Sous Vide - A Unique Style Of Healthy Cooking
There are so many people who are talking about a very unique style of cooking known as sous vide cooking. This healthy cooking approach uses low temperatures to get a delicious end result, but more importantly, it is a very healthy way to cook. If you have never tried sous vide cooking before, or heard of this type of cooking in the past—you may be surprised to find all of the great benefits of this cooking approach. The best part about sous vide cooking? It is much easier than most people think. Whether you are looking for easy ways to take a healthier approach to cooking, are working towards your New Year’s goals, or just want to try something new in the kitchen, sous vide is a great cooking technique to learn. You may be surprised to find how much you like it.
What is Sous Vide?
Before you start learning more about all of the unique benefits of sous vide—it is important to know exactly what sous vide cooking is. Simply put, sous vide is a cooking style where you cooking your food at a lower temperature for a longer time. You actually put your food in a vacuum sealed bag, or a sous vide bag. When you cook at this low temperatures, it won’t dehydrate the food and your food will stay in its original form which keeping its normal form and flavor. This is often a big worry about slow cooking—losing flavor—but thanks to the unique vacuum sealed bag, this isn’t an issue with sous vide. Once your food is in the vacuum sealed bag, you cook it in a “water bath” at a certain temperature and the process does the rest of the work for you.
Why Cook Sous Vide?
So, why exactly should you start cooking your foods sous vide style? Many people try sous vide cooking because of the better textures and flavors—but there are a lot of other great health benefits associated with this cooking style as well. When you cook sous vide, you can get restaurant-quality food, without having to make a trip out. According to researchers, when you eat at home instead of in a restaurant, you are much more likely eat healthier and eat less. Sous vide helps retain more vitamins and nutrients, since you aren’t exposing the food to as much heat, oxygen or water.
Research has even found that sous vide makes it easier to digest more foods—so you can enjoy a healthier gut and a healthier body. Simply put, sous vide is healthy, easy and delicious and it is growing in popularity as more and more people are starting to realize all of the great benefits of this type of cooking. Take a look at some of these benefits below.
What Are the Benefits?
If you’ve never tried cooking sous vide yourself before, you may have a number of questions about this cooking style and what it entails. Well, the best way to really experience sous vide cooking is to try it for yourself—but here are some of the great benefits you can expect from this cooking style.
Flavor
One of the first things that people typically notice about sous vide cooking is the taste. This cooking style can deliver some outstanding flavor that many people love. Even though sous vide is a slow cooking style, the sous vide bag will help keep in all of the flavors and aromas of the food. You don’t have to worry about losing flavor with sous vide and instead can enjoy even tastier and even more flavorful results when you cook.
Healthy
Sometimes it is hard to realize just how healthy sous vide cooking is because the flavor is so delicious. However, it really is a healthy way of cooking, especially when compared to other cooking styles. With sous vide, you don’t need to add extra salts, fats, seasonings or flavors in order to get some great flavor, meaning you aren’t adding any unnecessary extra butters, fats to get some flavor with your food. Imagine being able to cut out all of the oils and butters from your cooking and still getting great flavors.
Another great health benefit? With the vacuum sealed bag, you are keeping in more vitamins and minerals during the cooking process. These vitamins and minerals are typically lost during cooking processes like boiling and steaming. This means you are getting even more from your food.
Restaurant Quality Food
You can give sous vide cooking a try, even if you aren’t an experienced chef. And you may be surprised by how easy it is. However, the results are going to taste like restaurant-quality food. Sous vide cooking is a great way to treat yourself to a truly decadent meal or to impress your friends with your culinary skills. You will notice that your veggies retain their crunch and color and that your meat and sous vide steak is easily cooked to perfection every time.
Consistently Good Results
One of the many things that people love about sous vide cooking is that it is a really consistent way of cooking. More specifically, it can deliver consistently good results. There is so much more precision with sous vide cooking so you can easily cook the same dish over and over again and get delicious results every time.
No More Undercooked, Chewy or Burnt Food
When cooking, it can be really difficult to get the consistency of food right, especially when it comes to meats. With sous vide, it is much easier to control the temperature of your cooking environment, so you don’t have to worry about undercooking your food, or overcooking and burning your meats or chickens. You don’t have to worry about their weird “chewy” consistency either with your food. With sous vide, you can instead enjoy an easier cooking approach that will help you get the perfect consistency and finished results you are looking for.
Organized Cooking Time
With sous vide cooking, you can enjoy more organized cooking time so you have better control on how long you are cooking. This of course, makes planning much easier. You can cook your food and seal it up to 24 hours in advance and cook your food from there. Then you can come back and take your food out of the water oven and serve it whenever you want. You won’t be as confined by your cooking methods.
Quick Simple Meals
Everyone wants quick and simple ways to get dinner on the table and sous vide cooking and sous vide recipes can help make cooking easier and faster. There is very little preparation involved when cooking with sous vide as it keep so many flavors in. Once you put your vacuum sealed food in the water bath—you can cook most foods in less than 30 minutes, even with the lower temperatures.
Cooking Large Quantities
If you need to cook a lot of food at once, but are worried about cooking large quantities all at once, then sous vide can help. If you have a party or large dinner ahead of you—this cooking process can help take some of the stress out of the situation as you can easily cook large quantities all at once.
Savings
Saving on cooking costs is always a win-win, especially for busy families. One hidden benefit of sous vide cooking is that it can actually help you save money as well. Most people who cook sous vide style love the fact that they can use cheaper cuts of meat and still get the same flavor as more expensive cuts. This is because sous vide keeps in so much more flavor than other cooking styles—meaning you won’t have to upgrade to those more expensive and more flavorful cuts of sous vide steak.
Extended Shelf Life
Sous vide is a great cooking strategy if you want to make food that can keep for a longer time. Since the food is cooked inside a vacuum sealed bag, it can stay in that vacuum sealed bag and then quickly frozen or refrigerated for safe keeping. When doing it this way—your food will actually keep much longer in this sealed bag. This can make meal prep on the weekend super simple—so you can easily get your meals prepared for the whole week and keep them stored and ready for you to grab as needed.
Consider Sous Vide - A New Way To Spice Up Your Cooking Routine
If you are looking for a new way to spice up your cooking routine, then consider sous vide. It is a great way to make healthy eating fast, fun and flavorful. While it may take a little time to get used to, even novice chefs can get the hang of this cooking style including perfecting your sous vide steak. Take the time to think about all of the great sous vide recipes and benefits that can come with sous vide cooking and determine if you are ready to give it a try for your next weeknight dinner.
Rebekah Pierce is a professional social blogger and has worked on several online publications including Citrus Sleep. Rebekah is an experienced content writer and copyeditor. You will find many of her works throughout CitrusSleep.com that cover a wide array of subjects including sleep education, natural, sleep products, electronics, fashion and many more. She is passionate about her work and family.
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