Bea Mendoza is an #anovafoodnerd from Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2015, she received the gift of pro-level cooking from her boyfriend. She has been sharing her culinary creations with the #anovafoodnerd fam ever since. Get to know Bea, and find out her secret to sous vide pork belly, along with a few more super-delicious dishes she's created for you.
Bea is no stranger to good eats. Her love for incredible food can only be matched by her passion for traveling far and wide to discover world-class cuisine with her family and friends.
Currently, Bea is working toward a degree in nursing. She doesn't have as much time to travel, which makes it difficult for her to explore new and exciting dishes. Bea wanted to find a way to recreate the culinary experiences she'd encountered during her travels at home.
When she learned about sous vide during a cooking class, she knew the technique was exactly what she was looking for. The problem was that it didn't seem practical for her to apply at home due to the expensive, bulky equipment used in the classroom.
Fortunately, her boyfriend found an affordable, easy-to-use solution for her with Anova. She has been replicating world-class meals at home using her
Anova Precision Cooker ever since, and she's able to do so with ease.
Anova cooks. Bea studies.
As a nursing student, Bea admits time is of the essence, and she tries to pack a lot of things into a small window. Studying takes up a bulk of her time, and cooking at home became difficult for her to fit into her routine.
With Anova, it's easy for her to get her work done and still enjoy quality, home-cooked meals. Each night, she sets up Anova, drops her food in the water bath, and let's her Precision Cooker do the cooking while she dives into her studies.
"I give myself however long the food is cooking to complete my studies. My reward when I'm done is a delicious meal, and it's so hands off I can actually get done what I need to get done!"
Getting down-to-the-degree control in the kitchen
Bea graduated with a degree in biological science, and she's all about nerding out over a good home-cooked experiment. Bea enjoys learning exactly how and why an egg yolk cooks, and what a few degrees and a few minutes difference has in the final product.
Cooking with precise temperature control is essential for this food nerd. She knows that just a few degrees off, and those eggs aren't going to turn out with the gelatinous liquid gold she'd hoped to achieve.
She relies on her Anova because she knows she's getting down-to-the-degree control that's accurate to a tenth of a degree! Nerds, precision is a beautiful thing.
Perfect results, every time
Bea loves the ease of use that the Precision Cooker provides. The ability to control temperature so accurately allows her to repeat the same dish to the exact level of quality and doneness, every time.
Prior to her Anova, Bea says cooking “Before it felt that I never cooked it perfect. Now it's repeatable and effortless. What I want, when I want it, always.”
You don't have to be a pro chef to cook sous vide
Two of Bea's culinary influences are sous vide stalwarts and overall world-class chefs. She draws inspiration from Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller, who are quite possibly the two best sous vide chefs on the planet.
While Bea appreciates the "finer things" approach taken by pro chefs like Achatz and Keller, she believes it makes sous vide seem less accessible to the home chef. In fact, the opposite is true.
"Sous vide is it has the ability to take you from someone who was cooking instant Mac & Cheese one day, to a perfectly cooked filet mignon the next night. You don't have to be Thomas Keller to enjoy fantastic meals with Anova."
She also has an affinity for Anthony Bourdain and Anthony Zimmern, specifically their travel and food shows, and finds herself longing to walk in their footsteps.
Sous Vide Pork Belly Recipe
Bea shared a few her favorite recipes with the entire food nerd fam, including Sous Vide Pork Belly and Sous Vide Katsudon, which is a Japanese pork cutlet rice bowl. Bea says it was a chore to try and cook these dishes before she started doing them with her Anova. Both of these are go-to's for Bea when she's hosting friends and family. Anova allows her to be confident in what she's serving, because “I know its gonna be good!” she says.
Bea's
sous vide pork belly is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Just preheat the cooker, place the pork belly in a bag with the marinade, then drop it in the water bath to cook for 8hr at 170ºC / 76.7ºC.
With a southeast Asian marinade, the flavor in this recipe is jam-packed! Get the full recipe to the most juicy and tender pork belly you can imagine on the
Anova recipes site or in the
Anova App.
Sous Vide Japanese Pork Cutlets Recipe
Being such a thin piece of meat, it often felt impossible to cook the pork properly for her Katsudon dish. A few seconds too long, overcooked. Pull from the pan a little early, and it's undercooked. Bea says with Anova, the results are perfect every time.
Sous Vide Katsudon is Bea's favorite weeknight meal, and she's been thoughtful enough to provide step-by-step photos, so you can follow along with this recipe on the
Anova recipes site or in the
Anova App.
Be sure to give Bea a follow on Instagram at
@beat_riceee to stay up to date on her ventures! Showing off her wicked video editing skills, Bea has a knack for sharing her delicious dishes with the whole #anovafoodnerd family, in a very educational way.
Nerds, time for some easy and delicious food. You can give Bea's
Sous Vide Pork Belly recipe and her
Sous Vide Japanese Pork Cutlets recipe a spin with your Anova for an easy dinner.
