Question about changing my mind on sous vide cooking

I've been line cooking for about 8 years now and always thought sous vide was just a gimmick for home cooks who watch too much YouTube. Last month my head chef made me try it on a batch of pork chops for a special we were running at the restaurant in Portland. I set the water bath to 135 degrees and left them in for 3 hours, then seared them hard in a cast iron. The texture was perfect edge to edge with zero gray banding. I still think it's not great for every situation, but that pork chop came out better than anything I've done on a grill or in a pan. Has anyone else had a kitchen tool or technique they were dead wrong about at first?

2 comments

2 Comments

rose_grant7812d ago

Wait, you actually had to be forced to try it? Took me one bite of a perfect chicken breast from a friend's home setup to eat my words. Hated on immersion circulators for years. Called them "expensive water heaters for people who can't sear." Now I own two. One for proteins, one for infusing liquors. Still won't touch a pressure cooker though. Those things scare me.

veramiller12d ago

You ever actually look up how a pressure cooker works though, @rose_grant78? I was the same way until I watched a few videos by my buddy who's a home cook. It's basically just a sealed pot that traps steam to cook faster. The scary part is if you open it before the pressure drops, but modern ones have safety locks that make it pretty hard to mess up. I still won't leave mine unattended for long, but it's nowhere near as dangerous as the old ones my grandma used to rattle on the stove.