re: Not Prime Filet

Hope Solo would be proud

I'm not knocking you because I have never tried cooking a steak in water. But after screwing around with it for 17 hours is it really any better than just dropping it on the hot cast iron for 4 minutes?

Fair point however, there really isn't much 'screwing around' with this particular cooking method. It's almost as easy as the Ron Popiel Ronco4000 "Set it and forget it!". The machine does all of the work for you.

Also, the piece of meat that I used in this technique was a piece that is normally discarded because it contains numerous pieces of sinew, fat, and other undesirable materials. The long cook-time and constant temperature, melts the fat and transforms the connective tissues so that the meat can easily be separated out.

The real steaks were cooked traditionally on the grill.

I guess the best way I can interpret your point-of-view is to look at it in a different perspective. Sous vide is a new technology, borrowed from the scientific laboratories, that allows users to manipulate the interface between food and convenience. To put it into perspective, imagine when humans first discovered fire, or the first microwave.

I'm sure there were a few skeptical on-lookers questioning the validity of food cooked over fire. I can see a traditionalist like yourself laughing from the side lines at all of the other cavemen. "You cooked food folks, or whatever y'all call it trip me out."

The derisive attitude towards sous vide from some of you cynics is comparable to the pessimistic response the microwave first encountered. People scrutinized it with tremendous skepticism and cautionary doubt. Now microwaves are a standard appliance found in almost every home. I can hear them now, "You microwave folks, or whatever y'all call it trip me out."

The same scenario is played out every time a new piece of technology is introduced that bucks convention and turns tradition on its head. Just because you don't understand it, does that make it wrong?