Does anyone cook sous vide? And if so, how?
I’m clearing the utility room prior to having it decorated and have come across Lidl stuff OH has bought and never used. I think it’s the plastic bags and a piece of kit that seals the plastic bags. What else, if anything, does he need? And how then should he use this stuff?
I’m tempted to give it all away!
I know how you feel. My husband has gadgets that sit in cupboards and do nothing. I’m hoping that when he retires he’ll have time to use them.
That plastic seal-in-a-bag kit I have been informed by a number of ladies will make food sealed in it keep very much longer in the fridge. Say, cheese 3x longer than if not sealed, eg goats cheeses.
Don’t do much sous vide cooking but find my sv kit great for preserving confit de canard (I confit six legs every three weeks) and for freezing portions of uncooked meat, mainly jointed chicken, breast of lamb, and portions of lamb/steak mince.
Isn’t sous-vide cooking just posh boil-in-a-bag anyway ?
Wouldn’t use the lidl plastic for high temperature boil-inbag….
Sous vide is packing spices and flavorings such as alcohols, oils and sealing the bags after vacuuming.
Then cooking at low temperature in a water bath… for quite a while.
Then searing meats/fish to brown them…
We have the gear, used it successfully and now packed away the heater for the slow cooking in a waterbath. Way too much of a faff…
Still use the vacuum machine to seal meat/fish/confit duck…. for the freezer in individual portions.
Exactly - though I saw MPW make something sous vide and he did each item plain, with no spices or other flavouring.
When I looked into it, the water baths seemed a bit pricey.
All OH has seen is the ancillary bits in Lidl. Not the water bath. I will explore further.
We used to go to a wonderful Michelin star restaurant in Agen - The Mariottat. His meat dishes were always gloriously tender and moist - we think he used sous vide and it was the reason for our interest. I also had some tough squid in another posh restaurant (basically inedible) and think it would have been better cooked sous vide..
I must admit that the things I’ve seen (and bought) in Lidl weren’t (I think) for cooking with but for sealing stuff to go in the freezer. That’s what I use them for, anyway. Currently there are quite a few packs of meat and fish - when we buy things, we tend to buy reasonably sized amounts, used part and frezze the rest.
Was there anything in the packaging of the things your OH bought to indicate that they were for cooking? If, like mine, you can’t put anything with a liquid content e.g. sauce then I would definitely say they were for freezing fruit, veg, meat, fish etc.
We had a similar experience recently (I think the menu confirmed the meat had been cooked sous vide). It was a piece of veal. The waitress rushed over halfway through with apologies and a steak knife. It was the first time I’d eaten veal that you could literally have cut with a spoon.
Mind you, I’m a sucker for a gadget!
My first encounter with sous vide cooking, was over twenty-five years ago, but rather than in a Michelin resto it was in a remote S African B&B that described itself as ‘the oldest Karoo cottage north of the Orange River.’ My steak had been cooked for eight hours and was still steak, ‘but not as we know it Jim.’
These days I’d more likely prepare the steak for eight hours, then grill it as hot and as fast as poss.
Given it’s the way most fast food outlets are going, it’s not even very posh anymore. It’s all part of the ‘automate everything and remove as many of the humans from the kitchen as possible’ strategy. Busy quick service restaurants can now operate with two people in the kitchen as it’s all boil in the bag cooking, turbo chef for browning, slap on a plate and an 8 minute ticket time.
My wife got me a sous vide heating devicethat connects to thru wifi about 10 years ago. It has gotten a lot of use. It is great for turning cheap cuts of meat into super tender meals. It does take time thou usually atleast 6 hours for a thick steak. Longest was about 48 hours for a leg of lamb, It came out amazing thou
The vacuum device and the bags help storage times and save space. There’s no air thus less moisture to create ice/freezer burn in the freezer (and it saves more space than you’d expect). Sauces can be saved without the tubs etc.
Same with dry herbs - they last longer vacuum packed
You can also as described use them for sous vide - either in a dedicated water bath or using a thermometer and a pan of water.
Eek.
Mustn’t go to The Ivy again then. Aka ‘the reheaterie’. 
Back in another lifetime … “duck à l’orange” was a favourite dish at our local UK pub …
Dead simple, each “ready cooked” duck portion and it’s sauce came in a sealed bag, already frozen. It stayed in the freezer until a customer ordered it from the Pub Menu.
Swiftly and with style, as many bags as needed were moved from the freezer to a pan of hot water… and heated… and served to the ravenous hordes with whichever accompaniments they had ordered.
yummy 
Although we use the Lidl model a lot of storage in the freezer, it would never occur to me to cook/reheat in the bag. Not a fan of cooking with plastics…
Duck/orange was 40/50 years ago.. it was a very new concept in those days 
There are still many things sold in plastic, ready to be reheated in water, or “pierce the package” and use microwave..
personally, I remove the food from the plastic and gently reheat/whatever in a closed pan (on the hob).
Incidentally, France has declared that all plastic which touches food must be recyclable… so the plastic goes in the yellow bin… and not buried in the ground.. hurrah.
Sous vide is a much misunderstood or misrepresented concept in many ways. As better linguists than me can attest, it refers to something being under vacuum and that is the equipment you have - to achieve that effect. “Sous vide machines” normally refers to the thermostatically controlled equipment that is then used to cook vacuum sealed foods for a prolonged time at a specific temperature.
The vacuum sealer on its own is very useful in lots of ways. Raw meats don’t last much longer under vacuum than they do outside that environment, due mainly to the surface bacteria still being active even after sealing and refrigerating. But as others have pointed out, cheeses can last many times as long - several months actually in the case of hard cheeses, and cooked meats also can last months when quickly cooled and sealed as soon as possible after cooking. I will often do 3 or 4 magret de canard and then chill and seal them and they are good for months in the fridge, either cold and thinly sliced on a salad perigord or flash grilled.
As also mentioned, it can be great for preserving confit and actually I use mine for sealing dried fruits and vegetables from the garden, so that environmental moisture doesn’t cause them to spoil and the existing moisture content (eg in figs and apricots) is maintained. In fact I have 2 vacuum machines - one in the kitchen for everyday use and bigger, quasi commercial, chamber vacuum machine in the barn for sealing bags that have liquids or marinated foods in them (the countertop machines can’t really be used for this, at least not without specialist containers).
Magret of duck cooked for 3hrs at 55C and then flash grilled on the plancha is perfectly cooked - pink and moist throughout and with a nice seal on the outside (raise or lower the temp according to your preference). Steaks also, especially thick ones, do very well at a slightly lower temp, again according to preference. A big Cote du Boeuf cooked for a similar amount of time then also flash grilled is cooked with far less skill and fuss required and if you have guests you can leave the table for 5 minutes and return with a dish that otherwise would have taken 5 times longer. No risk of spoiling, as most timings are flexible and an extra hour would not result in it being overcooked. For lamb or pork sometimes I will cook up to 48hrs before putting in a scorchingly hot oven.
So fair to say I am a convert. I also thought this was a fussy, faddy cheffy thing for a long time before I realised that it is even more valuable to normal cooks than it is for the professionals. But of course you need to be obsessed with food by definition in the first place even to have read this far! 
But “sous-vide cooking” is also a revelation for many dishes - not all and I wouldn’t cook squid sous-vide TBH nor most seafood. If squid was tough it was likely cooked either too long or too short a time (like many things there is a window to cook quickly but once that passes it will need long and slow cooking to bring back the desired softness).
BTW I haven’t used Lidl bags but I’d be surprised if they were not compliant with the standards for cooking sous-vide - BPF free and able to withstand 70-80 degree temperatures. And loads available on Amazon for c1c a bag or from the likes of Gamme Vert