How to Sous Vide for Thanksgiving - Eat Like No One Else

Make your Thanksgiving cooking easier by using going Sous Vide. We give you ideas on how to use your sous vide cooker for a tasty meal experience that will help you keep your sanity on turkey day.

You know what the best thing about Thanksgiving 2019 is?

Its my first one where I can sous vide my heart out!

I got my immersion circulator for sous vide for Christmas 2018 and I have been waiting ever since to utilize for Thanksgiving.

Between this, a slow cooker, and the Instant Pot, the only thing the oven is going to be doing is cooking the turkey.

What to Sous Vide for Thanksgiving?

We are going to list for you some ways you can use your sous vide on Thanksgiving. Then we will go into more details about each of them.

Cook a turkey breast for extra white meat
Cook turkey drumsticks
Make mashed potatoes
Keep food warm
Start your Brussels sprouts
Cook carrots
Make sweet potatoes
Make a cheesecake (maybe pumpkin)

Can You Sous Vide a Turkey?

While I was tempted to try to figure out how to do a whole turkey sous vide, a friend reminded me of something that would make it a bad idea. White and dark meat are normally cooked to different temperatures, something that sous vide can't do. Can't believe I am saying there is something sous vide can't do.

Even if it wasn't for that, can you imagine trying to vaccum seal an entire turkey. You could try to butterfly it, like I normally do, and still that would be hard to do it.

Turkey Breasts, Drumsticks or Thighs

However, you could definitely sous vide turkey breast, thighs, or drumsticks. Smoked drumsticks would be really easy to bring up to temp in the sous vide until you are ready to eat.

Cubed potatoes in milk inside a sous vide bath

Mashed Potatoes

I gotta tell you, that Sous Vide Mashed Potatoes are where it is at. I tried them once and fell in love.

A couple cool things about doing sous vide mashers. You can usually cook the potatoes in milk. I pour milk into the bag of cubed potatoes. If you tried this on the stove top, it's really easy to boil over and make a mess. Plus you need quite a bit of milk to pull it off. Here I only used a cup of milk.

The other cool thing is that the potato flavor is more pronounced. This is because you aren't cooking the potatoes in water which waters down the potato flavor.

For the potatoes I cook them at 194 degrees for 1 hour 30 minutes. Then drained the milk, added butter, add in just enough of the milk til get them to the right consistency and whipped them with a hand mixer. Yum!

Keep Food Warm

If you can vaccum seal it and keep the water out, you sous vide is a great way to keep food warm, especially if your stove top or slow cooker are already busy.

Start Your Brussels Sprouts

Sous Vide Brussels Sprouts are tender and delicious. You can cook them perfectly through without them being raw in the middle. Then to add some serious flavor, throw them under the broiler once the turkey is out and get some char on them.

This method is better than cooking them in a saute pan as you don't smell up the house with that sulfur smell and you make sure that they are tender inside and out.

Cook Carrots

Same thing can work for carrots as well. Tender inside and out.

Make Sweet Potatoes

No doubt, sweet potatoes can be done perfectly sous vide. Don't use any oven space or stove space on them. They are so easy to do, then use for whatever you want them for - sweet potato casserole, for a pie, mashed sweet potatoes, etc.

Alton Brown's Immersion Circulator Cheesecake

Dessert

I am just beginning to experiment with desserts done sous vide. We made Alton Brown's Immersion Circular Cheesecakes in 4 ounce mason jars. Absolutely perfectly cooked cheesecake. Moist. No crackers. Just perfect.

How fun would it be to have jars of pumpkin pie for all of your guests.

While Alton's recipe for the cheesecake called for the topping crumbled on top, you could actually bake a crust into the jars first, before putting them into the bath.