I am all excited about a cooking trend that originated in laboratories, in the recent years it has spread out to high-end restaurants, and is finally making its way into home kitchens. It’s a technique that employs exact science to create consistent and perfect results each and every time.

Most of us like to cook and experiment with recipes. If nothing else, we all look forward to putting a burger or a piece of steak on the grill during summer months. Yet, most of the time, we settle for not-so-perfect final results. Our steaks or poultry can come out dry and chewy, our eggs cooked over or under, our veggies brown and wimpy from irregular heat source and imperfect cooking techniques. You know what I am talking about, right?

We can follow a recipe to its very last word…. yet the results usually will not be exact. Why? Because there are always so many variables at play: evenness of heat source, size and thickness of meats and vegetables being cooked, size of the pan, thickness of the pan….you name it! What is an average home cook to do? Most of us are not savvy enough to eyeball these variables and achieve near-perfect results.

How awesome would it be to get restaurant-quality results in our own home kitchens? How amazing if each egg used for Eggs Benedict in our Sunday brunch party comes out perfectly cooked? And the chicken or turkey tender and moist each and every time? When weeknight dinners could be executed with a savvy flair - we could all live happily ever after!

Too much to ask, you say? Let’s get real, you say?

The answer to all our prayers is here. Sous-vide cooking. A method of cooking ingredients (meats, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables), that are vacuum-sealed and immersed in a water bath with perfectly controlled temperature. The vacuum seal locks in the flavors and juices while forcing them to stay within the ingredient. You cook at a perfect, controlled, un-fluctuating temperature…and once the ingredient reaches that desired temperature inside and out - voila! Its done!!! The result is always precise, moist and incredibly flavorful food.

Think about it for a minute: a perfect egg for Eggs Benedict needs to be between 62 and 63 degrees celsius. Can you achieve that consistently by just counting the minutes of cooking time? With a sous-vide machine you can. You can not only get one egg cooked to perfection…but tens or a hundred at the same time in the same machine…. All at exact temperature and doneness.

The beauty of sous-vide cooking is that the ingredients will not get overcooked even if they are left in the water for too long - or even for hours in fact! If the water stays at a specific temperature then the food immersed in it cannot get any warmer than that temperature, right? So an egg at 62 degree celsius will stay at 62 degree celsius. And a medium rare steak at the perfect 132 degrees of perfection!!! Wouldn’t it make your next dinner party a cinch?

Only thing to note is that while the meats and fish etc will be perfectly cooked - they won’t have that color or crispness on the outside which we desire. To make it happen, just do a quick sear in a pan before serving.

Sous-vide machines range between $199- $1,000. They vary in their size and functionality. I have seen them at Williams-Sonoma as well as Amazon.com. One affordable machine, by Sensaire, has caught my eye. It is a product of a kickstarter campaign. Its compact for home kitchens and promises to deliver results. Most of all, its affordable at just $199! I have placed my order online and am counting days to when I can be a rock star in my own kitchen.