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    Home » Recipes » Sous Vide » Sous Vide For Beginners » Why Is Sous Vide So Popular With Home Chefs?

    Why Is Sous Vide So Popular With Home Chefs?

    Published: Jul 27, 2020 · Modified: Oct 5, 2020 by Jenna Passaro · This post may contain affiliate links.

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    why sous vide is so popular pinterest pin with Sous Vide Cookbook

    What does sous vide mean, and why is sous vide so popular with home chefs? It’s a question I’m often asked, as a sous vide cookbook author.

    Since sous vide cooking is one of my favorite foodie topics to chat about, I’m diving deep into this cooking method for you today. 

    why people love sous vide cooking collage with steaks and sous vide cookbook

    Have we met? I’m Jenna Passaro, author of The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook, and I run this food blog with sous vide recipes and restaurant-style food like homemade pizza. Welcome to Sip Bite Go.

    So why do people love to sous vide?

    Because people love really good food. And they’re amazed they can make food at home taste as delicious as restaurants. 

    That’s why I love using sous vide techniques at home — it is a foul-proof way to get restaurant quality food on the table with minimal fuss.

    We love trying new recipes with this underwater cooking method.

    How did I get into sous vide? My husband and I were gifted our first sous vide machine as a wedding gift. So, if you want to get mushy about it, you could say our love for each other brought us to our love for sous vide cooking. Corny, but true.

    Sous vide new york strip steak
    Sous vide steak is a staple in my house – and for many sous vide enthusiasts – because you can make steaks taste like restaurant steakhouse meals, right at home. That’s the amazing thing about using the sous vide technique to cook food.

    There wasn’t much information on sous vide cooking available when we started.

    It took a while to figure out exactly how sous vide cooking works at home, and what is the real benefit of sous vide cooking? We set up experiment after experiment to figure out which ingredients benefited the most from sous vide cooking.

    Topping my list: sous vide wings and sous vide lobster tails.
     

    sous vide tri tip recipe from The Home Chef's sous vide cookbook
    We’ll cook sous vide tri tip at home on a Sunday – it’s a short sous vide cook that’s done and ready to eat in just a few hours. We’ll eat sous vide tri tip sandwiches with bbq sauce or garlic mayo for a couple days after. 

    Leftover sous vide beef and pork makes delicious leftover quesadillas and next-day breakfast tacos.

    Check out more beef sous vide recipes.

    The evolution of sous vide cooking

    Once only available to restaurants, sous vide cooking became popular with home chefs in the past few years.

    In The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook, I share a little bit of the history of this technique:

    “Sous vide techniques actually began as safety measures as a way to pasteurize and sterilize food for hospitals, labs, and large food companies. In 1974, the science of sous vide was exposed to the restaurant scene.

    French chef Georges Pralus utilized sous vide cooking to solve an unlikely challenge: finding a new way of cooking foie gras that loses the least amount of fat while cooking.

    To the surprise of many, the foie gras sous vide experiment was the cooking method that not only lost the least amount of fat – it also retained the best flavor.

    No one could believe the dish was the result of food cooked in plastic in a water bath.”
     

    sous vide asparagus with anova sous vide machine
    One of the easiest sous vide vegetable recipes you’ll ever try. This sous vide asparagus is cooked perfectly in less than 15 minutes in the sous vide bath. Recipe featured in The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

    The sous vide recipes beginners should start with

    Sous vide NY strip steaks come out juicy, tender, and oh-so-flavorful.

    Sous vide egg bites are the ultimate in soft boiled goodness.

    And sous vide brisket, sous vide tri tip, and sous vide meatballs? You might never cook them another way. 

    You can even cook vegetables like sous vide asparagus, sous vide Brussels sprouts and sous vide onions with beer.

    Never overcooked, always done to perfection: that’s the way sous vide works.

    Sous Vide Asparagus Recipe From The Home Chef's Sous Vide Cookbook
    You can pretty much sous vide everything including vegetables like sous vide asparagus. Though I wouldn’t sous vide pizza. And definitely don’t sous vide popcorn. Literally, I’ve heard of someone who tried it.

    Why I sous vide everything these days

    My personal reason for loving sous vide cooking has changed over the years.

    My husband and I used to be up till 3 am making fresh raviolis from scratch. We were super into cooking gourmet food. In fact, hubs was a chef at a very popular farm-to-table restaurant in Baltimore when we met.

    Sous vide recipes have become a mainstay in my kitchen because of this reason. It’s like eating at a restaurant at home.

    We loved restaurants when we lived in cities from Baltimore to San Francisco to Portland.

    Now that we’re in the ‘burbs we have love to cook restaurant-style food at home. Meats cooked perfectly. Sauces. Fresh vegetables. And deli pasta salads.

    Today we have a young family with a toddler. The reason I’m up at 3am these days is not to drink wine and make pasta. #momlife

    When I was pregnant, and after becoming a mom, it became super important to make food as fast and as easy as possible.

    The sous vide machine has been the answer for us as new parents. We eat well at home by leveraging the convenience of sous vide cooking for meal prep.

     

     

    Sous vide New York strip steak cooked to medium-rare
    Probably the most sous vide cooked dish in my house: sous vide New York strip steak cooked to medium-rare or medium. This is both a fun cooking hobby for the hubs and I, plus it’s pretty helpful for meal prepping with a baby.

    How much things change over 2-3 years. Especially when starting a family. Never in a million years did the “restaurant obsessed” me think that the future “mom” me would be cooking frozen chicken sous vide style! Frozen food was not my thing before moving to the suburbs and getting busy with life as a new parent.

    Why would you sous vide food?

    Want a fun cooking hobby?

    Once you get the hang of it, sous vide cooking isn’t only tasty, it’s fun.

    Do you like steak?

    If you’re a huge fan of steak houses, that’s reason enough to try it. Steak made with the sous vide method of cooking is tender and buttery. Never chewy or dry.

    The food is always cooked to your perfect temperature – medium rare, medium, etc. and never above. Tri tip, filet mignon from frozen, brisket, ribeye – they all are wonderful to try sous vide style.

    Sous vide New York strip steak dinner with potatoes and peas
    Perfectly cooked sous vide steak that was cooked from frozen with mashed potatoes and peas. These types of sous vide dinners are simple and a great example of why I love meal prepping with sous vide cooking.

    Final reasons why sous vide is popular with home cooks

    It works consistently, across the board

    Most people want to know their dinner is going to come out perfect. This is possible with sous vide, because the food cooks at a consistent temperature. It never turns out dry. That’s why sous vide turkey breast is a really popular sous vide dish for Thanksgiving.

    It makes food safe by eliminating bacteria over an extended period of time

    That’s why Chipotle began to sous vide all their meat before finishing it off on the grill in individual restaurants.

    In their words: “[Sous vide] is also a recognized and validated intervention for controlling harmful bacteria. We use the sous vide process at the commissary level for our steak so that we can prevent raw beef from ever entering our restaurants.” (read more on the Chipotle food safety site)

    It provides unique, easy to implement goodness.

    Take Starbucks egg bites sous vide style. Everyone loves them, and there’s a reason why: they’re just so good. They’re rich and creamy, but pretty healthy, too.

    The sous vide method results, as they put it, in “velvety texture bursting with flavor”

     

    sous vide soft boiled eggs with herbs
    Sous vide is popular with home cooks because you can make restaurant style food at home, like these perfectly cooked sous vide soft boiled eggs.

    How to sous vide almost anything

    So many people are intimidated by sous vide cooking. You wouldn’t believe how many people tell me the sous vide machine has been sitting in the box for months since getting it.

    As it turns out, there is nothing complicated about sous vide cooking.

    Almost every meal can be summarized in three easy steps:

    1. Season and seal the food
    2. Sous vide food in a sous vide water bath
    3. Add a finishing touch with the grill, broiler, cast iron pan, or

    The top sous vide dishes to try at home

    It’s so hard to choose my favorite sous vide recipes because there are so.many wonderful combinations we’ve tried!

    My cookbook, The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook, reads as a collection of all-star favorites: recipes I want to make again and again and again.

    Sous vide lobster tails on skewers
    Sous vide lobster tails are definitely one of the reasons sous vide cooking is so popular. They turn out so tender.

     
    If I were to highlight just a few…

    Sous vide lobster — when sous viding lobster poached in butter and herbs, the result is  a final product that is wonderfully flavorful, succulent and tender. Never chewy or overcooked. 

    NY Strip Steak sous vide style — ideal for get togethers, you can cook these steaks to perfection in the sous vide machine and do a two minute sear when the guests come over. The result? Flavor and juiciness you’d never believe.

    Grilled sous vide shrimp — a short cook time (15 minutes!) allows me to get sous vide shrimp on the table for a quick but luxurious family meal.

    Egg bites sous vide style — the ultimate in versatile recipes! And the results are always wonderful– fluffy, creamy, and souffle-like–  no baby-sitting required!

    Overnight sous vide bacon
    Overnight sous vide bacon is one of the top sous vide recipes for breakfast in my house.

    Overnight sous vide bacon — You’ll have no idea what bacon was supposed to taste like till you try sous viding bacon — I know I didn’t! You get so much more of everything – flavor, consistency, presentation. See more on the best sous vide breakfasts.

    Buttery sous vide corn — Another super-quick way to double the flavor of your basic steamed corn on the cob. This one is poached in butter. So good.

    Sous vide wings — My prep-ahead specialty for game nights. This is the sous vide wings recipe Anova said is the last one you’ll ever need. Sous vide chicken wings are tender and oh-so-juicy on the inside. A quick sear, fry, or broil gives the exterior that perfect crispness too.

    BBQ glazed sous vide chicken legs and The Home Chef's Sous Vide Cookbook
    BBQ glazed sous vide chicken legs are inspired by a recipe in my new sous vide cookbook, The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook. The chicken turns out so tender, and the outside is nice and crisp from finishing the sous vide chicken legs in the broiler.

    Chicken is so underrated when it comes to sous vide cooking. See my guide to the best sous vide chicken recipes.

    The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook

    I’ve got a huge collection of sous vide recipes free online, ready for you to pull up on your iPad and make whenever the mood strikes you.

    But if you’re a serious home chef who wants to sous vide everything you can, you’ll have to check out my extensive collection of 100+ recipes in The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

    Here are some of the fool-proof  vegetables, proteins, and even breakfast with your sous vide cooker.

    • Italian Sous Vide Chicken Meatballs
    • Sous Vide Jerk Steak Bowls
    • Sous Vide Crab Cakes
    • Balsamic Sous Vide Brussel Sprouts
    • Sous Vide Chicken Thighs
    • There’s even a bonus section on spice rubs and spices – readers have told me to make another cookbook just with my sauces (if you like dressings check out this cilantro lime dressing)

    The Home Chef's Sous Vide Cookbook and sous vide NY strip steak

    These are the recipes you’ll be using again and again and again.

    Consider it your guidebook that will take you beyond your first sous vide experiments to actual full restaurant-quality meals that are bursting with flavor. As I put it in the book:

    “When starting out on the sous vide cooking journey, most people stick to making one ingredient at a time: a steak, a chicken breast, pork roast. This makes sense when you’re trying to master the sous vide technique, but it can be easy to ignore the sides and sauces that round out the meal. My goal is to help you turn sous vide foods into whole dishes. You’ll find recommendations for toppings and servings that will help you create wonderfully complete plated meals.”

    See more on The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

    New sous vide recipes are coming!

    Follow me on Instagram @sipbitego and subscribe to the Sip Bite Go channel on YouTube for more delicious recipes.

    « Sous Vide Burger Recipe From Scratch [Video!]
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    jenna passaro food blogger from Portland Oregon

    Hey, I’m Jenna Passaro.

    I develop easy recipes that can transform your kitchen into a restaurant – and you into a true home chef.

      

    Where to start?

    Learn the secrets to smoking tasty Traeger recipes and making pizza at home. And cook amazing tri tip steak dinners.

    Or, fall in love with something new to cook with your air fryer, pellet smoker, BBQ grill, sous vide cooker, and more…

    You’ll notice, I kind of geek out over new cooking trends and tools!

    Instagram me @sipbitego & chef hubs @handmodelpatrick

    My story. Growing up, I didn’t learn to cook.

    (I was actually banned from cooking for years)

    And then in my 20’s I didn’t have to cook because my job as an event planner involved a lot of travel and it was easier to eat out. At the time, I was 100% positive that restaurant food would always taste better than cooking at home, and there was nothing I could do about it.

    Until I fell in love with a chef. He would come over and cook me delicious meals right in my own kitchen. My mind was blown.

    Since then, I’ve been on a mission to figure out easy ways to make restaurant style food at home and share it here on Sip Bite Go.

    Love to eat out and travel? I can totally relate. See my guide on where to eat in Portland, OR.

    jenna passaro the home chef's sous vide cookbook

    Never in a million years did I imagine I’d ditch the 9-5 lifestyle in my late 20’s, move across the country on a whim, start a new life, start a food blog, and write a book.

    But here I am!

    See my book on Amazon: The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

     

       

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