Welcome Back to My Channel: Cooking with Emmy

Hello everyone, it's Emmy here, and welcome back to my channel. Today, I'm excited to share with you a unique cooking technique that's perfect for achieving a perfectly cooked steak without breaking the bank. We're going to be using an ice cooler as our vessel for cooking sous vide.

What is Sous Vide?

Sous vide is a French culinary term that refers to the process of cooking food in a water bath held at a specific temperature. This technique ensures that your food is cooked evenly and prevents overcooking, as the temperature of the water bath never exceeds the set temperature. Restaurants often use sous vide because it allows for precise control over the cooking process, resulting in perfectly doneness every time.

Water Circulators: The Expensive Option

While sous vide is a popular technique among chefs, using an expensive water circulator can be a significant investment. These devices feature a heater that maintains a consistent temperature, making it easy to cook food at a specific temperature. However, the cost of these devices can range from $200 to $1,000 or more, which may not be feasible for home cooks.

Replicating Sous Vide at Home

Today, I'm excited to show you how to replicate sous vide cooking without breaking the bank. We'll be using an ice cooler as our vessel, and I'll walk you through the process of achieving perfectly cooked steak at home.

My Journey with Sous Vide

I learned about this technique in Kenji López-Alt's book, where he explains the principles behind sous vide cooking. According to Kenji, the key to successful sous vide cooking lies in maintaining a consistent temperature, which requires patience and attention to detail.

Using an Ice Cooler for Sous Vide

So, how do we replicate sous vide cooking using an ice cooler? The process is surprisingly simple. We'll start by setting our desired temperature, which will be the same as the recommended internal temperature for a perfectly cooked steak. In this case, I've set my temperature at 130°F (54°C) for medium-rare.

Preparing the Ice Cooler

To prepare the ice cooler, we need to fill it with water and add some ice packs to keep the water cool. We want the water bath to be at around 40°F (4°C), which is ideal for cooking steak. This will slow down the cooking process, allowing us to achieve a perfectly cooked steak.

Placing the Steak in the Ice Cooler

Once we've set up our ice cooler, it's time to place the steak inside a plastic bag and submerge it in the water bath. Make sure to seal the bag tightly to prevent any air from entering or escaping during cooking.

Cooking the Steak

Now that the steak is in the ice cooler, we can let it cook for several hours, up to four hours. This allows us to achieve a perfectly cooked steak without overcooking it. The idea is to hold the steak in the hot water for a short period of time before searing it with a pan.

Finishing Touches

Before we serve our perfectly cooked steak, I want to add some finishing touches. We'll remove the steak from the plastic bag and pat it dry with paper towels to remove excess moisture. Then, we'll season it with salt, pepper, and any other herbs or spices you prefer.

Searing the Steak

The final step is to sear the steak in a hot pan with some oil. This will add a nice crust to our perfectly cooked steak and enhance its flavor. To do this, heat up your favorite cooking oil in a skillet over high heat, then carefully place the steak inside.

Plating and Serving

And that's it! Our perfectly cooked steak is now ready to be served. We can plate it with some fresh vegetables or sides of your choice, and enjoy the fruits of our labor. The best part about using an ice cooler for sous vide cooking is that we don't need a water circulator, making it more accessible to home cooks.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to cook a perfect steak using an ice cooler and the sous vide technique. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the section below. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more cooking tutorials and recipes!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings my lovelies. Hi it's Emmy, welcome back.Today, I'm going to show you how to cook a perfect steak using this:an Ice Cooler. Yes, a very inexpensive cheap styrofoam Ice Cooler.So let me explain myself. We're going to cook the steak in a water bath and the technical name for this is called Sous videSo sous vide is a french word and a french technique in which you cook your food in a water baththat is held at a very specific temperatureso your food does not overcook because the temperature of the water bath never gets any hotter than the temperature that you set it atSo there's these expensive water circulators that have a heater and you set the temperature, and it keeps it at that temperatureSo you put your food in a plastic bag place that into the water bath and cook it for the instructed amount of timeSo a lot of restaurants use this technique because you can get that perfect donenessAnd then you can hold the food in the hot water for a little while for a couple hours, up to four hours.Before you fry it. The problem is doing it at home can be a little bit expensivebecause the circulators -- it can be pricey a few hundred dollars up to I think a thousand dollars. TodayI'm going to show you how to do it without the water circulator in a styrofoam coolerso I first learned about this technique in Kenji López-Alt's book \"The Food Lab\" which is anIncredible book. Really, really informative. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it outSo I have used a sous-vide technique before. I do have a water circulator that was given to me and it works great,works really really beautifully, but I've never used this technique, so let's see if it really worksThe first thing to do is get yourself a steak and this steak is about an inch thick and it's a Ribeye andWe're going to season it really well with some salt and pepper then we're going to place the steak into a ziplock bagI'm using a freezer type bag, and then I'm placing a spoon in there as well to make sure that the steak remains submergedNext we can take our cooler you can use any kind of insulated box you have I'm just using this inexpensiveStyrofoam one and we're going to put at least two gallons of waterinto the vessel. So next, we're going to talk about water temperature depending on how you like your steak doneThat's going to affect the temperature of the water, so I like mine medium rare and mediumso I'm going to choose 133 degrees then use some additional boiling water and cold water to get itJust a couple degrees to your doneness next we're going to put our steak into the water slowlyAnd we want all the air to kind of come out of the bag and then we're going to zip it up so it's nicelyshrink wrapped around the steak now that we have the steak completely submerged we can put the lid on and then place this in aSunny spot, and if you're using one of these styrofoam coolers. I highly recommend taking it outsideBecause mine leaked all over the place, so we're going to let that cook for 45 minutesWe're going to recheck the temperature of the water and make sure it's at that temperature that you wantAgain use some boiling water or cold water to make those adjustmentswhile it is \"cooking\". So that brings me to the stage that I'm at now andhere is my steak; not very appetizing at all. So now we're going to fry this on a really hot skilletTo get some nice maillard reaction happening hereIt's a nice brown crispness, and then we're going to cut it open and see how it isBlot off some of this excess juiceThat will help with the browning and then add a little bit of salt since I've blotted much of that offI'm using my favorite little griddle pan. Love this thing.That on there. Now, we're going to place our steak on thereBeautiful.So as you can see there's a lot of smoke here. It's ready to turnOh yeah, look at thatThat's beautifulso I think we're ready to take this off.Oh yeah.Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you cook a steak traditionallyJust on the stovetop, you're supposed to allow the meat to rest for about 5 to 10 minutesSo that the juices can kind of return back into the meatBut I believe with sous vide you don't have to do that although. I usually let it rest anyways just out of habitBut I believe you don't have to because the temperature of the meat is already where it needs to beLet me know down below if you know, so this has been resting for about 5 minutes. Let's go ahead and cut into itAlright,Oh yeah, look at that. It's perfect! Perfect, perfect, perfect. That's exactly how I like my steakmedium RareMedium rare it has that beautiful crust on it.Look at that. Gorgeous, through and through medium rare.I love all the fatty bits as well. That is beautiful. That is a beautiful steakSo it looks great. Let's see how it tastesThese are my favorite bits, the fatty bits because that's where the flavor is -- the fatty bits.Itadakimasu.Perfection. Absolute perfection.Hmm. So try this technique, just try it.You can get a perfectly cooked steak with a really little effort.You do have to have a little bit of planning because it takes about an hour for your steak to cookbut with that planning you get a perfect perfect steak, plus it's really great for cooking lots of steakso if you have a large enough volume of water, you can cook maybe three or four steaks at one timeand just maintain the temperature and then you know grill them up on the grill outsideOr just do it inside if it's wintertime or too cold.Perfect perfect steak and you can do them a little bit ahead of time too for your expecting companyLet me talk a little bit about the flavor -- this steak is delicious. I usually get a rib eye steakI always look for a good amount of marblingWhich is like some white little bits that you see in the steak that is fat and fat is flavor, and it's deliciousSo I try to get the fattiest one I can because that makes the juiciest and tasty steak in my opinion and the steak is scrumptious.My only concern is cooking at high temperatures using plasticsI can't help but think there might be some leaching that might be happening withplastic and high temperatures into my foodSo I actually don't implement this technique all that often but when I do I'm always happywith the result. Alright, so do let me know in the commentsIf you've ever tried sous vide cooking before or if you actually tried this Icebox Cooler techniqueI want to know and if you do make this be sure to share your results with me on social media so I can seeit and be proud of you.Thanks so much for joining. I hope you guys enjoy that. Hope you guys learned something. Be sure to ring that notification beltso you know when I publish which is three days a week Monday Thursday Saturday at 8 p.m Eastern Time.Hope you guys enjoyed that. Hope you guys learned something, and I shall see you in my next video. Toodaloo, take care. Bye!*weird alien sounds*\n"