Basic Blood Orange Glaze over Chicken

This is a super simple glaze that I've used for poultry dishes that I like. Serves two.

1) Two blood oranges
2) 1.5 tbsp sugar
3) Some cooked chicken. In this case, I used two chicken breasts approx 2.5cm thick, cooked sous vide at 145F for 1 hour, each having a spice rub.

Halve the oranges and sqeeze as much juice as you can into a sauce pot. I like to get a few little chunks of the pulp in as I do this to give the sauce some sort of texture.

Turn on the heat, and bring to a boil. As it's warming, add in the sugar, and stir.

After this point, you basically want to simmer it until it's almost evaporated. It'll take about 30 minutes or so, but when it starts to thicken, you'll want to stir it around.

And, that's it. The sauce will be quite sweet and tangy. You can try throwing in a tbsp or so of cognac when the sauce starts to thicken to give it another dimension. Since it's so sweet, it's best used in moderation. You can also probably substitute any citrus fruit, and have this recipe essentially work.

Let the sauce cool a bit, plate the chicken, and spoon the sauce over or under.

Sous Vide

I first heard of sous vide like most people, while watching Top Chef, and seeing contestants vacuum pack food and stick it inside a water bath, with the temperature controlled by a thermal immersion circulator. Being a total gadget geek, I thought that was cool as can be!

For those not in the know, the wikipedia entry for sous vide states,

"French for "under vacuum",[1] is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. Unlike cooking in a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 60°C or 140°F)."

So, I did a lot of research, and decided to pick up an Ary Vacmaster VP-210 chamber vacuum sealer and a Polyscience 7306c. Lots of people get buy using Tilia Foodsaver vacuum sealers and other cheaper solutions to monitor the temperature of the water bath, but I decided I wanted to go in all the way. (Food savers have an annoyingly high defect rate, poor sealing of bags, and they don't handle liquids well.)

In the past week, I've made fish, eggs, chicken, and beef. All of my attempts have yielded a protein that was amazingly well cooked. My girlfriend, who was at first skeptical of me filling the kitchen with laboratory equipment, is now a convert.

All this said, this technique isn't for everyone. There are some legitimate food safety issues to consider regarding safe holding times, how long and how hot to cook things at, which are magnified by the fact you're cooking in a vacuum -- which is a ripe breeding ground for bugs like botulism.

For those interested, I highly recommend these resources,

Thomas Keller's Under Pressure

A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking

The beginning

Hello world. I'm an amateur home cook who occasionally stumbles upon awesome recipes and manages to occasionally make something unique, pretty, and most importantly -- tasty. As a foodie who lives in Seattle, is a pretty decent photographer, and has more kitchen gadgets than is sane -- I decided to start this blog.