We are shouting out Moms across the world! Nothing makes us happier than seeing passionate #anovafoodnerds, and we're using our platform to remind everyone how amazing Moms are. Today, we meet Thembi, a sous vide lover who uses Anova in her day to day cooking! Take it away, Thembi!
I’m Thembi and I’m Chief Recipe Tester and Owner of Tasty Tin. While I do catering events and private chef cooking (on the side, I’ve been in the IT field for over 20 years), my daughter Sabrina and I love to cook together and make videos on how we cook together. She just turned 9. So very helpful in the kitchen but has literally been helping me cook since she was about 3. In her spare time, she likes to model and play online games. We love to travel together and learn about places and cultures through their food. And my husband, Scott just rolls with it!
Meal time is hard to describe! I love to go food shopping so while I’ll plan some things to cook early in the week, that can totally change at the drop of a hat depending on the day. If we’re recipe testing or planning to video we tend to do that early. We try and start in the afternoon so that the whole thing can be done for dinner. But we’re like everyone else in that we have our favorites and fall back on usual meals a lot. Outside of crabs (my favorite food) I tend to fall back on a technique or style of cooking when I’m brainstorming as opposed to wanting a specific food.
So while Sabrina would be like 'I’m in the mood for fried rice’, I'd say 'I’m in the mood for something on the grill’. And that’s where sous vide comes in.
We’ve had our Anova Precision® Cooker for about 5 years now so there are tons of things we’ve tried and love. Seafood is great in there, and I suggest it for people who are scared of ruining seafood. It gives fish a velvety texture that is hard to replicate for the average person. It’s also extremely forgiving. You do have to plan for it so it’s not what I’d suggest for the last minute dinners unless you’re really comfortable with it. But its a great tool to have in your arsenal to change things up.
With our sous vide we found the most joy in cooking seafood and pork. But I use it for others with steak as well. Because people are very picky about how their steak is cooked, sometimes its just easier to rely on machines to get you there! We love our mustard and maple pork chops over mustard greens. Or seared scallops over fennel salad.
The thing we try and make everyone know is while we enjoy cooking, we are far from perfect and have thrown away ruined meals before. But it’s so much fun to try and try together that we just keep doing it. As Sabrina gets bigger and chooses to spend more time with friends than her mother 😩, at least we will know that we will always have cooking!
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Happy Mother's Day!