone used to be.  Cut the trimmed meat into portions.
7. If using the blowtorch, place a cooling rack above a sheet pan or jelly roll pan.  Place each portion of ribs on the cooling rack, allowing plenty of space in between.  Pat the ribs dry with paper towels.  Using your torch, sear all sides for a few seconds, or until golden brown. 
8. If you’re not using a blowtorch, give the ribs a quick fire under the broiler or in a little oil on a smoking-hot skillet to brown all sides as quickly as possible.
9. Serve immediately.

After tasting these short ribs, I may never cook any type of ribs the same way again.  This summer, I plan to lightly smoke a rack of spare ribs, then cook them sous vide for a few days before finishing them back on the grill.  I expect pretty incredible results.

How many adjectives have you used to describe a glass of wine? Smoky, sharp, fruity, complex, perky, aggressive, balanced, lingering, refined… Now, how about coffee?  Bold, rich, dark, strong, nutty…  Now try beef.

Having a little more trouble with this one, huh?  While you may have gone to wine tasting events, or perhaps sampled two or three different coffee blends side by side, or even done blind tastings of chocolate or olive oil, chances are that you’ve never tested your taste buds with steak.  In fact, aside from a favorite cut (like T-bone, New York strip, filet and the like) most Americans have no idea what qualities they like in a steak.  I know that in wine, for example, I prefer fruity reds with mild tannins and a sweet finish.  But up until a few weeks ago, I was totally unaware of my own preferences for that great-American staple: steak.  Learning about your own preferences is not only delicious, but also quite a bit of fun.

“But what is there to choose about a steak besides the cut?” you may be asking.  Well, in the same way that two bottles of Pinot Noir don’t taste identical just because they come from the same varietal, two New York strips can vary vastly in flavor based on the breed of cattle, the terroir in which the cattle lived and grazed, what the cattle ate, and how the steaks were finished.  It is a disgracefully unfortunate fact that we are have little-to-no insight into any of these particulars when we buy steaks at the grocery store.  In fact, if you want to piss off the meat man at your local Safeway, pick up a steak and ask him if the cow was treated with steroids, hormones or antibiotics, and if it was fed grass, corn or some type of mystery feed before slaughter.  (Note: this is part of the reason that I don’t buy formerly-living things from Safeway, at least not the one near me.)  While your average $7 bottle of wine will tell you the year the grapes were harvested, the blend percentage of the varietals, the grape source, where the wine was made, and the alcohol percentage, we’re lucky if our beef packaging even makes mention of the cow’s diet.  And even then, you’re rarely getting the whole story.

Luckily, I happened to meet Carrie Oliver at the International Food Bloggers Conference last summer, and get to hear her talk steak.  Her company, Oliver Ranch, connects people like you and me with high-quality, traceable, hormone and antibiotic-free beef produced by independent farmers.  Their website allows you to order your favorite cuts from one of four independent farms that supply to Oliver Ranch, and your steaks are shipped directly to you, vacuum sealed and flash-frozen.  But, in my opinion, the best part of what they offer is the tasters pack.  You can choose between filet mignon, New York strip, top sirloin or rib-eye tasting packs that include one or more steaks from each of the farms.  The tasting pack comes with a tasting guide, complete background on the ranches and cattle, and even nifty little wood picks that read “medium rare” (incidentally, the only proper way to cook a steak, in my opinion). 

I held a steak tasting for 8 people using the four different steaks from the tasting pack, plus one from my local (and well-renowned) butcher.  Since the purpose of the tasting, other than to fill up on amazing meat, was to discover everyone’s personal preferences, we made the tasting blind – that is, nobody but me knew which type of steak they were eating until the very end of the meal.  In order to ensure consistency, I cooked all of the steaks sous vide to a precise medium rare (53.5C) for two hours.  Afterwards, I seasoned the meat with sea salt and seared the outside with a blow torch.  So, every steak was the exact same doneness, with the exact same seasoning, with the exact same amount of char.  I can say with confidence that this preparation method, as geeky as it was, would stand up to scientific scrutiny.

I cut each of the steaks into small portions and served them clockwise around the tasters’ plates.  To round out the meal, a healthy dollop of garlic mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus filled in empty plate space.  As we started eating, a chorus of moans, full-mouthed expressions of surprise and delight, worked its way around the table.  Not only were the steaks transcendent, but the flavor differences between them were profound.  Some steaks carried a strong flavor of grass, others of nutmeg and molasses, still others of wheat and a milieu of subtle tones – just like a glass of fine wine.  What’s more impressive, though, is that these differences were not at all lost on the other tasters: my family.  Although they certainly appreciate good food, this was not a group of foodies looking to out-taste one another, or people with a vested interest in seeing the emperor’s clothes.  These were people who, until that night, didn’t know Holstein from Angus, but now had a reason to find out. 

Not surprisingly, everyone had their own opinions on which steak they liked the best.  However, in general, the table preferred the two wet-aged steaks: the Holstein-Friesian from the 3 Brand Cattle Company and the Wagyu-Angus Cross from Select Kobe Beef America Ranches.  We considered these to be the “steakiest” steaks with a richer, sweeter flavor than the others.  There was another clear decision from the table – the expensive steaks from my local butcher came in dead-last.

Not only was this a fun and memorable way to spend a meal, but now when I’m at the butcher or ordering steak off of a restaurant menu, I’m armed with knowledge of my own personal preferences, as well as some of the right questions to ask to ensure that the beef comes from sources I want to support.  If you’ve watched Food Inc. or read a Michael Pollan book, you know that the American beef industry is a clusterfuck of cost-cutting, misinformation and industrial-strength indifference to sustainable meat production.  But it is important to remember that there are artisan farmers out there, raising beef responsibly and artfully.  Once you connect with that delicious combination of breed, diet, finishing and cut that lights up every taste bud on your tongue and makes your mouth water in anticipation of the next bite, you’ll know you’ve found the steak for you.  And after that day, you’ll never settle for less.

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
-Abraham Maslow

OK, OK, I’ve gone a little sous vide crazy lately… but can you blame me?  Perhaps the most revolutionary cooking method of our lifetimes has just poked its head into my kitchen.  It’ll take more than a few weeks and a handful of medium-rare proteins before I’m over it.

We all know that the sous vide method produces flawless (and dare I say, unparalleled) steak.  But, did you know that the same magic works on lamb?  It’s an amazing and, frankly, jolting experience to watch an incredibly tender lamb loin chop fall off the bone, only to reveal that the interior is a perfect medium-rare.  How can this be?  In order to get lamb tender enough to fall apart, you have to braise the hell out of it, right?  Wrong. That’s where sous vide comes in.  I cooked the lamb shanks at 54.5C – a precise medium rare – for 24 hours, until they were just barely clinging to the bone.  And since lamb is so flavorful and succulent on its own, a simple slice of pita bread, some feta cheese and toasted tomatoes were all that was needed to create a really memorable dinner.

Makes: 4 little lamb wraps
Total kitchen time: 15 minutes active, 24 hours cooking
Special equipment required: sous vide immersion circulator, blowtorch (optional), vacuum sealer

Shopping list:

• 4 American lamb loin chops
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 4 pieces pita bread
• 1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese
• 1 cup roasted tomatoes (available in finer grocery stores, substitute sun dried tomatoes)

1. Heat your sous vide immersion circulator to 54.5C.
2. Pat the lamb chops dry and coat liberally with kosher salt.  Sear all sides with a blowtorch until just browned.  If you don’t have a blowtorch (you should get one if you’re gonna be sous videing) preheat a skillet over very high heat.  Sear the lamb chops on all sides, just a few seconds per side.
3. Place lamb chops in a vacuum sealer bag and seal.  Place in the water bath and cook 24 hours, up to 32 hours.
4. When ready to serve, heat the pita slices for 30 seconds in the microwave.  Divide the Feta and tomatoes between the pita.  Remove lamb from the water bath and pull the meat apart with your fingers or a fork.  Add to the pita.  Roll and serve!

It’s a little jarring at first to see shredded lamb that’s so bright pink and moist.  But one bight of this dish will make you forget every lamb sandwich you’ve ever eaten.  Rather than tough, dry meat that begs for the rehydrating action of mint jelly, this is lamb as it should be.

Full Disclosure: I got free stuff, but that doesn’t pay for my opinion.

Update: I’ve added a forums section to the site.  Please visit the DIY Sous Vide topic for comments, questions and suggestions.

I’ve recently been fascinated by the idea of sous vide cooking – a method of slowly cooking vacu-sealed foods in a precisely controlled water bath to achieve the optimal doneness.  Last year, Sur La Table started carrying the world’s first “home” sous vide cooker, the SousVide Supreme.  This was fantastic, since commercial sous vide cooking machines cost north of $2000.  However, the home model (priced at $450) is still a steep investment for something that essentially just keeps water warm.  I was determined that I could build a better device on-the-cheap.

Behold, the $75 DIY sous vide heating immersion circulator!  By scrapping together parts that are readily available on eBay and Amazon, I was able to build a self-contained device that heats and circulates water while maintaining a temperature accurate to .1 degree Celsius (yes, point one degrees!).  And unlike the SousVide Supreme, my device can be mounted onto any container (up to a reasonable size, perhaps 15 gallons) allowing you more room to cook, if needed. 

To build your own device, you’ll need some basic soldering skills, the list of stuff below, about 6 hours of free time (plus time for glue to dry) and the can-do attitude of a geek who doesn’t want to pay $450 for a water heater.  Click the “more” link for complete step-by-step instructions.

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2009 has been a great year for food in Seattle, but with the new year just around the corner, I thought I’d share my guesses insight into what we’ll see in restaurants and home kitchens 2010.  Some of these may be national trends, but as Pacific Northwesters, we tend to be the canaries in the coalmine, especially when discussing what we put in our bodies. 
As always, there will be a balance of healthy, socially-conscious eating and perverse gluttony (see Bacon Explosion). 

Seattle will go sous-vide crazy

The fancy restaurants have already been doing it for years (though, perhaps illegally).  But in 2010, I predict that sous-vide preparations will start showing up on restaurant menus everywhere (like The Keg and McCormick & Schmick’s), not just at cutting-edge gastropubs.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, sous-vide describes a cooking method where food is vacu-sealed and heated very slowly (hours or even days) in temperature-controlled water baths.  The method lets cooks achieve heavenly textures not achievable with an oven, stove or fry-o-lator.  2009 saw the release of the SousVide Supreme, the world’s first home-use water oven.  But at $499, it only appeals to serious food geeks (even I don’t have one yet).  I predict that 2010 will give us the “George Foreman Grill of sous-vide”, an afforable, mass-market water oven, complete with late night infomercial.

Homemade Pasta is the new Canvolution

There’s nothing new about homemade pasta.  Nor is there anything new about canned foods.  Both are oldschool, inexpensive, and very social ways of preparing food.  2009 gave rise to a huge wave of canning parties, covered under the umbrella movement of “Canvolution”.  I predict a similar wave of ad-hoc food gatherings next year, and I think homemade pasta could be the recipe of choice.  Making pasta – particularly rolling and cutting noodles – is a fun group activity.  Plus, dried pasta lasts forever and makes for a great gift (just like canned goods).  Stock up on Semolina flour – it’s gonna be a carb-tastic new year!

Sliders Out, Rillettes In

You know sliders are falling out of fashion when they appear on the menu at Jack-In-The-Box.  Although the mini-burgers enjoyed  their time in the spotlight at almost every restaurant in the city, it’s time for us to move on to the next “it” dish.  My prediction: rillettes.  Sure, they lack the mass appeal of a very small hamburger, but these spreadable potted meats are a total rustic treat.  The first rillette I ever tasted was a creamy little pot of salmon at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in New York.  Let me tell you, it left an impression.  Although pâté may be hopelessly off the mainstream, I think rillettes have a fighting chance.

Other Predictions, Hopes and Ramblings…

1. Cupcakes are over.  And so are the Pinkberry knockoffs.  Please, let’s move on.
2. Sustainable sushi will be the new norm.  With more and more diners checking sustainable seafood watchlists at the dinner table, we can no longer gorge on unagi without social consequences.  Bravo to chefs like Hajime at West Seattle’s Mashiko for leading the charge.
3. Salts on the rise.  Look for specialty salts to play a major role in restaurant menus.  Oh, and regular table salt is so last decade.  If it’s not Chardonnay-smoked, truffle-infused, or from an obscure seaport town in France, I’m not interested.
4. We get it: bacon is delicious and makes for ironic kitsch.  Let’s find a new punch line in 2010.  How about blowfish?
5. Seattle chefs embrace (or at least tinker with) molecular gastronomy.  It may not be for everyone, but molecular gastronomy – sciencey food made through extremely geeky methods – is still turning heads around the country.  There are a number of brave Seattle chefs are already having fun with science, but in a city with so many artists, I have to believe the best (and weirdest) is yet to come.

 
Sous-vide cooking is a method that’s been around since the 70’s, but has just recently gained popularity in the mainstream.  In practical terms, it means putting your protein in a plastic bag and cooking it in warm water for longer than normal.  The benefit to sous-vide, particularly in this recipe, is that it keeps the structure of your proteins intact – our fish won’t toughen up or fall apart during cooking. 

I’m using a chile verde salt from SaltWorks, a gourmet salt company based in Woodinville, Washington.  I’ve recently been in a major salt bender and SaltWorks and Secret Stash Sea Salts have been my pushers.  You’ll see more on that next week.  Flavored salts like these are an excellent way to add flavor without adding additional work. 

Makes: sous-per duper dinner for two
Total kitchen time: 30 minutes

Shopping list:

• 3/4 – 1lb halibut fillet, skin removed
• 1 tsp. chile verde salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground white pepper
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 1 1-gallon zip-top plastic bag
• 1/2 can Kerns Guava Nectar

1. Pat the halibut fillet dry and coat all sides with the chile verde salt, white pepper and olive oil. 
2. Place the fillet in a zip top bag and place a sprig of rosemary (if using) on the top and bottom of the fillet.  If you’re lucky enough to own a vacu-seal machine, use it to suck the air out of the bag.  For the rest of us (and our pseudo-sous-vide) just try to get as much air as possible out of the bag.
3. Fill a large stockpot with warm water over medium-low heat.  You’ll want to bring the water to 132°F, but not much hotter.  If you paid attention in chemistry class, you’ll know that the water won’t be close to boiling at this temperature. 
4. Submerge the bottom of the bag in the water, leaving the top above the water line so as not to introduce any accidental leakage.  Cook until the halibut feels slightly firm, about 6-8 minutes.  You can test the doneness by gently flexing the fillet in the bag.  If it flakes easily, it’s done. 
5. Meanwhile, heat the 1/2 can of guava nectar in a small saucepan over high heat.  Boil to reduce the liquid to about 2 tablespoons. 
6. Remove the fillet from the bag and divide into two servings, discarding the rosemary.  Pour the reduced guava glaze over each fillet and serve.

This turned out to be a super easy and excellent dinner.  The saltiness and slight kick of the chile verde was an excellent compliment to the sweetness of the guava.  My original intent was to bruleé the guava glaze for a crispy exterior, but alas my torch was nowhere to be found.  If you’re feeling adventurous, won’t you light this dish on fire and tell me how it turns out?

Update: Jean-François at SousVideCooking.org has an excellent table of cooking times and temperatures for fish, along with other great sous-vide tips.  I’ve adjusted this recipe accordingly, since I didn’t have my stopwatch out the first time through.  Thanks, Jean-François!