Amazing sous-vide candied apples with apple cake

apple cake with sous-vide poached apples

A few weeks back, I updated my page in which I list my favourite tools. The list pretty much covers my camera gear (plus the Olympus OM-D I don’t own yet but dream of daily), my favourite knives and knifemakers, and the equipment I use for sous vide cooking. While I previously championed the SousVide Supreme, these days, my wife S and I are lucky enough to be using the coolest, smallest (and comparatively affordable) chamber vacuum packer on the market, the Vacmaster VP112EU, and the Addelice swid, a beautifully designed (and also comparatively affordable) immersion circulator. A chamber vacuum allows you to vacuum pack foods in and with liquid, which domestic vacuum packers are not able to do. Having this has allowed me to whip up some cool foods that previously would have been impossible given the equipment I had at home. One such item are the best tasting poached/candied apples I have ever had, which I’ve paired cold in the above picture with a beautiful apple cake.

vacmaster and addelice swid

Of course, making poached apples the old fashioned way is not that difficult. But serving apple slices that you’ve poached and then cooled down without them loosing their shape and colour is very difficult. Using the sous vide technique, on the hand, allows for a few things: Firstly, you can pre-portion the apple slices, which is great if you are not going to be eating all of it in one sitting or you plan to make this in very large quantities; secondly, the color of the cooked apples is really vivid and beautiful, and since one eats first with her eyes, it’s always nice to have as much of your dish looking its very best; and thirdly, because you can cool the apple slices down (in the cooking liquid) within the bags you’ve packed it into, the fruit maintains its shape perfectly. The texture of the resulting apples is very nice, with a bite that you also wouldn’t get from traditionally poached fruit. Served cold, they burst with flavour.

Doing this sous vide is also extremely easy. I’ve used a recipe adapted from one in Thomas Keller’s seminal sous vide cookbook Under Pressure. All you need to do is make your poaching liquid ahead of time, and chill it. Then when you want to prepare the apples, slice them, vacuum pack them in the liquid and cook them in a water bath for 3 hours at 75 degrees Celsius (167 degrees Fahrenheit). The great thing with cooking with a good immersion circulator is that you can go off and do other things while your food is being prepared. There’s absolutely no need for you to hang out in the kitchen. When the apples are done, quickly move the bags of fruit to an ice bath to cool them off as fast as possible and then place the chilled bags of fruit to your fridge, to be opened whenever you need them.

At home, we served our candied apples with a beautiful apple cake — the recipe comes from Tish Boyle’s The Cake Book (If you don’t have this book, you MUST buy it! One of the best cake cookbooks on the market and the one that S and I use the most. In fact, we are not sharing the recipe for this cake here in hopes you’ll go out and buy this book.) — and topped with some whipped cream that’s been sweetened with some ginger jam. It was a dessert that worked really well with my parents and S’s parents, all of whom prefer desserts that are not so sweet.

Of course, purchasing sous vide equipment for one’s home is a pretty hefty investment. The Vacmaster and Addelice swid that I have are probably the most affordable, best performing devices that fit in a domestic setting. But they’re still not cheap. For people who really want to experiment with restaurant-grade recipes, however, the investment will pay off in the long run.

 

About Aun Koh

Aun has always loved food and travel, passions passed down to him from his parents. This foundation, plus a background in media, pushed him to start Chubby Hubby in 2005. He loves that this site allows him to write about the things he adores--food, style, travel, his wife and his three kids!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

2 Responses

  1. Hi CH

    The apples look wonderful! After reading you wax lyrical over the Vacmaster and Addelice Swid, I contacted Paul who promptly replied and delivered my new toys:) I haven’t had much time to experiment (a little difficult when you have a young toddler) but I can happily say that the couple of times I did get to play with my new gadgets, the husband and father-in-law were pleased as punch and ate far m

    I plan to try your poached/candied apples next weekend for our X’mas brunch. Hopefully, they’ll be as spectacular as yours! Quick question: how many seconds did you set the Vacmaster for to vaccum the apples ?

  2. Hi Aun,

    Thanks for blogging about sous vide cooking. Really enjoy reading and picking up tips from you. May I know where you get your stock of pouches for the vacmaster chamber vacuum sealer?

    I am getting a unit from a company in Singapore thru their KL office. Unfortunately , they can’t seem to give me much information about their pouches (whether it is safe for sous vide cooking ) and even the brand. In fact , they told me they have the sealer ready for me but no pouches until their next shipment which means I have to wait till end of the month.

    I was thinking perhaps I can get a friend to buy me some from Singapore for me.

    As such, I appreciate if you can advice the best size for the pouches and where I can purchase them in Singapore. A price indication of the pouches would be most helpful.

    Regards
    Gelina
    Subang Jaya

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Back to Top