Cooking in a vacuum

Splashed out on Saturday evening and cooked steaks and as you can see they're vacuum sealed in plastic bags ready to go into a hot water bath at 54 centigrade for three hours. This method of cooking is called "sous-vide" which is French for "under vacuum" but is essentially a way of slow cooking things like meat and fish so that a precise degree of "done'ness" is achieved. 

I've been using this method of cooking for around 10 years now, not for everything of course, but when we treat ourselves to something like expensive steak (see above) then IMO it's the best way to achieve that "restaurant quality" finish. The great thing about it is that you can chuck food in the water bath and forget about it, it will never burn or over-cook and, if like me, you prefer your steak medium-rare then so long as the water is around 54 degrees then that's exactly what you'll get. A quick flash under the grill or in a smoking pan adds that brown crust to the meat but the inside remains moist and "melt-in-the-mouth", clever really.