I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my Sansaire Immersion Circulator since I received it … was it really only ten days ago?

The first things I tried to sous vide were short ribs, followed by eggs. Saturday night, I moved on to skinless chicken breasts, which I vacuum sealed and dropped into a 140-degree Fahrenheit bath for 90 minutes, the time and temperature recommended by Sansaire.

Result?

Extremely juicy chicken, seen here surrounded by broccoli fried with pecans and raisins.

It was slightly undercooked to my taste, however, which could have been either because these were huge pieces of chicken, or because I’d sealed them two per bag, creating an even larger food mass to heat. I’m a sous vide newbie, with a lot to learn, so I’ll tinker with those numbers next time and see what I need to do to bring chicken closer to my ideal.

For example—I’ve seen recommendations of “146 degrees for 1 to 2 hours,” 140° F “for at least 2 hours,” even 140° F for “for at least 1 hour 35 minutes and up to 10 hours,” so there are obviously a lot of variables to play with. I’ll let you know what happens.

Then, last night, I let two thick porterhouse steaks bathe at 130° F for an hour, followed by a one-minute sear on each side, resulting in, no lie, the best steak I’ve ever cooked.

The problem with a home-cooked steak (for me, anyway) is that there’s always the possibility of ruining a good piece of meat, some parts of it ending up over-done or under-done in order to get other parts just right, which can easily happen when you’re cooking a steak to 130°F in a 550°F skillet. The consistency of sous vide cooking solves all that, and you end up with an entire steak cooked exactly the way you want it.

The only issue in my house is getting the right sear at the end, because we have electric rather than gas burners, and so we can’t get a pan as hot as I’d like for that final step. But it still turned out to be mind-blowing. I can’t see a reason I’d cook a steak any other way again.

And I look forward to summer when I can do that final sear over coals on the grill!

Then, this morning, because my wife felt that her 65-degree Centigrade eggs were slightly too runny, I upped the temperature to 66 degrees, which resulted in this.

The white was a little thicker, with the yolk remaining jam-like. David Shaw tells me that instead of raising the temperature, I should instead keep the temperature to 65 degrees, but leave my wife’s egg in to bathe for longer than the suggested 45 minutes. I’ll give it a try.

As you can see, my Sansaire is becoming indispensable.

Next up: Double cut pork chops!