Sous Vide cooking is a method of sealing food in a plastic bag and heating it through in a heated water bath to a precise temperature, and holding that temperature for the needed amount of time. The idea is that the food will not overcook due to higher temperatures and that it can be held at the desired temperature for an extended period without overcooking. Note that the starting temperature of the food will affect how long it takes for the heated water bath to increase that food temperature, all the way through, to the right level for cooking.

The sous vide technique was developed in France in the 1970's but not used much in the USA until the late 1990's. It is now common practice in upscale restaurants, like great steak houses, to have steaks already heated through to, for example, a medium rare amount, like 130 degrees F, allowing the chef to simply remove a hot steak from a bag and do a very rapid very hot grilling (about 30 seconds to one minute per side) to complete the cooking and have the steak ready to serve, nicely crisp on the outside and evenly cooked throughout the inside.

It is easy to think of other applications, like precooking a boneless skinless chicken breast to a bare 148 degrees F, all the way through, and maintaining that temperature for one hour, to have it perfectly safe to eat and ready for battering and very rapid frying. About five minutes of frying is all that is needed to make the batter perfect, and the chicken breast is already cooked through and so remains very moist and tender. That is a massive improvement over simply trying to fry a battered raw chicken breast, where by the time it is cooked through the batter is overcooked and most of the flesh is tough and dry.

You likely already know the government recommended temperature for cooking fowl is 160 degrees F, not 148 degrees F, so why the difference? The reality is that the higher temperature causes the flesh to be drier and tougher. The lower temperature of 148 degrees F, if maintained for one hour after the flesh is heated through, is perfect to guarantee no bacteria will be alive. But what will happen is that you will have very moist and tender fowl, which is wonderful compared to that cooked to a higher temperature.

One thing you might consider with sous vide cooking is having the item being cooked in a marinade in the sealed bag. I leave it to your imagination to consider all the possibilities ... and/or to look up recipes.

Food Nirvana has two excellent recipe entries for making and cooking cured meats. Note that the final cooking of those meats can readily be done, and done perfectly, via sous vide cooking. For example, ham made from pork loin is cooked to a final temperature of 150 degrees F, after which is cooled, chilled, and then used as lunch meat for sandwiches or like Canadian bacon for light frying and enjoyment at breakfast.

Pastrami made from cured beef is heated to 200 degrees F, which is still within the use range of the sous vide heating unit I describe next.

The picture shown with this discussion is of a sous vide unit I purchased for roughly $250 that includes a water circulating electric heater with precise temperature and time controls, plus a water tank that holds the heater and the food to be cooked. It is the epitome of ease of use provided you have a convenient place to keep and use the three gallon water tank. I also use my vacuum sealer and "boil-in" plastic bags to seal the meat, fowl or seafood products I decide to cook by the sous vide method. I cover the tank during cooking with a plastic cutting board to hold in the heat and thus better maintain the desired temperature.

I enjoyed reading J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's description of sous vide cooking in his great book, The Food Lab©, and especially the part about how a home cook can bypass all the expense of the sous vide equipment and the vacuum sealer, and simply use common items found at home to do sous vide cooking. I paraphrase his thoughts next.

Use a 3 to 5 gallon cooler of the type you would take camping. Fill it about 3/4 full of hot tap water a few degrees hotter (or as hot as you have) than what you need to cook whatever you are cooking. Have a quick read thermometer handy to periodically check the water temperature. Add boiling water when necessary, with stirring, to create or to maintain the desired temperature for the 30 minutes or more required to cook the food all the way through, and to cook it long enough to make it safe to eat. Use something like a Ziploc® freezer bag to hold the flesh item. Expel air from the bag by immersing the food filled bag into the sous vide water up to but not over the top edge of the bag, after which you seal the bag, having eliminated unwanted air in the bag that might cause uneven cooking.

The cooler lid is closed tightly to keep the heat in the cooler as much as possible.

Using this simple and inexpensive approach to sous vide cooking does require periodic checking of the cooler water temperature, about once every ten minutes, making temperature adjustments as needed by adding additional boiling water, which you keep available by having a one gallon pot of it at a low boil on your stove, adding water to the pot as necessary.

Okay, that is a primer for sous vide cooking, sufficient for you to do it successfully. You can choose to read more about sous vide cooking via searching the Internet.