These days more and more home chefs are discovering the joys of sous vide cooking, as a relatively foolproof way of producing restaurant quality food at home that is even more nutritious than other cooking methods as vitamins and minerals are not lost during the cooking process.
Sous vide cooking also allows you to spend less time in the kitchen, as food can be prepared in advance and cooked slowly, without the fear of becoming overcooked. And with WiFi connected devices such as our iVide Cooker, you can even check on how your food is doing while you’re at work.
No matter what you are cooking, whether that be meat, vegetables, or even desserts, with sous vide you can expect better texture and tenderness than with other cooking methods. No more overdone asparagus or dry chewy chicken, as you’re able to consistently achieve perfect results each time. You needn’t worry about overcooking your steak or burning your vegetables, and it’s a great way to cook perfect poached eggs.
Sous vide cooking is a fantastic method of cooking food to perfection, and one of the many benefits is that you can prepare food without a great deal of moisture loss or shrinkage. As the food is vacuum sealed in the sous vide pouch, it does not become dehydrated or lose its shape during the cooking process.
But as more people are finding their feet in the world of sous vide cooking, there may be a few questions about best practice that spring to mind. When cooking sous vide, there is often much debate when it comes to what you should or shouldn’t add it to the bag, so we thought we’d take a look at the topic of whether or not you should add butter to the bag when cooking sous vide.
Butter in sous vide cooking
Butter serves many different purposes in cooking, from adding flavour, to acting as an emulsifier. Butter has a nice light flavour that goes well with a lot of different foods and makes recipes that little bit richer.
When we think about cooking meat, butter is often used as the fat of choice during the browning process as it adds a rich flavour, particularly when paired with aromatics. When cooking sous vide, this browning process, of course, does not occur until the meat has been taken out of the water bath (unless the meat is seared before it is added to the bag), so many people argue that there is no purpose for butter to be added to the bag.
Here at Sous Vide Tools we often like to add a small amount of butter to the bag and find that for best results, flavoured butter works really well to add a little something extra during the cooking process. Our preference is to place butter into the bag itself, rather than on top of the product.
Butter added to the bag will help with air displacement, prevent things from sticking together and help to retain shape, and can also be used afterwards for a pan sauce.
Butter also works really well for vegetable dishes. For example, check out our recipe for butter poached asparagus here, in which butter and truffle butter add a beautiful flavour while cooking that really makes the dish.
We hope that this has helped to shed some light on whether or not butter should be added to the bag when cooking sous vide. There is no harm in omitting butter from the bag as food will not dry out without the presence of fat as with other cooking methods, however, there are benefits to including it.
If you need some inspiration for your next sous vide cooking adventure, why not take a look at our recipe section, where you can find some fantastic dishes to try out.
