Healthier cooking with sous vide

There are dozens of reasons why cooking with a sous vide stick is better. Just think of the perfect doneness and tenderness, better flavors, but also the ease of use and how sous vide helps you achieve the best results every time. We could go on and on about it for hours. But we won't do that this time. Today, we're going to talk in depth about the health benefits of sous vide cooking.

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Because today, our health is more important than ever. It seems everyone is busy striving for a better balance, making responsible choices, and consuming healthy and responsible food. This isn't surprising, of course, because our health affects our quality of life. A wise Greek man known as Hippocrates reportedly once wrote: "Let food be thy medicine." What he meant by this was: food can make you healthy, but food can also make you sick. A growing number of scientific studies are concluding that our intestines have a significant impact on our physical and mental well-being. Healthy cooking is therefore vital for staying healthy for a long time.

How can sous vide help you cook healthier?

With sous vide, everyone can cook healthier at home. First and foremost, of course, because cooking at home is much healthier. When you cook at home, you eat fewer carbohydrates, less fat, and use significantly less salt than you would when eating out. When you prepare your own meals, you also know exactly what's in them. You buy your own ingredients and therefore have control over the quality and sustainability of what you buy. This allows you to ensure the healthiest meat, fish, and vegetables. Allergies and sensitivities to certain ingredients can be prevented, saving your body a lot of unnecessary stress.

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But cooking with sous vide of course has even more health benefits

Sous vide preserves nutrients and vitamins. There are a few things that can cause vitamins and nutrients to be lost. Exposure to heat, water, and oxygen affects the final vitamin content of your meal. Overcooked or overcooked foods are less healthy, and sometimes even very unhealthy, for example, in the case of burnt food. With sous vide, none of this is a concern. In the sealed and therefore completely airtight packaging, all the goodness and health benefits are preserved. With sous vide, the dish is cooked at a much lower temperature than with boiling, steaming, or baking. This significantly improves nutritional value, making healthy cooking a breeze.

Using sous vide makes our food easier to digest

Many of the vegetables we eat are more easily digested by our bodies when they're not completely raw, but just cooked through. Cooking breaks down the cell walls, making it easier for your body to digest. Animal proteins, such as meat and, to a lesser extent, fish, contain collagen. The sous vide cooking process converts the collagen in the food into gelatin. This gelatin is ultimately more easily absorbed by our bodies. The collagen we mentioned earlier is a protein naturally occurring in the body. Collagen plays a crucial role in maintaining a healthy body.

Collagen is important for healthy skin, strong bones, and flexible tendons. This protein is also important for maintaining supple cartilage, and even our teeth benefit from sufficient collagen. Moreover, collagen can help repair the stomach and intestinal lining, for example, in cases of problems caused by heartburn or leaky gut syndrome.

With sous vide you use less fat

When you cook with sous vide, you use less fat. The reason for this is simple. The food isn't cooked in the pan, so you don't need to use butter or oil to prevent the food from sticking. Don't get us wrong, we're definitely not anti-fat. In fact, we love the good fats. Because nothing beats the taste of butter or a good olive oil, right? That's why we always use some fat in the pan, so we can properly sear our perfectly sous vide-cooked steak without the risk of it sticking.

But it's a fact. With sous vide, the amount of fat we need is simply much, much less than if we were to cook that same steak directly in the pan. For a healthy lifestyle, it's important to use fats responsibly. Sous vide can help you use less fat when cooking.

Sous vide improves food safety

Sous vide and food safety. We see this topic pop up regularly. With sous vide, you cook food at a low temperature. As long as you follow the minimum cooking times and the minimum temperature, nothing can go wrong. When you let meat (beef, lamb, or pork) float in the sous vide bath at a temperature of at least 55 degrees Celsius, and in the case of chicken at least 60 degrees Celsius, you're essentially pasteurizing the meat. This prevents harmful bacteria from developing.

You can also choose to sterilize the surface of the meat before vacuum-sealing it . You can do this by submerging it in boiling water for about thirty seconds or briefly searing it in a pan. After sous vide cooking, you can finish cooking the meat. This not only adds beautiful color and texture to the dish, but it also kills any bacteria.

Sous vide makes it easier to prepare larger quantities of healthy food in advance

As with many of our New Year's resolutions, they often don't last. The reason is often that it's too difficult to fit them into our lives. Busy jobs, little time, kids—there are plenty of reasons why it's hard to consistently put a healthy meal on the table. Sous vide can help with this too. With sous vide, it's perfectly possible to prepare multiple portions of the same dish simultaneously. You can cook multiple vacuum-sealed pieces of meat or vegetables simultaneously in the sous vide bath. They'll all be perfectly cooked to the same perfection.

Once the dish is ready, you can cool it down, after which you can store it in the refrigerator for a few days or freeze it. Sous vide dishes can be stored in the freezer for up to three months. You can read more about this in one of our previous blogs about refrigerating sous vide dishes . Before serving, thaw the dish in the refrigerator. If desired, you can reheat the sealed dish directly in the sous vide bath or finish it off in a pan. Reheating with the sous vide should be done at the temperature at which the dish was initially cooked; otherwise, 54 degrees Celsius is always a safe choice. Want to surprise your family this Christmas? Then check out these sous vide Christmas recipes!