I am a big fan of Tim Ferris, cooking, and the awesome website ChefSteps which teaches you how to cook. When I saw that one of the perks of buying Tim’s iTunes TV show is the chance to take part in a ChefSteps cooking contest where the grand prize is a meal with the ChefSteps’s founders and Tim Ferris I got very excited and knew that I will take part and do my best!
My cooking skills are still rudimentary and so is my kitchen equipment at this moment. I have recently learned about the technique of cooking sous-vide from ChefSteps via the following lessons and decided I would try cooking somethig sous-vide for this contest.
As a software engineer, the precision and repeatable results from this technique had my interest piqued so I got myself the Anova sous-vide immersion circulator and I came up with the following simple but tasty dish:
- Sous-vide NY Strip Steak (55C/131F for 90 minutes) on a bed of Green Pea Mash
- Chive butter for the steak
- Caramelized carrots with orange juice and honey reduction inspired by this ChefSteps recipe
- Multi-colored baby potatoes with caramelized baby carrots
Final Dish
Final Dish With chive butter
Final Dish With chive butter. As known with sous-vide, we have an incredible medium-rare interior all throughout.
I usually have my steaks with a more savoury than sweet accompaniment but the multiple levels of sweetness here worked out really well. The honey/orange-juice caramelized carrots were the sweetest note, followed by the slightly sweet green pea mash with non-overpowering herbs like parsley, and finally the thyme-infused steak with chive butter gave us the savoury contrast to the rest.
Here is an account of how I prepared the dish.
1 Preparing the dish
Here is a ChefSteps document that is a good starting point for when you want to develop a dish. A supplementary article on plating is also a good read.
Steak mise-en-place as per the ChefSteps suggestions. I will cook it sous-vide with thyme and butter.
Steak in ZipLog Bag. I don't have a vacuum sealer so a ZipLoc bag will have to do.
Water-displacement method that I learned from ChefSteps to get the air out of a normal ZipLoc bag if you don't have a vacuum sealer.
Honey/orange-juice caramelized carrots with stems. Follow the ChefSteps recipe, but add orange-juice and honey instead of water.
Honey/orange-juice caramelized carrots with stems. Follow the ChefSteps recipe, but add orange-juice and honey instead of water.
Green pea mash mise-en-place. I loved this ChefSteps recipe and will definitely be repeating it.
After 90 minutes at 55C/131F my steak is done. You can find temperature/time tables for various meats and seafood on the ChefSteps course on sous vide.
I will now maillardize the steak by using a propylene (MAPP) torch. Your food won't smell of gas, don't worry. Apparently this could be an issue with propane but propylene burns quicker and at a higher temperature and avoids the issue. The ChefSteps article on steak sous-vide uses a pan, but I only own a Teflon pan that would not be able to sustain the high heat required for a steak.
Maillardizing the steak with a propylene torch
Sous-vide maillardized NY Strip!
Final Dish
Final Dish
Final Dish With chive butter
Final Dish With chive butter. As known with sous-vide, we have an incredible medium-rare interior all throughout.
2 Advertising on Social Media
I have posted my contest entry on Facebook and tagged ChefSteps and Tim Ferris and used the relevant hashtag.
When the contest closes, I will also post my entry to reddit where some of my articles are able to get even more than a thousand upvotes.
3 Improvements for next time
- Improve the chive butter as it was not ‘chivey’ enough. I need a ChefSteps recipe for one! I A/B tested by putting half of my chive butter into a sous-vide bath to hopefully extract more flavour but this wasn’t very successful, and moreover the texture slightly changed (probably should use clarified butter, and keep it longer in the water-bath)
- Improve plating as I am not happy with it. I think for plating the plate itself is important and simply didn’t have a good plate.
- Do something more interesting with the potatoes. I A/B tested cutting the potatoes of three different colors into a modernist colorful potato tower but it looked out of place. Work further on this idea, make something more interesting out of the potatoes.
- Acquire more useful kitchen utensils. I have recently moved out from my family home and I’m severely understocked to attempt many basic things let alone more complicated modernist cuisine dishes.
4 Closing thoughts
For my skill level, I consider this a success and a great and fun experience! I have looked at a couple of other entries and it does look that some have clearly superior skill, knowledge, and equipment, but I hope to keep on improving with the help of ChefSteps!
I’ve read all three of Tim’s books, listen to his podcasts and watch his tv-show, so getting to have dinner with him together with the ChefSteps crew would provide for an unforgettable evening!
I wish could claim I’m able to make this (or submit it for this contest!), but here’s a picture of my favourite dish I’ve had at the one-and-only El Celler de Can Roca recently. If you are interested, here is my detailed overview of the dinner. Hopefully one day I’ll have just a fraction of the skills of Joan Roca.
Iberian suckling pig with charcoal-grilled young garlic, garlic pesto, black garlic, “nyores a l'ail”. We have suckling pig cooked at 65C for many hours, then finished off and pressed on a plancha grill for the amazingly crispy skin. I doubt you have eaten pork that tender. It is falling apart and melting in your mouth. My favourite dish here!
Me and Joan Roca. Hoping one day I will have even just a fraction of his skill :)
Thanks for reading!
5 Links mentioned in this article
- ChefSteps
- ChefSteps Sous Vide Steak
- ChefSteps Cooking Sous Vide – Getting Started
- ChefSteps Cooking Sous Vide – Beyond the Basic
- ChefSteps Green Pea Mash
- ChefSteps Caramelized Carrots
- ChefSteps Developing a Dish
- ChefSteps Plating and Serving
- Anova Immersion Circulator
- El Celler de Can Roca
- My El Celler de Can Roca Review