Recipe - Sous Vide Honey Sesame Duck Breast with Rice and Sesame Broccoli

Sous Vide Honey Sesame Duck Breast with Rice and Sesame Broccoli

Ever had the problem of your duck breast going tough when you cook it? Never again with the sous vide method - it comes out perfectly every time. The searing with duck is a little bit more complicated than with chicken, but it is still really easy.

Now, there are 2 ways to go about this:

1. quick prep, but the skin isn't going to be as crispy
2. longer prep, with perfect crispy skin

Both give fantastic duck breast meat, so if that's all you're interested in, go with version 1, but if you love yourself a bit of duck skin, go with 2.

Serves 2

Ingredients

for the duck

• 2 duck breasts (I use the Gressingham duck breasts from Morrisons that they have in packs of 2 on the 3 for £10 offer).
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 clove garlic (crushed - I use a tube)

for the broccoli

• 1/2 head broccoli
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp normal oil
• 1 clove garlic (crushed - I use a tube)

75g of Jasmine rice per person

Instructions

For the duck

• Preheat the Anova to 57.5 °C / 135 °F

Quick prep:

1. Place the duck breasts in a bag with all the other ingredients.
2. Seal using the water displacement method or a vacuum sealer on moist.

More complicated prep:

1. Score the duck skin with long even strokes - do not cut the meat and score against the grain.
2. Sear in a med pan, skin side down for 2-3 mins until the skin it golden - no oil is required because the fat will render. Do not have the heat too high or it will burn.
3. Place the duck in a bag with the other ingredients.
4. Seal using the water displacement method or a vacuum sealer on moist.

Cooking:

1. Put the duck in the water bath and set the timer for 2h
2. When the duck is ready, remove it from the water bath and bag and pat dry - reserve the cooking liquid.
3. In a hot, but not scorching pan, place the duck skin side down and cook until the skin is crispy.
4. Meanwhile add the cooking liquid to a saucepan and add a little corn flour.
5. Cook until bubbling and thickening.
6. Allow the duck to rest for a few minutes before serving.

For the broccoli

1. Blanch the broccoli by bring a pan of water to the boil, dropping in the florets and cooking for 3-4 mins (if you have small florets, go for 3, bigger, go for 4). Drain and leave to the side until almost ready to serve.
2. Heat the oils for the broccoli in a small frying pan or wok and add the garlic (you could use a saucepan if you are using your only frying pan for the duck:)).
3. Add the blanched broccoli to the garlicy oil and stir fry for a minute.

Cook the rice as indicated on the packet - usually in boiling water for about 12 mins.

Serve with the sauce drizzled over the top.

Cooking the duck sous vide with all the flavours in the bag means they really get into the meat, but the meat also stays beautifully soft and juicy.

If you prefer your duck done to a different level, here are the temps chefsteps.com recommend for different results (I haven't tried any of them):

• 129 °F / 54 °C: Rare, with some chew
• 135 °F / 54 °C: Tender and juicy (temp I use)
• 144 °F / 62 °C: Totally tender, a little less juicy
• 149 °F / 65 °C: Decidedly less juicy but still delicious
• 158 °F / 70 °C: Cooked all the way through

Do you have any favourite duck recipes you can recommend?

Sous Vide Chicken, Pesto and Mozzarella Roulade + Buttery Potatoes

Sous Vide Chicken, Pesto and Mozzarella Roulade + Buttery Potatoes

I made this recipe yesterday and it was delicious, so I am going to share. First let me say that I used these 2 recipes as a base, but had to do added things:

• Sous Vide Butter Poached Potatoes
• Sous Vide Pesto and Mozzarella Chicken Roulade

Serves 2

Buttery Potatoes

Now I have no idea if the original recipe could actually work as is, but when I used it, the potatoes just weren't cooked, so I had to add a step. The reason I think it is worth the trouble is because, boy, the flavour of the potatoes is wonderful.

Prep time: 5 mins Cooking Time: 1h20

Ingredients

• enough salad potatoes for 2 (I did a whole bag of Morrisons' The Best salad potatoes because I intend to use the left overs in a potato salad, but just do as many as you want to eat - also in season new pots would be good).
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Set the Anova to 87C or 190F - make sure to use hot water from the tap or kettle to start with because getting to this temp takes a long while otherwise
2. Put everything in a zip-lock bag and seal using the water immersions method (or if you have a vacuum sealer, use the moist setting).
3. Pop in the Anova for 1h (you may have to weigh them down because pots float - I used an upturned bowl). 
4. Once the timer goes off take potatoes out of the Anova and set aside.
5. Half an hour before serving boil a pot of water on the stove.
6. Add the potatoes and cook until tender (anywhere from 10-20mins)

Yes it seems like a lot of work and the potatoes are boiled anyway, but seriously, the way the butter infuses with the potatoes is lovely. You could add herbs or just go with olive oil if you are looking for a different flavour profile/lighter option. Honestly, I won't be doing these often, but I wanted to try them and they would be great for a special occasion.

Sous Vide Chicken, Pesto and Mozzarella Roulade

This is delicious, and you may notice that I use a higher temp than the original recipe, this is because my husband just can't bring himself to enjoy the texture of the low-temp cooking.

Prep time: 20 mins Cooking Time: 1h15

Ingredients

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• ~100g (4 tbsp ish) green pesto
• 1 regular ball of mozzarella (~125g)

Instructions

1. Set the Anova to 63C or 145F - if cooking straight after the pots, adding ice and cold water to the pot will help cool it down quickly.
2. Butterfly each chicken breast and beat flat between 2 sheets of cling film (don't go too mad, but show it who's boss ;)).
3. Spread each chicken breast with half the pesto.
4. Thinly slice the mozzarella ball and place half of the slices over each pesto layer.
5. Roll the chicken breast tightly and pack it in the cling film so it is easy to handle.
6. Place each in a zip lock bag and seal using the water immersions method (or if you have a vacuum sealer, use the moist setting).
7. Place in the water bath and set the timer for 1h15 
8. When the timer goes off, remove from the water and carefully take each roulade out of its bag using tongs.
9. Heat a frying pan/skillet on high on the stove.
10. Remove the cling film from each roulade and brown in the frying pan on all sides - this only takes seconds.
11. Serve (the chicken can be left to rest for a few minutes in a very low oven while finishing off the rest of meal).

The Wonders of Sous Vide! My new love...

The Wonders of Sous Vide! My new love...

My wonderful twin bought me the most amazing machine for my birthday in December - the Anova sous vide cooker (pot not included).

Sous vide - "under vacuum" in French - is a method of cooking that cooks the food in a bag with all/most of the air removed, in a water bath maintained at the chosen temperature.

I was unsure when I first tried it, but now I am in love.

The most important bit is the water bath, which is what the Anova does. Some people buy a vacuum pack machine to go with it, but that's unnecessary - I use the water immersion method to force the majority of the air out of the bags before cooking. Below is a lovely vid from Anova explaining the water immersion method:

Now the sous vide method takes time, the whole idea is to cook the food longer at a lower temperature to produce the best results. Think of it like pasteurising the food. Sorry to my vegetarian friends, but I have only used it for meat so far, although I am assured you can use it for veggies and eggs etc.

The Anova comes with a great app that not only allows us to control the machine from afar, but also has many guides and recipes to get us started. The app is not fool proof in that it works wonderfully on my Sony phone, but has a bit of a mare on Rob's Samsung in that the app keeps losing connection with the phone. However, what I do to be safe is put on a backup timer so I know when things are done.

Just to be clear, the Anova itself has never forgotten how long it is supposed to be on or anything like that, it has always pootled on beautifully, but the app on Rob's phone did fail and didn't seem to want to reconnect so it didn't alert us about cooking time etc. On my phone, before I enabled the wifi, the bluetooth did drop out once the first time I tried it, but it reconnected with no probs and continued from where the Anova told it, it had got to.

What is really great is we can pick a guide or a recipe from the app and it will program the Anova for us. This has never failed to work.

Chicken

Photo by Mark DeYoung on Unsplash

I tried chicken first and, wow, I never want to cook chicken breast any other way again. The results were so soft and tender and juicy. Not going to lie, when I usually eat chicken I require mayonnaise or gravy because of the texture. However, don't need a thing when it comes out of the water bath.

The usual technique with chicken breast is:

• load up the bag with the flavourings and the chicken,
• use the water immersion method to force out the air from the bag and seal it,
• pop it in the water bath at around 60C /140F for about 1h 15m, 
• pour out the juices into a saucepan to reduce to make a sauce,
• pat the chicken dry
• heat a frying pan/skillet until very hot and show the chicken breast to it on either side for 15s or so to colour

and it's ready.

Perfect chicken every time.

So far I have tried the recipe on the app for Sous Vide Honey Mustard Chicken Breast by Christina Wylie, which is my fav (I just use English mustard instead of whole grain) and I used the techniques in the Sous Vide 5-Spice Chicken Breast by Barbara Freda, but with my own ingredients for Honey Sesame Chicken.

Steak

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Then there is the steak. My father's birthday is 24th Dec and for his lunch he asked for steak. So we decided to try it sous vide. Now I don't like steak, but my husband, my sister and my father do, and, frankly, they were blown away.

With this one we didn't even use a recipe, we just went with the guides in the app. We has 3 rib eye steaks, all of which had quite hard lumps of fat in the them that would have been worrying cooking in just a pan.

The usual basic procedure with streak is:

• season the streak with salt and pepper,
• place in the bag and use the water immersion method to force out the air from the bag and seal it,
• pop in the water bath at 53.9C/129F for 1h (this is for medium rare - the guide has exact temps and times for however we might like it)
• take out and pat dry
• in a very hot skillet/frying pan sear the meat on each side in 15s bursts until the desired colour is reached (no more than 2 min total).

Perfect, juicy, tender steaks every time in a totally predictable manner - no more guessing.

Other Requirements

To go with our Anova we need:

1. a large heat proof pot of some kind as in the pic at the top - my large crock pot which used to be used only for the potatoes at Christmas is now getting much more of a workout :)
2. sturdy zip-lock bags that will completely seal - if they are too flimsy they could split during cooking and some versions do not seal well enough, they have to be able to maintain a semi-vacuum - I use the medium bags I can get from Home Bargains, which work perfectly well.
3. some sort of pegs or clips - these are to clip the bags to the side of the pot so they don't float around, I bought some soft grip pegs from Home Bargains :)

This is a scientific, easy way of cooking that produced perfect results every time. I love it and I look forward to experimenting some more.

Does anyone already use a sous vide machine? Any recipe recommendations? Any tips or tricks? Anyone thinking of getting one?