Sous Vide for the Home Cook cookbook

I've been cooking sous vide for at least two years, and use one of my circulators multiple times/week for a pretty broad variety of foods from proteins like beef, pork and chicken. to vegetables -- potatoes, carrots & asparagus, hard 'boiled' eggs, chickpeas, etc. I've tried a lot of things, and am almost always delighted with the results.I've read a lot, and watched a lot of informative videos produced by amateurs and professionals alike, and am always interested in the science of this technique, both in terms of achieving wonderful restaurant-quality meals, but in also making sure that I'm preparing them with a wary eye towards food safety. That's the main reason I chose to purchase this book - to learn the right - and wrong! - ways to do things!This is often referred to as the 'Bible' of sous vide cooking info, so I figured I'd try to learn from the best. Douglas Baldwin has a sterling reputation and has done a lot of research and experimentation, much of which has found its way into the book.There's a lot of good and helpful information and techniques include in here, but I see it as more of a cookbook -- a collection of recipes -- than a deep-dive into the science of why and how it works. Frankly, I'd prefer more of that deep-dive stuff -- perhaps more details and tips on the best way to use Delta-T cooking to reduce cooking time, than page-after-page of food items and how long to cook them at what temperature.It's a good book to read and re-read, but I'd really like to see something a little less geared towards the 'home cook' and heavier on the principles and why they are so effective.

I must admit the book did not live up to my expectations. While I expected this to be more of a book about cooking Sous Vide with some recipes than a cookbook with some information about cooking Sous Vide, the great majority of the book is recipes. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and I do look forward to trying many of the recipes in this book, but there are bits of information that seems to be missing from this book which makes the book unusable to me without outside information.To cook meat Sous Vide, you need to know how thick the meat is, what temperature you want to cook to, how long it takes to get to that temperature, how long it takes to pasteurize once at that temperature, and occasionally how long to keep cooking after pasteurization for touch cuts so that they become more tender. I expected this book to cover all of these topics sufficiently, but it does not.The initial Time and Temperature section covers a great many meats, but the times given are absolutely useless since the time will depend not just on meat and target temperature, but also thickness of cut, and no thickness is given. I also would have loved a larger treatment of why different temperatures are best for certain items. Why is the only option given for a chicken breast Medium? Is there some reason not to cook a chicken breast medium-rare?The food safety charts do take into consideration thickness of the meat, but only give 140F for fish and poultry, and 130F and 140F for meat. You also have to brave parsing very difficult mathematical formula to realize these figures are assuming initial temperature of 40F, and additional charts for frozen meat would've been appreciated. As well, the times given are a lumping together of initial time to temperature and time to pasteurization while I would've liked the book to separate the two. Some meats don't really need to be pasteurized presuming they haven't been tenderized and the external surface is seared. So how long do I cook my two inch thick Porterhouse if I don't care about pasteurization? Unless you are an advanced enough mathematician to be able to understand the very dense calculus given, and I presume most home cooks aren't, this book doesn't tell you.The book continually points you back to the author's website for more information, but the reason I bought this book was because I wanted more information than is on that website. The website is very good, and while it is disappointing that the book has less information than the website on some topics, the book is still overall very good and a must-own of you are a home cook interested in Sous Vide.

A great technical reference, this book is for food-science guys who want facts and figures instead of rote recipes. It has good explanations of the techniques, equipment and science of sous-vide. There are some recipes of course, but this is not really a cookbook. If you want recipes, there are scads of them available online, plus many videos on Youtube with more specific recipes.This is for someone like me who wants references with temperatures & time data for each specific TYPE of food. It includes recommended temps for meats, fish, veggies and even some unusual dessert ideas! The table of contents and index are well organized and thorough. That makes finding info fast and easy.Overall, this is the BEST reference-book of the sous-vide subject I have seen. There is plenty of time & temperature information plus lots of tricks that will SAVE MONEY on otherwise expensive sous-vide equipment. The entire work is deeply researched and impressively organized. The presentation is perhaps a little dry, but I prefer clearly presented facts over pretty pictures and faux inspiration any day.The first part of the book and several spots in latter chapters tell you how to perform sous-vide WITHOUT ANY extraordinary equipment. By itself, that makes this book worth the price many times over!I also find it comforting to know when I have an expensive cut of tenderloin or roast beef to cook, the reference material gives me solid advice that (so far) has never disappointed.I am no newcomer to sous-vide, but this tome is well suited to those with little or no experience. For those of us who have been cooking sous-vide for years, it is a very useful technical reference.if THAT is what you need, then THIS is the right book.

Douglas Baldwin is regarded as one of the fathers of modern sous vide cooking. This book is scientific, comprehensive, and thorough.

This book is a good starting point for the new sous vide cooke, it has a fair range of recipes and for the reader who wants a more in depth knowledge of the science of sous vide cooking, it gives the maths behind the detailed cooking times. I would add that the food cooked by this method is as tender as you will ever get. One down-side is the amount of water needed--some nine litres--and when the user is on a water meter and a pensioner this could work out very expensive if used on a regular basis; as it happens I live on my own so I fill the cooker with as much food (meat mainly) as it will hold and this gives me enough meals to last for 2-3 weeks.

I've been cooking Sous Vide for many years. This book is an essential read for food safety, when cooking at low temperatures. I've bought several books since, but this is the best - not for it's recipes, which are somewhat basic, but for understanding pathogen and bacterial development in food - even when in your freezer. Highly recommended!

Une recette, dix façon de la servir !!

A bit disappointed of this book. Interesting content and recipes but not at this price.Soft bounded book with almost no images or pictures. I would not pay more than $15.00 for a book like this one.I returned mine to seller.