Shortly after deciding to go low carb, I splurged on a Sous Vide Supreme set up - basically a seal a meal type vacuum sealing and a water bath capable of very accurate temperature control. Sous vide can be done on the higher end with immersion circulators or more economically using insulated coolers and/or do it your self setups, including modified crock pots or rice cookers. Here's an article from Popular Science on DIY sous vide - Cooking Sous Vide the DIY Way
The basic concept is to seal whatever is being cooked in a bag to keep it from absorbing the cooking water, removing the air from the bag first allows the food to be evenly heated. Then set the temperature of the water bath to the temperature that you want the food to be when it's served. Since the water bath can be held at a constant temperature for long periods of time.you can leave it in the water bath long enough for it to reach the desired temperature all the way through.
This allows for some interesting results - short ribs cooked for 72 hours at 131F are melt in your mouth medium rare with an excellent beefy flavor. One draw back with sous vide is that food doesn't brown and you don't get the delicious flavors (aka the Maillard reaction) There's an easy remedy, either sear the meat in a hot skillet or use a blow torch. I went for the blow torch and turned a draw back into a positive. Grilling and BBQ were my default macho cooking skills, blow torch takes it up a notch.
Eggs cooked for an hour (no need to vacuum pack them, they come that way naturally) at 143.5F have a soft liquidy white and a nice runny yoke. Around 147F / 148F the egg white firm up a tiny bit and the texture of the white and the yoke are similar but still runny. Traditionally soft boiled eggs have firm whites and runny yokes due to being cooked at a higher temperature, starting near 212F and the egg whites begin to set when they reach 176F. Since the heat has to penetrate the egg white to reach the yoke when cooked conventionally timing the perfect soft boiled egg means stopping the cooking before the yoke reaches somewhere between 149F and 158F.
The practical advantages of sous vide is that it allows for a ready supply of lean protein, it requires less fats for cooking, food cooked to the exact desired temperature and generally more leeway in timing - cooking a piece of chicken for an extra 15-20 minutes has little impact. For a ready supply of lean protein, I'll pick up a pack of boneless chicken breasts or boneless chicken thighs - between 4 and 6 pieces - cook them all at one time over the weekend for a week's supply.
Just think - all the convenience of ready to serve processed food without any added salt or preservatives and much moister than traditionally cooked chicken. I'll go into more details and techniques in future posts. There is one important safety pointer - vacuum packed food lasts longer in the fridge or freezer, if prepared properly. Botulism is an anaerobic toxin that thrives between 40-120F. If you're not opening the sous vide pouch immediately and serving soon you must plunge the food into an ice bath (50/50 ice/water) for at least 10 minutes to get it through the zone as quickly as possible.
Cheers & Happy New Years! Wishing everyone good food, good times and good numbers in 2012