King prawns

My internet's rubbish, 3mb rubbish but there's never been any availability in the local cabinet to upgrade. Until recently. So I placed my order, waited for upgrade day and then lost the internet for 3 weeks. I apologise for the lack of updates.

On the other hand I've found my pasta machine which has meant fettucini for every meal since. Thinking of what to go with, prawns offered themselves as an option so with a hungry girlfriend and a song in my heart, off we went.


In the interest of editorial integrity, there was no song.

Vital statistics : 57 degrees for 20 minutes (but see notes at the end)

When cooking fishy things at low temperatures I like to use frozen as it's likely to be fresher than fresh. However, don't cook prawns from frozen ; they've got a protective glaze* of ice that rapidly melts under vacuum and dumps itself into your sealer. There'll be tears, there'll be an electrical fire, there'll be an insurance claim and weeks in a hotel while your house is rebuilt. Don't offer yourself up for that kinda nonsense. You're better than that, champ.

Just make sure they're dry but don't run out of kitchen roll like I did and resort to (a fresh) loo roll as you'll spend 1500% longer picking the bits off than you did drying them.

I like the Anova. It's the water bath I've got permanently setup in the kitchen so I use it most of the time these days but only for short cooks. Longer stuff goes into the Supreme which reminds me, I really must do that Anova review.

Because we'll be cooking prawns for a short amount of time, make sure they're in a single layer so they'll cook evenly.

If you look at the next photo, you'll see one prawn in the bag that's suspiciously pink. Make sure you give that to one of your guests. No-one needs to be a trailblazer when it comes to food hygiene.

Ladies and gentlemen - sous vide prawns. If you're anything like my girlfriend, you'll be trying to hook one out of the bag before they get on the plate.

There's a point to this and it's the same point as cooking steak in a water bath - they're both really easy to overcook but doing them this way means you get you want without any guesswork. Plus, you don't lose any flavour because the bag holds it in.

57 degrees and you're sorted then. Ish. We've tried prawns twice now, once at 57 and once at 58 and the difference is marginal. What does make a big difference is time. 20-25 minutes is good, 45 minutes and they start to soften and not in a good way. For us, 57 gives you a lovely snap you only get from a plump prawn so that's what we'd go for but 58's great too. The important thing is time with these bad boys. You've been warned.

*Protective glaze = water to bulk out the expensive bits.