Review by Booklist Review
This collection of recipes will send home cooks on an adventure discovering the buzzed-about sous vide cooking method. Logsdon provides the reader with the information necessary to successfully utilize the sous vide in an easy, accessible way. The introduction touches on topics such as food safety, time and temperature, and the pros and cons of the many and varied appliances and accessories that can be employed for this technique, which involves cooking vacuum-sealed food in a type of water bath. The chapters are broken down into recipes for salads and sandwiches, various meat and seafood, fruits and vegetables, and infusions. Each recipe includes the sous vide water temperature, length of cooking and prep times, and recommendations for sides or alterations. Logsdon's recipes include ingredients that are readily obtainable for any level of home cook. The infusion recipes are useful, but none necessarily require a sous vide to achieve. This is most certainly a handy resource for new beginners looking for a basic cooking guide to using the sous vide.--Smith, Becca Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Having self-published several previous sous vide cookbooks, Logsdon, an avid home chef, now teams with Castle Point for this useful collection. As he explains, time and temperature are the key variables in cooking sous vide, which requires vacuum packing food in plastic and then submerging it in a hot-water bath-generally at low heat for a long time. And, since overcooking rarely occurs in sous vide, the acceptable cooking time for any dish can be varied according to one's needs. Two to four hours is the typical range for most of the beef and chicken dishes here, but the meat for the skirt-steak quesadillas can stay in its bath for a full day if necessary. And two pounds of seasoned, sliced pork butt need 18-24 hours before being ready to be shredded for carnitas. Though the sous vide is, indeed, simple to use, many of these offerings require additional steps that add a layer of complexity. French-dip sandwiches, for example, call for a cooked roast to be quick seared in a pan while hoagie buns are topped with Swiss cheese and toasted. Chicken thighs are browned over high heat before being flavored with a 16-ingredient jerk paste. The book closes with an exploration of 17 different infusions in which a mason jar can replace the plastic bag for concoctions such as black-cherry rye and apple-pie bourbon. Home cooks who already use sous vide as part of their routines will want to give this a look. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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