If you’re already cooking sous vide, you know that the hardest part can be choosing the right time and temperature—particularly for less common ingredients. That’s where we come in. We’ve done all the testing and research for you, which means no more scouring the internet for information. Our development kitchen has tested these times and temps to a T and put together all of our favorite options. Want to access times and temps for so many more sous vide recipes? Get the [link https://www.chefsteps.com/update-app app] today and search away. With over 150 foods to choose from, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/joule Joule Turbo] helps you figure out what to cook and how to do it perfectly. Goat? We’ve got that. Flounder? You know it. Every kind of steak you can think of? Consider it (perfectly) done.

Holidays are all about tradition, even though observing traditions often trumps tastiness. And there’s no better example than the Thanksgiving turkey, which is often dry, overcooked, and bland. This year, we’re asking you to consider stepping away from tradition and making the best dang turkey you’ve ever had. The key to success? Using sous vide. A precision temperature-controlled water bath will deliver excellent results, every time. Not only will the white meat be plump and juicy and the dark meat silky and rich, the skin will be a deeply burnished brown, and it’ll be crisp. The secret is to treat both the breast and legs as if they’re tougher cuts of meat—because they are! A long, low-temperature cook will transform them into centerpiece worthy of the name. The best part? No guessing when they’re “done,” and you can hold them for hours and hours in the water bath and serve them whenever you’re ready. EDITORS’ NOTE: We’ve updated this recipe to be more user friendly and more convenient to prepare. The leg quarters are cooked for a shorter amount of time on their own (8 to 12 hours, rather than the original 12), before lowering the sous vide temp, adding the breasts, and cooking them together for a longer amount of time (16 to 24 hours longer, compared with the original 8 to 14 hours). This gives you a much bigger window for finishing and serving your Thanksgiving feast anytime in the afternoon/evening.

Steak, man. There’s nothing like it. And the best way to cook a steak, bar none, is to cook it sous vide. Sous vide steak means perfectly cooked steak, every single time. No need to worry about “ruining” a pricey dry-aged ribeye; no need to babysit or fuss over your beef to cook it just right. Seal the steak in a bag, drop it in a precisely calibrated temperature-controlled bath, and all you have to do is take a minute or two to finish it on the stove when you’re ready to eat. Our foolproof sous vide method for cooking tender steak cuts produces consistently excellent steaks, cooked to exactly your ideal level of doneness with a burnished sear on the outside. The result is big beefy flavor of meat complemented by aromatic notes of garlic and herbs. [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/your-ultimate-guide-to-grilling-cuts Choose your steak], measure its thickness, choose your preferred level of doneness, and then all you have to do is set the temperature of your sous vide bath and bag up your beef. (For the most flavorful steak, we recommend [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/presearing-for-sous-vide presearing the steak] before putting it in the bag, but it’ll be plenty tasty without that step.) Pull out the steak when you’re ready to eat, give it a quick sear, and serve it up with a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/perfect-pomme-puree silky pomme purée] (or a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thrice-baked-potato cheesy thrice-baked potato!]), and you’ve got yourself a better-than-a-pricey-steakhouse meal that you can make any day of the week.

Steak frites is a bistro classic: seared steak with a deeply browned crust and medium-rare (or “bleu”) interior, a towering pile of crispy golden fries, often accompanied by an aromatic sauce that’s just as delicious when doused over the meat as it is when used as a dipper for the spuds. The most iconic steak frites has to be served at [link https://www.relaisentrecote.fr/?page_id=205&lang=en_GB Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte], a Parisian institution that has gone worldwide. They don’t have anything else on the menu: just steak frites, served with a side salad, although you can get a second helping of steak—and dessert, if you want. What’s funny about it is the steak and fries ... they’re just all right. The real draw is their secret sauce. It’s got it all: It’s creamy and savory, it’s briny, it’s got a pronounced acidic tang, and it’s got a raft of herbs mixed up into it—not quite a hollandaise, not quite a mayo, but 100 percent delicious. We reverse-engineered it and came up with something very close but better, fresher, and super simple to make. Since the steak and fries are only so-so at the restaurant chain, we knew we—and you!—could do better. Pick your [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-guide-to-steak favorite steak], give it a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/presearing-for-sous-vide quick sear] to jump-start the Maillard reaction, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-steak cook it sous vide], and then sear it right before serving for the ultimate steak, perfect for saucing. The fries? We’ve developed the [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-crispy-french-fries ultimate crispy frites], which are basically the Pringles of fries—riced potatoes mixed with starch and formed into batons before getting double-fried to produce an ultra-crispy exterior with a light and fluffy center.

Like any proud parent, we love all our french fry recipes equally. [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thin-cut-french-fries Thin-cut], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries thick-cut], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/air-fried-frozen-french-fries air-fried]—each is delicious in its own right; each one has its time to shine. But this french fry recipe ... well, we love it just like the rest, but maybe a little more. Designed to go along with our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-steak-frites Ultimate Steak Frites], these fries are the fluffiest of them all, thanks to the fact that they’re not made from planks of potato; they’re a combo of riced potatoes and cornstarch. They’re basically processed potatoes, a Pringles approach to our classic fries. This process gives you a leg up on time and convenience. Whereas our other french fry recipes work best with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/finding-perfect-french-fry-potatoes perfect french fry potatoes], you can use any russets you have around for these. And the cooking process is comparatively streamlined: You just boil ’em til tender, mix them with starch, let the dough chill and set, then cut it up and get frying. In the end, we might like these french fries more than our others not because they’re quick to make, or because they’ve got a short ingredient list, or they’re dead easy. It’s because, fresh out of the fryer, they’re actually just the best fries we’ve ever made (and they stay crispy for hours).

We’ve got sous vide versions of all your ’cue favorites—[link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-brisket brisket], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-pork-shoulder butt], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-ribs-incredible-barbecue-no-smoker-required ribs], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-beef-short-ribs short ribs]—and they’re just as good, if not better and easier to make than the real deal. We took all our experience with turning [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts tough hunks of meat] into tender and juicy ’cue and translated it to the task of creating our version of the star of the Jewish delicatessen: sous vide pastrami. “Pastrami” comes from the Turkish “pastirma,” or “pressed,” which refers to jerky-like cured meat product. [link https://tastecooking.com/pastrami-everything/ The preparation ] was brought by Romanian immigrants to the United States, and it was perfected in iconic Jewish delicatessens in New York like [link http://katzsdelicatessen.com/ Katz’s]. Instead of using premium cuts of meat, delis used inexpensive brisket, specifically the navel cut, and they’d dry cure the beef, smoke it, then steam it until tender for service. As people realized how delicious the preparation could be, “pastrami” products became available at supermarket deli counters and on the cold cuts shelf. But that “pastrami” is almost always sad and dry. Often made from beef shoulder cuts and designed to be sliced thin and eaten cold, it never really had a chance of measuring up to the great pastrami you can get at Jewish delis across the country. Our version blows any supermarket pastrami offering out of the water, and a big part of that is we use one of the beefiest cuts of meat–short rib!—and we serve it up hot. EDITORS’ NOTE: We’ve retested and updated this recipe to include an option for a shorter sous vide cook at a higher temperature that produces a leaner, more firm pastrami for folks who prefer that texture. We still favor a 48-hour low-temp cook—our preferred temp is now [f 147]. We also provide two options for the order of pastrami-cooking operations, and we have outlined the pros and cons for each in the “Before we begin” section. In the updated video, Grant goes with the sous vide then smoke option, but we kept the original recipe instructions for the smoke then sous vide method. Both produce excellent results, and it comes down to a matter of preference.

You probably think of cucumbers when you think of pickles. But as that one [link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYey8ntlK_E Portlandia skit] reminds us, cukes are just the beginning. Garlic? You can pickle that! Lychee? You can pickle that! Champagne grapes? You can pickle ... those. A pickle is any food that’s preserved in an acid. You can make pickles with fermentation but that takes more than a hot minute. Another way to pickle is to add vinegar or a vinegary brine to your fruits or vegetables, then heat-treat the combo to pasteurize it. This process is faster and simpler than fermentation, but the results have less bite—both in terms of funky flavor and crunchy texture. To amp up the former, we add salt and/or sugar, plus herbs, spices, and other aromatics. And to get the pickles crisp, we use a low-temperature water bath—[f 140]—to heat the pickles until they’re pasteurized. If you use quart—or liter—jars, your gorgeous, crispy pickles will be good to go in just two and a half hours. Store ’em in a shady spot for up to six months and you’ll have snappy snacks, garnishes, and side dishes whenever you want. So, the next time someone asks you what they should do with a fruit or veggie, you know what to say, right? You. Can. Pickle. That!