Chai Chicken

Bhakti Chai is a local company, and I was recently treated to a tour of the facility thanks to Sprouts (a grocery store chain, if you're not familiar).

As soon as I sampled the product at the factory, I thought it would make a great marinade for chicken. Maybe I was just hungry.

Yeah, I know. it's a drink. It's not a marinade. But the ginger-forward flavor just wanted to be used in cooking. So ... we got to take some samples home, and after having a little pick-me-up, I decided to give Chai-Chai-Chai Chicken a try.

But, being me, I didn't actually do a marinade. Nope. I bought some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and I cooked them sous vide.

I know I post a LOT of sous vide recipes ... but that's because they're so easy and hands-off. Most of the time, I finish the recipe with a quick sear on the stove or maybe a broil in the oven, but that's all I have to do. With the chicken breasts, I just sliced and served.

Let me say here that sealing a sous vide bag that has a lot of liquid in it can be a little tricky. I didn't add a LOT of liquid, but if you're skeevy about having any liquid at all to deal with, just freeze some of your marinade mixture - in this case the chai - and put that into the sous vide bag.

If you've got a giant thick hockey puck of frozen stuff in your sous vide bag, you might want to extend the cooking time a little bit, but if you froze a 1/2 cup in a baggie so it's thin and flat, it's going to thaw pretty quickly. And seriously, you don't need a lot of marinade or sauce or whatever in the bag.

You can cook each chicken breast in its own bag (which is great if you're adjusting flavors to people's personal preferences) or cook them all together in one bag. Just make sure the breasts are in one layer in the bag, if you're doing a bunch of them together, so cooking is even.

Bhakti Chai Chicken Breasts

• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

• Bhaki Chai Concentrate (I used the original version)

Let's assume we're doing just one chicken breast, okay?

If you've got those giant chicken breasts, one breast might be enough for two people, depending on what you're serving with it. If it's really huge, feel free to add another 15 minutes to the cooking time.

So, put the chicken breast in the sous vide bag and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the Bhakti Chai - depending on how comfy you are with dealing with wet ingredients in your sous vide bag. If you were smart enough to freeze some of the chai ahead of time, you're so much smarter than me.

Add a pinch of salt, if you like.

Vacuum carefully and seal. Use the wet sealing feature, if yours has that option. If you want to be extra sure you have a good seal, wipe the recently-sealed end of the bag to remove any moisture, and seal it again on the end.

All done? Good.

Set up the sous vide for 150 degrees. Chuck that chicken in there and set for 1 hour (or a little longer, if it's one of the huge breasts that they sell these days).

Now go and do something fun.

When the chicken is done, remove it from the bag. Slice and serve.

That's it. No muss, no fuss. I didn't even bother browning the breast afterwards, but you can do that if you like. This was also great cold ... try it on a salad with an Asian-style dressing and some bean sprouts and snow peas - or maybe some of crispy fried wonton skins. Yum!

About Bhakti Chai

Bhakit Chai is a great example of a small business started by one passionate person. The original Chai product still exists, but the company has expanded the product line to include more flavors, a ready-to-drink line, and some fizzy chai drinks as well.

The fizzy drinks might have been my favorite, since I'm a fan of ginger ale and similar fizzy drinks that are less sweet and more refreshing.

But that doesn't mean I didn't like the others. The ready-to-drink iced chai is perfect if you just want to grab one and go. That's them, in the photo on the right. Lots of options, including one coffee-chai drink.

The concentrate is what you need in the fridge for drinking at home. I've been making mine with about 1/3 chai concentrate and 2/3 with either milk or almond milk, but of course you can adjust that to your preference. And you can drink it hot or cold.

If you're me, you can also use the concentrate in recipes. I was thinking that rice with a little chai would be really really nice with a stir-fry dinner. And chai rice pudding is awesome. Simmered down to concentrate the flavor even more, it would be a nice sauce for either sweet or savory.

While you can find some of the Bhakti Chai products on Amazon, you probably want to just go look for them at the grocery store, since they're a perishable product. Like, you know, go to Sprouts and buy them there.

One of the best parts about going to tours of different companies is seeing how things are made. here's a super-short video of the bottling line at Bhakti Chai. It was cool watching it work. Yum, chai!

Thanks to Sprouts for sponsoring and arranging the tour and to Bhakti Chai for being such a great host (and for the samples!).

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Sous Vide Rack of Lamb

While rack of lamb isn't something I make often, it sure as heck doesn't need to be saved for special occasions. I mean, everything goes on sale once in a while, and when that happens, I take advantage.

As far as cooking it, of course I cooked it sous vide. It's my favorite way to cook a lot of different kinds of meats, and it's particularly good when you want an exact doneness.

And, unlike when you're roasting, you get the same doneness all the way through. You don't end up overcooking the thinner parts or the outside edges. and you don't have to watch it like a hawk. If it cooks a little longer because you didn't hear the alarm, it's not going to get ruined.

This was insanely easy, and it was done pretty quickly, too. While this was a "just for me" splurge, this would be a great main dish for company. To make it even easier, you could cook the meat sous vide the day before, then sear it right before serving, to get that nice crust and to warm the inside.

Sous Vide Rack of Lamb
Depending on the size of the rack and what else you're serving, figure on 2-4 chops per person.

1 8-bone rack of lamb
Salt and pepper, to taste
Greek seasoning mix*
Olive oil

Heat the sous vide water to 135 degrees.

Sprinkle the rack of lamb with the salt, pepper, and seasoning, to taste. Drizzle with olive oil, just enough to moisten, and rub the seasoning onto the meat.

Place the meat in a sous vide bag, vacuum, and seal.

Place the bagged lamb in the water and cook at 135 degrees for 1 hour.

Remove the bag from the water. Remove the lamb from the bag and pat dry.

Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan until it's just about smoking. Sear the lamb, fat side down, until it's brown and crispy, then sear on the other sides.

Let the lamb rest for a few minutes before slicing into individual chops.

*Or use any spices or any spice mix you like. With lamb, I like oregano or rosemary with lemon, but feel free to use anything you like.

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Sous Vide Shrimp - Perfectly Cooked for Shrimp Cocktail! Plus a Super-Quick Sauce!

Oh, look, another sous vide post.

Don't worry. It's not going to be all sous vide all the time. But I'm working my way through sous vide cookbooks, looking for the one that will be my go-to book. This time, the book is The Essential Sous Vide Cookbook by Sarah James. I bought this one because the author had a pretty good track record working for Instructables.

Raw, shell-on shrimp were on sale at my local grocery store, so I bought 2 pounds, then I decided to see if the book had any sous vide recipes. Yup. There was a very simple recipe, which was exactly what I was looking for. With sous vide recipes, my first concern is whether the cooking time and temperature will work. If that doesn't work, the rest of the recipe doesn't matter.

Shrimp is a good candidate for sous vide cooking since shrimp go from undercooked to overcooked in the blink of an eye. Overcooked shrimp are the most likely result because if you cook them until they're done, the carryover heat takes care of the overcooking. And then they're kind of tough and rubbery.

The instructions were simply. Put the cleaned peeled shrimp into a sous vide bag with a little bit of olive oil or butter so they'll fit in a single layer. I used butter.

Then, cook at 130 degrees for 15 minutes, drop the bag into cold water to begin the cooling process, then refrigerate. Then the shrimp can be used in salads, with cocktail sauce, or however you want to serve them. The interesting thing was that two recipes where the shrimp was served hot used a temperature of 135 degrees for 30 minutes, with no interim chilling.

But for chilled shrimp, I'm going to say this time and temperature was really nice. I also tossed some into hot leftover fried rice, and the were perfect for that, too.

Sous Vide Shrimp
Adapted from The Essential Sous Vide Cookbook by Sarah James

1-2 pounds of raw, peeled, cleaned shrimp
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter

Heat the water to 130 degrees.

Place the shrimp and butter into a sous vide bag so they'll fit in a single layer.

Put the bag into the sous vide water and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the bag from the water and place it in cold water to start the chilling process, then refrigerate until fully chilled.

Serve cold in salad, with cocktail sauce, or however you like. I even stirred them into some leftover vegetable stir-fried rice that I had left over. So yum!

Super-Quick Cocktail Sauce

This is pretty much the only cocktail sauce I ever had when I was a kid. We always used a brand-name chili sauce to make the sauce, but the folks at Kam's Kettle Cooked sent me some of their mild-flavored sauce as a sample(they make both mild and hot), so I used that instead. Their sauce has a slightly spicier flavor which worked perfectly well for my cocktail sauce.

To make the cocktail sauce, just mix chili sauce with jarred horseradish - whatever proportion you like. As horseradish sits around, it loses strength, so if you have a fresh jar, you might just need a tiny bit. If the jar has been hanging around a while, it will take more to get the same kick. If the jar has been around for a long time, it might have no life left, so it's time to buy a new jar.

If you make too much cocktail sauce for the amount of shrimp you have, mix it with some mayonnaise and a little bit of chopped sweet pickle or sweet pickle relish to make Thousand Island salad dressing.

About the cookbook: I've only made this one recipe from this book, so I can't really draw an opinion yet. I'll be making more recipes soon. The book was NOT free from the publisher. I bought this one.

And here's a bonus for you. Download the Shrimp Fried Rice photo as a coloring book page. It's free. No obligation, no need to sign up for anything. Here's my artwork:

For more blog posts coloring pages, click here or click the Coloring Book Pages tab at the top.

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Sous Vide Scrambled Eggs

If you're scratching your head and wondering if I've gone off the deep end with all of these sous vide recipes lately ... well, maybe.

But also, I got a few cookbooks with sous vide recipes that I wanted to try. I recently bought Richard Blais's book Try This At Home, and when I browsed through it, the sous vide scrambled eggs caught my eye.

They're not really a recipe, I guess, but more of a side note about cooking technique. The actual recipe was Riley's Scrambled Eggs with Asparagus and Hollandaise.

I didn't make the asparagus or the hollandaise. But I used the sous vide method to cook some eggs.

The Recipe(ish):

Basically, you whisk together 4 eggs and a tablespoon of milk, along with salt and/or pepper to make you happy.

Preheat the sous vide water to 168 degrees, then drop the bag in for 10 minutes.

Fish the bag out, mush the eggs around in the bag (you'll see some very yellow uncooked yolk in the center of the eggs in the bag) and drop it back into the water for another five minutes, or however long it takes for the eggs to set.

The Results

The first time I tried this, there was a bit too much of the super-loose egg for my taste, so I decided to cook the eggs longer the next time. Then I decided I wanted the eggs a little firmer, too, so I increased the temperature.

Honestly, I'm still fiddling with this. It's not that the recipe is bad, it's just that everyone's taste in eggs is a little different. I think for me, the sweet spot will be somewhere around 171 degrees. Maybe 170. See, it's not that much different from his favorite temperature, but it does make a difference when cooking something like eggs where they can go from custard to curd in the blink of an eye.

As for the book, there are some recipes here than I'm pretty sure I'll make, a lot that I will use as inspiration or that I'll make one component but not the whole shebang, and then a bunch more that I'll probably try as-is.

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Instant Pot vs. Sous Vide! A Saucy Food Fight featuring Baby Back Ribs

I've been doing a lot of sous vide cooking lately, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. So, when I picked up a pack of baby back ribs, I decided I'd give them a try. I've cooked pork loins and pork chops with great success.

One thing I've found with many meats I've cooked via sous vide is that if I want to brown them after cooking, it works best to refrigerate the meat first to let it cool down. For me, this means I usually cook the food so it's ready the day before I actually want it, then I refrigerate overnight.

On the day I want to dine, I finish cooking. This way, I'm just searing the outside and warming the middle, rather than driving more heat into the meat, which could overcook it.

This might not be necessary with every cut of meat, but I also find it convenient, particularly for small, thinner cuts. The meat is fully cooked and resting in the refrigerator so I can have it on the table in a very short time when I decide I'm hungry. And these days I'm mostly cooking smaller cuts of meat.

Except when I go on a pork rib binge. That's totally different.

So anyway, After puttering around a bit, I decided to cook the meat three different ways. First, I cooked one batch in my Instant Pot, using my usual method. I know this method works, and I wanted it to be my control sample.

This isn't the same as cooking ribs on a grill or in a smoker, but it makes decent ribs. And crazy fast.

Then I started looking up sous vide recipes. I didn't care so much about spices or sauces, but I wanted to pick two different cooking temperatures and times, to test the results.  I settled on 165 degrees for 12 hours for one batch and and 145 degrees for 36 hours for the other batch.

I cut each rack in half to fit the bags, and for the fun of it, I put a little bit of sauce in one of each pair of bags. I don't know if that made a heck of a difference. I think a little bit of the sauce flavor did get into the ribs, but not so much that it made a huge difference once the ribs were sauced and broiled.

Next time, I might try a rub and see how that works.

When the pressure-cooked ribs were done, I slathered them with sauce, then broiled them to get the sauce all sticky and bubbly.

When the sous vide ribs were done, I let them cool slightly, then tossed them in the fridge, still in their bags. When I wanted to eat them, I took them out of their bags, got rid of the accumulated juices, slathered them with sauce, and broiled them just like I broiled the pressure cooked ribs.

And yes, I had two pots with different sous vide sticks set for different temperatures going at the same time. I know how to have fun!

The Results!

The winner, for me, was the sous vide ribs cooked for 12 hours at 165 degrees. They were slightly pink, very plump and juicy, and super tender. They still hung onto the bone when I cut them into single ribs, and when I bit into them, my teeth knew I was biting something.

They also fared well when reheated, which I find is pretty typical with sous vide meats. They don't seem to tighten up or dry out as quickly as conventionally cooked foods. Of course, the sensible thing to do was to broil as many ribs as I needed rather than broiling all, but I did have to reheat some and I didn't notice any quality issues.

12 hours at 165 degrees

The second best were the pressure cooked ribs. They were also plump and tender, but not pink and not quite as juicy, particularly when I reheated them. What, you thought I ate all of them in one big meal? And not quite as ... hmmm ... fluffy, I guess, compared to the sous vide ribs. Yup, the pressure cooked were just a little more dense than sous vide. Which is actually okay, I like that texture a lot, too.

I'm sure I'll still be pressure cooking ribs once in a while. It's so fast! I can bring home a slab of ribs from the grocery store and have dinner in a reasonably short time. The other advantage to the pressure cooked ribs, though, is that I save the stock and use it to make tomato soup.

Pressure-cooked ribs. Recipe here.

My least favorite (although not actually bad) was the batch cooked at 145 degrees for 36 hours. They were a little too tender for my liking. I had a hard time cutting them into individual ribs because as soon as there was slight pressure from the knife, they just slid off the bone. When I bit into them, it was almost like the meat flaked apart (kind of like flaky fish) rather my teeth letting me know we were biting into something meaty.

While the ribs at the thicker end of the rack fared better, some of them were verging towards being a little overcooked and dry, too. And some parts were pinkish while the thinner sections were more white. I might try the 145 temperature again, but this time limit it to a 24-hour cook time.

36 hours at 145 degrees

Of course, preferences for cooked-rib texture is a personal thing. You might like yours softer than I do, or you might not want to see any pink in the meat. Or you might appreciate more chew. Make 'em the way you like 'em!

Have you tried sous vide cooking yet? What's your favorite recipe? Or, if you're curious about it, is there anything you'd like to see me try?

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Sous Vide Beef Roast (and some Dulce de Leche for dessert!)

Click here for a line art version of this photo that you can color!

I've become quite enamored with sous vide cooking. It's foolproof (with a good recipe) and much of the cooking is hands-off. Just put the food in the bag (with or without seasonings or other stuff), seal it, and drop it in the pot. Set the and temperature, and you don't have to think about it until it's done.

Much of the time, I cook the food and then refrigerate it until the next day, when I sear or broil it to get some browning on the outside. And of course, this also heats it up to serving temperature.

This time, my sous vide cooking was inspired by a new cookbook, The Complete Sous Vide Cookbook by Chris McDonald. Since the recipes are soooo easy, you're getting both a beef roast and some dulce de leche.

I hadn't heard of the author before, so I was wasn't sure how reliable the recipes would be. Sous vide cooking isn't like any other method when it comes to temperature and timing, so that's why it's a good idea to start with a good recipe, before you wander off on your own.

In this case, I actually did do some wandering. The recipe was designed for a prime rib roast, but I cooked a New York strip roast instead. I figured it wouldn't be too terribly different, since it's a tender roast that could use the same kind of cooking. Turns out, I was right. It was just as tender as when I've done rib roasts.

The one thing that's a little different with this recipe is that you preheat the water to a hotter temperature, then lower the temperature for the cooking time. I've never done that before - I usually just put the food in the water bath and let it heat up to the cooking temperature before I start timing the cooking.

I don't know if this method made a difference in the final product, but it worked well, and it made sense. When the cool roast went into the hot water, the temperature dropped to close to the final cooking temperature, so it was ready to start the timing.

Sous Vide New York Strip Roast
Adapted from The Complete Sous Vide Cookbook by Chris McDonald

1 New York strip roast or boneless rib roast
Olive oil, as needed
Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the water bath to 190 degrees.

Meanwhile, rub olive oil over the roast and season with salt and pepper. You could also use another spice mix or rub. I actually used a seasoning that's made by my local butcher shop.

Place the roast in the sous vide bag and vacuum seal. Put it in the water bath, reduce the temperature to 134 degrees, and cook for 9 hours.

Remove the pouch from the water and let it stand for 20-30 minutes, then remove it from the pouch, pat dry, and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate fro 20-30 minutes.

Note: I just chucked mine in the refrigerator and seared it the next day. By the time it was browned, it was warmed to a decent serving temperature.

Preheat a grill to medium-high (I used a cast iron frying pan).

Put the roast on the grill and brown on all sides.

Transfer to a cutting board and slice against the grain.

Dulce de Leche

Click here for a line art version of this photo you can color!

If you've ever looked at recipes where you're supposed to put a whole can of condensed milk in a pot and cook it ... and you've wondered if that's a safe and sane thing to do, this method of making dulce de leche is pretty foolproof.

Just transfer one can of sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk!) to a sous vide bag and seal (don't vacuum it into your machine - just get most of the air out and then seal it).

I tried this method with plain sweetened condensed milk, and with chocolate sweetened condensed milk. Both worked fine.

Heat the sous vide bath to 200 degrees. Place the bag in the water and cook for 8-10 hours. I tried both 8 hours and 10 hours, and didn't see a difference. So cook it for however long is convenient for you.

Remove the bag from the bath and transfer the dulce de leche to a storage container.

I found the easiest way to get the dulce de leche out of the bag was to snip a corner and squeeze it out as soon as it was reasonable to handle. If you wait until it's room temperature, you can still squeeze it out, but it's pretty thick, so it's not as easy.

I received the book from the publisher at no cost to me.

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Sous Vide Boneless Pork Loin

As a blogger, I get a lot of stuff sent to me. Books, food, gadgets, samples, snacks. Some of it gets reviewed and then it's seldom mentioned again. But other things turn into recipes, and then recipes turn into blog posts.

This is one of those instances. It started with an offer from Butcher Block Box, a company that ships meat to people who subscribe to the service. I said, sure, send me meat. I will review it. I mentioned them recently in a gift guide, because a meat subscription would be a nice gift for a lot of people.

Not the vegans or vegetarians on your list. They wouldn't be thrilled with you at all. But just about anyone else would probably like a box of frozen meat.

My shipment was delayed by a day because of a train derailment. Sheesh. Of course the perishables would get delayed. Even though the package arrived a day later than it was supposed to, the meat was frozen solid. So they get bonus points for good packaging.

This is just part of what arrived:

I chose the beef and pork option, because I had just bought chicken and I've noticed a much greater variation in quality with beef and pork than with chicken. I mean, yeah, some chicken is better than others, but it's never chewy, like a bad steak can be.

I got a nice variety of meats - some steaks, ground beef, thin-cut steak, a pork loin roast, and bacon. Everything was packed in reasonable amounts. Nothing too big to deal with. The pork loin roast was the biggest item.

I tried one of the steaks first, followed by the thin-cut steak. I had no idea what to expect with that, but the slices were really really really thin. Like for sandwiches. Which is what happened after I have that a quick saute on the stove.

I stared at the pork roast for a while. I thought about roasting it, but then decided to cook it sous vide. Yup, me and my sous vide. Again.

I considered cooking it in the same bag it came in, considering it was nicely vacuum-sealed, but decided I wanted to season it first. After it was fully thawed, I tossed it into a sous vide bag, then sprinkled on some Penzeys seasoned salt, then some Penzeys Mural of Flavor. It's an unsalted seasoning mix that's one of my favorites. Good flavor, but kind of universal and non-threatening.

In retrospect, I should have sprinkled the spices onto the meat before putting it in the bag for more even distribution, but it wasn't a big deal. As soon as the meat had released some juices and the bag was looser, I massaged the spices around to get the meat more evenly coated. It was just fine.

The finished meat was decidedly pink rather than white. If that bothers you with pork, you'll need to raise the temperature. But despite what your grandmother told you, pink pork is perfectly pleasant.

Sous Vide Pork Roast

• 1 smallish boneless pork loin roast - I'm guessing it was about 2-3 pounds - I didn't check the label before I tossed the packaging.
• Seasoned salt - I'm guessing I used about 1/2 teaspoon, or perhaps a little more.
• Penzeys Mural of Flavor (or other seasoning you like) a generous teaspoon or more.
• Olive oil - about 2 tablespoons, or enough to coat the bottom of the pan.

Sprinkle the seasonings on the meat and place the meat in a vacuum-sealer bag. Vacuum seal the bag. Obvious, right?

Set up your sous vide. I have an Anova sous vide with wireless and I use a large stockpot for cooking. Set the heat for 140 degrees and the time for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

When the time is up, remove the meat from the water bath. Open the bag and remove the meat.

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the meat, fat-side down. Let the meat brown on that side, then turn it so that all sides get browned.

Remove the meat from the pan. Slice and serve.

This is also really good cold, for roast pork sandwiches. Yum.

I received meat from Butcher Block Box at no cost to me. I received the Anova sous vide at no cost to me quite a while ago. I have no obligation to continue posting about it, but I use it a lot. I have no relationship with Penzeys except that I like a lot of their products.

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Herb and Butter Sous Vide Chicken Breast

AND ... besides an awesome recipe, I'm going to give you a bunch of reasons why you need a vacuum sealer.

I mean Christmas is coming, right?

Full disclosure: This post is sponsored by FoodSaver and they sent me a really slick new vacuum sealer to test.

But this is now my THIRD vacuum sealer made by them, so I knew I was going to be happy with it before I agreed to post.

My first FoodSaver suffered a tragic accident, so I replaced it. The second one is still here and functional. I bought both of those. And now I have a new one with some features I really like. More on that later, though.

There are a bunch of reasons I think a vacuum sealer is a great kitchen tool, in general.

First, it saves food from freezer burn. You'll see photos of what I mean.

Second, you can seal foods that are affected by oxygen and they'll last longer. Like guacamole. I have guacamole that's been in the freezer since last year, and it still looks perfect.

Third, you can vacuum seal things in ball jars, bottles, and canisters with the adapters. There are also vacuum bags with zip opening, so you could seal vacuum-seal things that you'll be using in portions, like lunch meat or cheese.

Fourth, you can marinate foods a lot faster.

Fifth, you can see what's in the bag when it's frozen.

Sixth, and this is a huuuuge one for me. You can cook foods sealed in the bag using sous vide.

I'm a huge fan of sous vide cooking, and I've posted a lot of recipes here for foods I've cooked sous vide. I trust the thick bags that the Food Saver uses. I don't trust zipper plastic bags, particularly not for long-term cooking. If I've got an expensive hunk of meat or I'm investing a lot of time into a cooking operation, I'd be really mad if a zipper failed.

So anyway, the challenge from FoodSaver was to pick a food product and store one in the freezer for a month sealed in a FoodSaver bag, and have another one stored in the freezer in the usual way. I bought some chicken boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

For the "normal" method, I chose a zip-top bag and removed as much air from the bag as possible. The second one went into a Foodsaver bag.

A third breast got seasoned first with some spicy chipotle seasoning, before I froze it. This is actually a great idea if you want to have some food that's prepped and ready to go into the sous vide, you can add seasonings, butter, or whatever.

Adding different seasonings to different pieces of chicken (or other foods) could be quite handy of you have people in the house who like different flavors or different levels of spice. You can add the seasonings and label the bags, but you can still cook all the different flavors at one.

Just toss  as much chicken (or whatever) into the water, set the time, and walk away. If you're not sure what you're going to use the chicken for, then leave it unseasoned. It's easy enough to add that later.

After a month in the freezer, the FoodSaver chicken (the one on the bottom in the photo below) looked about the same as it did when it went into the freezer. It was solid, of course, but it looked pretty much like it did before. The one in the zip-top bag (the one on top) didn't fare quite as well. Where the plastic didn't freeze right against the chicken, freezer burn was already taking over. You can see it there on the right side, where it's turning white and there are ice crystals in the bag. UGH. It sure as heck didn't look pretty.

Normally, I'd trim off the freezer burn if it wasn't too bad. I mean, sometimes it's just too far gone and the whole thing needs to be tossed. But if it wasn't awful, I'd lop off the bad part and salvage the good part. But I decided to just go forth with my cooking plans since the freezer burn was just in one place. I was curious how bad it would be after cooking. I'm a risk-taker, huh?

So ... I opened the sealed FoodSaver bag and added a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of an all-purpose seasoning called Chef Shake. You could use pretty much anything you like ... Mexican, Cajun, Italian, Greek ... whatever flavors you like. Or your own custom mix. Whatever makes you happy. Olive oil would be okay, too, or leave the fat out entirely.

I put the zipper-bag-stored chicken into another FoodSaver bag and added the same seasonings. Those two, plus the pre-seasoned breast, went into the hot tub. I mean ... the sous vide.

Once they were cooked, it was hard to tell by looking at them in their bags that one of them had suffered freezer burn because of the spices milling about in the bag. But ... when I sliced into the one with freezer burn and tasted it (yes, I do these things for you) it was a little more obvious. I don't suggest you eat freezer-burned food.

So ... I removed that part and went on to bigger and better things.

Herb and Butter Sous Vide Chicken Breast

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (one per serving, unless they're huge)
Butter
Your favorite seasoning mix (I used Chef Shake)
Salt (optional)

For individual servings, use one bag per breast. This is great if different people like different flavors. Otherwise, you can put several chicken breasts in a single bag. Keep them in an even layer rather than piling them on top of each other.

Add about a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of the seasoning to each bag. Please adjust the amount of seasoning to your taste and for the seasoning you use. If you're using something super-spicy and you only want it mildly spicy, cut back on the seasoning. If your seasoning is very mild or you want something flaming hot, add more.

If the seasoning doesn't have salt, add a pinch, or to taste. Much of today's chicken is brined, so it's a little salty. But a little pinch is fine.

Seal the bag using the FoodSaver. You can cook this right away, but let's assume you're prepping to cook later. So ... into the freezer they go!

When it's time to cook, set the sous vide for 146 degrees for 2 1/2 hours. Toss the still-frozen chicken into the sous vide.

Yup, you can cook it from its frozen state. It thaws really quickly even before the water had reached cooking temperature, and I started with hot tap water.

When the timer says it's done, remove the chicken.

You can slice and serve immediately. I used the chipotle-spiced chicken right away, in tacos.

For the more gently-spiced chicken, I opted to toss them into the refrigerator to chill. I used them the next day on a salad. You could also cook ahead and then gently reheat and serve. Or add the chicken at the last second to a stir fry - just long enough to heat it up.

Chicken breast cooked this way is always moist. Never dry. And it absorbs the flavor of the spices you add, so it's never just plain chicken. So freaking good!

About the new FM5000 series FoodSaver:

So, the big benefit of this model over my old one (which is pretty old) is that it does the sealing closer to the end of the bag, so you're not using as much bag material.

This one has a different method for making bags, too. You make the first seal at the end of the roll, before you pull the bag material out. So, you pull a bag out, and that end has already been sealed from the previous operation. You flip a lever which seals and then you cut your bag loose. Again, you have a seal at the end of the roll.

The new bag, when you seal it, goes into a different slot, so that roll is never in the way.

Also, the roll stores where you can see it, which is nice. I wish there was space for two rolls, but I mostly use the widest ones, so it's not really a big deal.

Thanks to FoodSaver for sponsoring this post.

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