Sous vide breakfast for the masses
The part of this I don't do sous vide is some kind of starch. I like to change this up so I'm not doing the same thing every single time. I might make scratch biscuits, pancakes, hash browns, or roasted potatoes. Easier things include just toast, market croissants, some banana bread made the night before, or just a salad of various diced fruits.
Ingredients:
1 dozen eggs
1 ham steak
12oz bacon or approximately 2 slices per person vacuum packaged
Cream (optional)
Salt/pepper or other seasonings
The night before:
Heat water bath to 147F(64C)
Drop entire package of bacon into water bath. It will float at some point so you'll need to figure out some way to keep it submerged.
Into a large bowl crack the entire dozen eggs and whisk with a fork. Add 1-2 Tbs of cream or half-n-half (optional) and seasonings. Continue whisking until well combined. Saffron works really great for this. If you've never used it before a little goes a very long ways so always use a lot less than you think you'll need. A tiny pinch will do it. You could also do truffles, truffle oil, curry powder, or just keep it simple with salt/pepper.
Empty the egg mixture in a plastic bag. I use vacuum bags and seal them while removing as much air as possible, but a 1 gal ziplock will work great. Refrigerate overnight.
In the morning:
Preheat oven to 400F(205C)
Preheat 12" skillet or 2 qt saucepan over medium-low heat
Prepare 1/2 sheet pan with rack
Preheat covered casserole dish (microwave for 1 minute with damp tea towel inside)
Remove the bacon from the water bath. Place bag of eggs into the water bath, displacing air and sealing bag as necessary.
Place bacon on rack in sheet pan. Place into preheated oven for ~18 minutes depending on how crispy you like your bacon.
Dice ham steak and gently saute in preheated pan with a pad of butter until it just starts to brown, approximately 2-3 minutes. Remove egg mixture from water bath and add to pan, stirring constantly. It will cook very quickly in about 2 minutes. Remove from heat before it's done as carryover cooking will finish the eggs. Place in preheated casserole dish.
So the question might be, why use the sous vide at all as you could just skip that step entirely? The answer is you certainly can, but sous vide does a few things for you.
Cooking bacon in the oven without sous vide works fine, but it creates a couple of problems. One is it makes an absolute mess of your oven and really your entire kitchen. As the lard renders it evaporates, then coats the inside of your oven and also condenses outside of the oven all over your kitchen just like when you cook bacon in a skillet. Pre-cooking the bacon sous vide overnight renders most of the lard out of the bacon into the bag instead of all over your kitchen. I like to save the lard in the refrigerator for use with other things. You still get some rendering in the oven after sous vide, but it doesn't create nearly as much mess.
As many already know, slow cooking scrambled eggs is a great way to do it, but you're constantly stirring on the stove for 10-15 minutes which prevents you from doing much else. I've found preheating in the water bath to 147F works brilliantly. Less time stirring, more time to do other things. The finished product also tends to come out more uniform with a better texture because there's less evaporation during the cooking process.
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