Sometimes the day calls for a crisp, flavorful salad or a warm bowl of hearty soup. In my quest to cut down on eating out, I've been making more soups and salads, but I still want them full of rich flavors and to be really filling. Using sous vide allows me to easily add perfectly cooked meat and vegetables to these with very little effort.
At their most basic, soups are flavorful infusions of meat and vegetables. At their worst, they are filled with starches, preservatives, and tons of salt. The recipes in this chapter are bold and full of flavor, using fresh ingredients to fill them with nutrition. Taking the time to make these soups at home is also worth the effort so you know exactly what is in them.
Most soups are also a perfect candidate for freezing. You store them in smaller, serving-sized containers and then quickly reheat them later.
One of the easiest ways to use sous vide is to make pureed soups. It's one of the uses where the results might not be any better than using the stovetop, but sous vide makes it so much more convenient.
The pureed soups in this chapter all are fully cooked in the sous vide bag, meaning you don't have to try and scrub scorched soup off of a pot. These types of pureed soups work with many different kinds of vegetables and allow you a wide variety of flavoring combinations. In addition to the recipes here, I also really like puree soup made from carrots, cauliflower, sweet potato, turnips, and beets.
Many soups contain pieces of meat in them, and sous vide shines when you want to ensure it is cooked perfectly. We have all had a rich, filling soup ruined by dry pieces of meat. Sous viding the meat separately ensures it is tender and moist, adding to the soup instead of taking away from it.
I've given recipes for two of my favorite meat-based soups in this chapter. Feel free to substitute other types of meat if you prefer, or even just some crunchy vegetables.
One important tip for meat-based soups is to make sure you use high quality stock in them. With a traditional soup, the cooking process pulls flavor out of the meat into the liquid, so you can get away with a lower quality stock. But with sous vide, all the flavor of the meat stays in the meat, so the liquid can taste bland if it is not high quality already. I highly recommend making your own stocks at home. They are very easy to do, simple to freeze, and impart rich flavors into your dishes. To learn more about making stock I recommend Michael Ruhlman's series of articles on it: ruhlman.com/2015/01/meat-broths-and-stock.
A big part of a nutritious life style is making sure you are eating enough salads. I often struggle with salad and it's not something I crave. I've worked hard to come up with salads that are not only chock full of lettuce and vegetables but are really filling. This chapter contains some of my got-to salads. I would still prefer a juicy hamburger, but these recipes make it easier for me to behave...at least most of the time!
There's nothing wrong with a simple side salad, but for a hearty meal I need to have meat with my lettuce! Ensuring the meat is moist and adds to the salad is very important, and sous vide makes it easy.
Sous vide is also very convenient for several reasons. I'll often make several batches of meat ahead of time and store the rest in the fridge or freezer until I need it. You can do this at any point in the process, either before cooking it, or after cooking it but before searing it. If it is after sous viding it, just chill it in an ice bath for 15 to 20 minutes to fully chill the meat then toss them in the fridge or freezer.
Another way to optimize the process is to skip the sear unless you are trying to be fancy. I almost never sear my poultry and even skip it on some meat. It's not as pretty, but for a quick and nutritious lunch anything to speed up the process helps to keep me from reaching for unhealthy food.
Note: In these recipes I recommend the time and temperatures I prefer, but for more options you can refer to the "Common Temperature Ranges" section at the start of the "Recipes" chapter or the "Cooking by Tenderness" chapter.
