Simple Chicken Salad For Two Sous Vide

As a chef people always expect to be wow'd by the food I cook. With all the long hours I spend in the kitchen already, sometimes at home I just want to make an easy meal. My SV1 is the best tool in my home kitchen to accomplish a simple meal that lives up to the high expectations of being made by a chef. Those expectations can be a bit much when most nights you're only cooking for two. Believe it or not even for someone who cooks for a living, cooking just for two can be surprisingly challenging. 

With the variety of hours I work, it is fairly common for me to have a day off during the week, while my girlfriend is at the office Monday through Friday. It's not expected, but she loves it when I have dinner ready when she gets home after a long day, who wouldn't. I earn brownie points if the meal tastes like I put a lot of time and work into it. 

Just like many households a grilled chicken salad is a staple on our dinner table. Chicken can be a finicky meat, it's not hard to accidentally dry it out, especially when you're just cooking enough for two. Restaurant quality food for two at home is easy with sous vide.

For this easy chicken salad I follow four simple steps:

1. Prepare and Season

First I set up the water bath for my sous vide cooker, a large pot, a tub, or even a cooler will work for this. My SV1 has a minimum and maximum fill line on it, so I filled it to land between those. I set the temperature to 149°F and began to season my meat while it warmed up. I chose to go the Italian route for our chicken and added some oregano, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. I make sure to flip each breast over and season the other side for more even flavor. 

2. Vacuum and Seal

For small projects like this our apartment sized PRO110 is perfect. I put each seasoned chicken breast in a bag and sealed it. The vacuum seal is an often over looked part of sous vide, which surprises me because "sous vide" literally means "under vacuum" in French. The vacuum seal works to remove all of the air ensuring even cooking. 

3. Submerge and Simmer

When the SV1 is finished heating up it beeps to let me know, when I hear this sound I know that the water is ready and hit the "play" button. Then I add my seasoned and sealed chicken breasts to the water. I set the timer for an hour, and leave it alone while it cooks. During this time I prepped the rest of the salad, washed and chopped the lettuce and set the table.

4. Finish and Enjoy

When the hour was up I heated up a skillet to finish the chicken. Once I removed the chicken breasts from the bath I took them out of the bags and quickly seared them on each side. I chopped the chicken into slices and placed it on top of the salads. 

Cooking for two we use the sous vide method regularly in our house, it's the perfect method for evenly cooked food, whether you're making a little or a lot.