Sous Vide

plythacur

I frequently buy the club packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts, season them, and freeze them in sous vide bags for easy weeknight dinners. I always start with salt and pepper then add sub sauce, rosemary and lemon, garlic and sage, cumin lime and garlic, creole seasoning, or some other combo. Just add about 30 minutes to your normal cook time to account for them being frozen ahead of time.

acpgee

Efficient idea to prep bags in advance. Any disadvantage of just pulling them out of the freezer in the morning and letting them defrost in the fridge while you're at work?

StatChicBayes

Chicken, turkey breast, and salmon are all great (although I still prefer atlantic salmon cooked on my Big Green Egg, but this is a nice alternative if it is too rainy to get the grill going)

Scallops - cooked at 120 for 30 minutes! perfectly done! Can sear in a hot cast iron skillet, place under a broiler or use a blow torch if you want to brown.

Shitake mushrooms are fantastic! (add a little soy sauce + rice wine to season and cook for 30 minutes at 185) so tender! (what's really nice is that you can skip adding oil to reduce fat content with mushrooms and lots of other vegetable)

Lots of great recipes from Anova Culinary (just google). My only disaster was with squid one time - it turned to mush!

acpgee

Have discovered the sous vide has made duck confit manageable for home cooking. Previously a dish I only ate in restaurants. In the sous vide bag, you only need a tablespoon of duck or goose fat as opposed a pint or more needed to submerge the meat slow cooked the traditional way. I do a large batch, portion and toss into the freezer. When you want to eat, defrost and finish under the broiler or in the air fryer for 15 minutes to crisp up the skin. Roast potatoes that have been par boiled for 3 minutes and tossed in a little of the duck fat can be done at the same time.

walkie_eggs

Sous vide is great for meal prep, a few packs of chicken thighs at 165F for 1.5hrs with salt and pepper (maybe some garlic powder) and you have protein for a week at the cost of about 5-6 minutes of prep. Do a pork shoulder and you have great pulled pork (and some excellent pork fat/broth if you strain and keep the juices!).

One of my favorite things to do is carrots, it takes a while to get up to temp but the carrots come out better than anything you can get in a restaurant: https://www.seriouseats.com/sous-vide-glazed-carrots-recipe . A tip for getting up to high heat quickly, don't rely on the immersion circulator to get up there, it'll take an hour or more for low-power circulators and poorly-insulated containers to get there. Put water into a stock pot, put it on the stove on high heat and let the circulator help, cut the heat about 5-10F before the target temp, and then put the food in.

acpgee

I tried the sous vide carrots and they were terrific. Thank you @walkie_eggs.