Sous Vide: Getting Started Class

ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

ChefSteps

Joule® Turbo Sous Vide

Digital instant-read thermometer

1-gallon Ziplock-style freezer bag(s)

Microplane

Breville Super Q™

Sous Vide Pork Chops

Hazelnut Pistachio Romesco

Caramelized Carrots

Greek yogurt

Once the chop is in the water, you can move on to Step 2 and start making the romesco. {activity:4wxJVyau4S2FjDdRKWxpjT}

Juicy, perfectly cooked pork chops are easy to master with this simple sous vide recipe. Pair with a bright apple purée and a simple brussels sprouts salad for weeknight perfection.

Make Sous Vide Pork Chop

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Make Hazelnut Pistachio Romesco

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Make Caramelized Carrots

Spoon a generous layer of romesco onto a warm plate.Add yogurt if desired, then a layer of carrots.Top with pork chop, season with salt, and serve.

Assemble

With hearty pork, caramelized carrots, and bold romesco, this dish is a subtle way to show off your good taste and sophisticated knowledge of the best flavor combinations. Cooking the pork sous vide—using <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cook-sous-vide-tonight-stovetop-method">a pot on the stove</a> or whatever equipment you prefer—means you can determine the exact doneness you want without fear of messing up that meat. The end result is a juicy chop with a crispy brown surface, which tastes ridiculously delicious alongside tender carrots and a distinctive, delicious romesco variation made with hazelnuts and pistachios. We add some plain Greek yogurt for a cool, creamy note—but it’s an optional ingredient. With or without it, this is a meal that feels elegant and homey at the same time and is sure to become one of your favorite ways to impress guests and keep the loved ones well sated.

Pork Chops, Carrots, and Romesco

Romesco is to Spain what pesto is to Italy. Easy to make, this workhorse sauce has all the versatility of its Italian counterpart—it’s an amazing dip for roasted vegetables, coating for fresh pasta, or accompaniment to rich meats. Most versions call for almonds, but we like the subtle notes that emerge when we use a combination of hazelnuts and pistachios instead. This is one of those recipes that’s great to have around when you’re short on time and want to make a quick dinner that’s actually delicious. Try it with <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pork-chops-carrots-and-romesco">sweet caramelized carrots and a hearty pork chop</a> or whatever you’ve got hanging out in the fridge.

It starts with recipes. You watch Ina Garten make a corn salad, and you think: “Hey, I can do that.” And yes, it turns out, you can. As you keep cooking, the recipes get more and more complicated, and one day you find you’re tweaking things here and there—making dishes on your own without consulting the internet for permission. You know to use cumin when you’re out of coriander. You serve spinach-and-walnut pesto instead of that one you made with basil and pine nuts five million times. Once you get to a certain level of cooking, recipes begin to function more as inspiration than straight-up instruction. They give you ideas you can play off of because you have acquired intuition about flavor combinations and that intuition frees you up to be creative. But what’s essential to this creative process is technique, and technique can be mastered only through practice. Here, we offer a technique for turning any hard vegetable (carrots, in this case) into a sweet, buttery, fork-tender treat that pairs perfectly with most any protein. It’s not hard to master, and it will likely evolve into your go-to, no-brainer way to transform your CSA contents into delicious side dishes—no recipe required.

Is a perfectly cooked pork chop even possible? Yes, thanks to sous vide.A lot of home cooks are afraid of pork, which is understandable. For decades, there was a mass misconception that even a blush of pink in a cooked pork chop meant the meat was almost certainly lethal. Fear of undercooking led to a profusion of unappetizing, overdone chops. Either the other white meat was going to kill you or you had to sit at the table for hours chewing your dinner.Making matters worse, pork producers settled on raising leaner breeds, part of a misguided effort to market pork as a competitor to chicken. Lean meat dries out way faster than fattier meat, and thus overcooked pork chops are even drier and even more leathery than they should be.For all these reasons, pork chops are ideal for cooking sous vide. When cooked in a temperature-controlled water bath, even the leanest pork chop can be well-seasoned, juicy, and perfectly cooked from edge to edge. Give the chop a little sear when it’s done to get some of those toasty flavor notes from <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/mastering-the-maillard-reaction">Maillard browning</a>, and you’ll get a pleasing contrast between the browned, crispy exterior and the tender, blushing interior.Serve it up with a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/light-and-lovely-apple-puree">bright apple purée</a> and a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/a-zesty-brussels-slaw-you-can-whip-up-in-a-flash">shredded Brussels sprouts salad</a> or some of your other low-effort, high-reward sides and you’ve got a delectable, weekend-worthy meal that’s easy to put together even on a weeknight.