sous vide filet mignon.

recently made this for my mom for her birthday. cooked them at 135 for 2 hours.

forgot to get an inside shot, but they turned out absolutely amazing.

roasted garlic powder.

i recently made this for the purpose of sous vide cooking. the thing is - when you cook at the low temperatures of sous vide, raw garlic won’t get warm enough to properly cook. thus - you pre-cook the garlic, dehydrate it, and chop it into powder. i tried it out on some filet mignons and it worked great!

this was relatively easy.

i took 10 heads of garlic, cut off the tops, drizzled some olive oil into the tops, turned them upside down on a sheet of foil, baked in the oven @ 425 for about 45 minutes. then took the garlic out of the pods - this was the time consuming part. i then put them in my food dehydrator and left it on for a day. did my house ever smell good! i wish i would have chopped the cloves in half half way though, but it worked almost perfectly. chopped in my food processor and sifted through a sieve and got the quantity you see above. not a lot for 10 heads of garlic, but well worth the effort.

this is how nerds cook ribs.

sous vide baby back bbq ribs, zip tie guns, ibc cream soda

today i went to the whole foods metropolis by my house and picked up some fresh asparagus, and a monster organic grass fed strip steak.

i took a sprig of fresh rosemary (also from whole foods) and a pressed clove of garlic, loosely wrapped them in a sheet of seran wrap and threw it at the bottom of the bag. i heard this is to not give it such a direct taste of the aromatics, but next time will go back to just having the aromatics contacting the meat. dried, salted and peppered the steak, and vacuum sealed!

also prepared the asparagus. washed and dried, seasoned with salt and pepper. cut some butter into little cubes and distribute them throughout the bag and that was it! cooked them for 10 minutes at the end.

cooked the steak at 140 degrees for 4 hours. an hour before i took it out i put in a couple eggs for an hour. i heard that eggs when cooked sous vide are also absolutely awesome (and kept seeing them on top of asparagus!).

finished the steak as always on a super hot pan (this time with butter!), which gave it some great color (very plain looking out of the bag) and also makes for a DELICIOUS crust of flavor on the outside. the center was very pink but absolutely perfectly cooked! can’t believe what great results i’ve been having. however, the eggs i felt were a little underdone, but will try again with more time next time. also, the asparagus was very crisp and tasty! next time will add more butter and seasonings (forgot rosemary and garlic :P).

sous vide filet mignon.

i recently hacked together a sous vide cooker. i read about these a while ago but just recently thought it was a good idea. the idea is you hook a temperature controller up to a crock pot full of water and cook vacuum sealed food for a long time at a constant temperature. the results are spectacular.

first i needed to get a vacuum sealer. i knew these were pretty awesome, but never had a use for one. after doing some research on amazon i realized to get a nice one would be like $100. i found the wolfgang puck BVS0010 on eBay refurbished (with warranty!) for $30 with a ton of bags, not bad! it seems to be pretty decent quality and am very happy with it. tthere were some nice industrial temperature controllers on eBay, but after some internet research it seemed as if the cheapo ones do the job just as good as anything else. i got a $13 “aquarium” controller from china (2 weeks shipping). spliced  a $1.50 white extension cord from home depot into the controller, hooked up a spare 12V wall wart, and i was in business!

first i made some dry rubbed chicken breasts. you can do marinades, but you must freeze them so they don’t get sucked out when vacuum sealing the bag. either way the dry rubs worked great. finished on the grill for a couple minutes and was excellent! by far the juciest tastiest chicken i’ve ever had, texture was also real unique. also made some filet mignons. dry rubbed one with my previously made mocha java dry rub, and just salt/pepper and a clove of crushed garlic in the other. cooked at 140 degrees and pulled the coffee dry rubbed one out after 4 hours. came out looking weird so finished on a super hot frying pan with a tiny bit of peanut oil for a couple minutes which just browned it and gave it a crust. it was totally excellent, unbelievably easy to cut, super tender, super juicy, and perfectly cooked. the salt/peppered/garlic’d one i took out after 8 hours and was also incredibly perfect. there was a little bit of juice in the bag that i thickened with corn starch into a great sauce. i got these “filet mignons” at jewel and they were kinda weird, both had dime sized cylinders of fat in them, but after cooking easily peeled away from the steak. while the dry rub was excellent, i preferred the simpler taste of the seasoned one. next time will add more seasonings to everything! this guy wrote an excellent research article regarding cooking sous vide steaks. will try with many different meats and vegetables in the future.

making vanilla extract!

vanilla extract is expensive! the jewel by my house is charging $8 for a 2 oz. bottle of vanilla extract. i’m currently making some vanilla extract. i heard about this a while ago and recently just got around to making it. i got 10 grade B (extract grade) vanilla beans for like $4 on eBay. i got a cheap 750ml bottle of vodka from jewel.

real easy - just slice them open lenghtwise, and use a dull edge (i used a butter knife) to scrape out the guts (caviar) inside. cut the shells into 1 inch strips and toss em all in!

the first week and half i shook it every day, and every time i’m in the cabinet it’s sitting in i try to shake it up. it’s been in there about 5 weeks now and it’s starting to smell a lot sweeter and not so alcohol-y. apparently after 2 months i can start using it! and the vanilla beans will continue to give out flavor and it will all only get better with time.

some quick math: 750ml is 25.3 fl oz. total cost was about $13. about 51 cents per oz, versus about $4.50 per oz at jewel.

diy ftw.