How do you do under pressure?

Sous vide beef is a technique that isn't really used at home unless you have a temperature controlled bath. Sous vide actually means "under pressure," where the meat (or any protein) is vacuum sealed and placed in a water bath at the exact temperature you'd like the beef to be cooked. The magic of the bath is that it's impossible to overcook the meat you put in it.

You can add any spices you'd like to the bag before you seal it, and it definitely needs some oil. We added cracked peppercorns and crushed garlic and some thyme to our bag and placed it in the bath at 131 degrees. This temperature produces a medium-rare meat which is what we wanted before we grilled/seared/broiled it to add some color at the end.

So first we started with getting our beef in the water bath, because it could stay in there as long as we'd need.

While the beef was cooking, things got real hectic. Probably the most hectic for me in the kitchen. Chef told us that by the end of the day we needed to present a full plate, meaning: protein, carb, and a vegetable. The protein, obvious. Except, we needed to serve it with a sauce. Chef asked me to make a Bordelaise sauce for the entire class to use. No problem. Shira, first, strain all the mother sauces that are on the fire, then get your mise en place ready for the Bordelaise, and then fight everyone else who is working on the stove to get a burner to make the sauce for everyone. No sweat.

Also, chef had us working on this Pommes Maxim dish which is potatoes sliced to 1/16 of an inch thick, cut in perfect circles, dredged in cornstarch, and formed this circular thing that we'll pan fry and then use some mashed potatoes to help stand it up on the plate.

Also... I TOTALLY fluted a mushroom! A few mushrooms, actually. Were they perfect? No. Give me a break. I'll get there.

Things finally came together: the beef, the sauce, the potatoes and the vegetables. It was the most stressed I've been, probably my least favorite day because of the stress. But, I got to sous vide some meat and it tasted great.

Tip of the day: When cooking meat, you can use a meat thermometer to see how "done" your meat is. If you like your meat very rare, you want a temperature of about 120-125 degrees. That's about 12-15 minutes of cooking time per pound of meat. If you like rare meat, 125-130 degrees, 15-18 minutes per pound. A medium cook is 135-140 degrees, 18-20 minutes per pound of meat that you're cooking.