What happens when 5 college friends decide to use their newfound cooking skills and throw a two-night pop-up sous vide dinner party for 40 friends and family? A full on food nerd fiesta breaks out. Zachary Cohen, Julian Daly, Tobias Rosen, Ben Rosenberg, and Sam Wasserman are all students at Cal, and close friends, took on this challenge and knocked their sous vide dinner party out of the park.
Plan a party for the ages
After a newly discovered love for cooking, they decided the next step was create a menu worth talking about, and invite all their friends to enjoy their delicious eats. Sous vide became the natural answer to ensure perfectly cooked food, all while making it as easy as possible, and they quickly decided
Anova could handle the task at hand!
No ramen here
Cooking wasn't always something that they enjoyed, or excelled at. Upon entering college, none of them wanted to be the cliche ramen and take out student. They decided to jump in head first and learn some basic skills. It snowballed from there, and they can surely hold their own today.
Anova makes it super-simple to throw an epic sous vide dinner party.
The two night affair took place high in the hills of Berkeley on a Friday and Saturday night. After tackling a pretty creative menu head on, they set out to complete the task at hand. The difficult menu consisted of an early course of bone broth soup with a sous vide quail egg. Julian said the ease of sous vide made the dish possible, and much more stress free than they imagined. The egg was able to cook in 30 minutes at 145°F / 62.8°C, and then hold in the warm-water bath for up to an additional hour with no quality drop. This made plating and service a breeze! They continued the assault with a chicken wing cooked in lard for 4 hours at 130°F / 54.4°C and then pan seared for a crispy finish.
Time for the show-stopper: nailing the main course
After serving the crispy wing, they set on to the main course, and it was surely the highlight of the night. They rubbed down some pork shoulder chops with with Koji fermented rice, an umami bomb of epic proportions. Known for big flavor, it still took a back seat to the perfectly-cooked pork. They cooked the pork to a crowd-pleasing 153°F / 67.2°C for 2.5 hours, before a quick sear resulting in that crispy crust. Sam and Julian said many of the lucky attendees gushed that it was one of the best dishes they had, anywhere, in quite some time. When they went into the night, they had hopes of delivering restaurant-quality results, and from the rave reviews they surely nailed it! While they definitely took some credit, they passed along most of the praise to Anova.
After two perfect evenings with delicious food, Sam and Julian said they all declared their sous vide dinner party a roaring success. They said it felt incredible to cook for people so close to them, and really took a lot of pride in the event. They even hinted that the event got a couple of the guys thinking about a career in the kitchen, post-college. With photos this drool-worthy, and the guests gushing about the food we surely understand why this group of #anovafoodnerds feels that way! Start preparing that guest list, and learn how to throw the ultimate dinner party with
Anova and choose from the world's largest collection of
sous vide recipes.
