Sous Vide Cooking Made Simple: Techniques, Ideas and Recipes to Cook at Home

Sous Vide Cooking Made Simple is a tutorial and recipe collection for sous vide cooking by Christina Wylie.  Due out 22nd September from Quarto on their Voyageur imprint, it's 192 pages and will be available in hardcover format. 

The introduction covers the basics of sous vide (long time low temp) cooking and essential accessories as well as an intro to the processing, uses, ingredients, tools, supplies, and how-to. 

The following chapters include the recipes arranged roughly by category: basic starter recipes, meat, salads & small bites, seafood, breakfasts & brunch, and desserts.
 
Ingredient measurements are supplied in American standard measurements with metric measures in parentheses (yay!).  The nutritional information is not included. Each recipe has a header with special info - cooking times and temps, and yields, along with a short description. Extra tips or recipe alternatives are listed in text boxes. The recipes themselves are fairly straightforward and are made for the most part with easily sourced ingredients. Many are very simple, none of them are overly complex. Special equipment is listed in the directions as well as in the tools overview in the introduction.

The photography is abundant and the photographs which are included are clear and well done.  The serving suggestions are stylish and appropriate. 


Most of these recipes are, to my mind, quite fancy and certainly appropriate for special meals and gatherings. They are certainly anything but boring. Because of the nature of the cooking process (long time low temp), many/most of them are not really what I would consider "have to get dinner on the table or the kids will gnaw the legs off the table" after-work dinner type dishes. The oatmeal recipe, for example, takes 10+ hours (great for overnight cooking to be ready in the morning). They're fine for weekend or special occasion cooking. 

We're definitely going to try more of these recipes.  Well written book, very tasty recipes and a style of preparation which places emphasis on safe and nutrient dense food.

Four stars. This is a solid recipe book which will be used. It would make a superlative gift for a culinarily adventurous friend or family member, as well as readers looking to branch out and learn new techniques. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.