Chris’s brother got us a sous vide precision cooker as a belated wedding gift the summer after our wedding, and because our apartment was small and had no outlet near the stove, Chris forbade me from using the precision cooker until we moved into a new apartment. Well, lo and behold, we did move into a new apartment last summer, but I felt intimidated by the precision cooker even after reading extensively about how to use it, and finally sucked it up and used it today.

I bought Australian grass-fed ribeye steaks on sale at Whole Foods last week in anticipation of this experiment given that most of the people I know who have tried sous vide have said that the first time always has to be steak for the most impressive results. Some people do fish, others do eggs, but a big hunk of steak is always the most dramatic.

After an hour and a half in the sous vide bath at 129 degrees F, I think it is safe to say that these steaks were pretty much perfect. After a quick sear on my cast iron and getting smeared in butter, they were pretty much perfect. The sear isn’t as apparent as it is if you just cooked it on a pan, but the inside was exactly the right texture. And since they were Australian steaks, the meat was a bit more chewy than the American cuts of steak that are grain fed and finished.

I rarely cook steak at home, but now I know that when I do, I’ll always use this sous vide precision cooker. It was much easier than I thought it would be, and the time spent waiting for it was completely worth it. The actual “work” that’s put into it is actually quite minimal since you can pretty much set it and forget it until it’s done. That’s definitely cooking that a lot of people can get behind.