INTRODUCTION
“What’s for dinner?” These seemingly innocent words can strike dread in the heart of anyone managing a busy household. If you know me (or have read my first book), you know how much I love cooking. But after a long day at the office, juggling errands and kids, the prospect of getting even a simple dinner on the table can feel like climbing Everest. The last thing I want is for cooking to feel like yet another chore on my to-do list.
When my husband and I launched Nomiku as the first sous vide company geared toward home cooks, I managed to find the energy to make elaborate meals in between long hours at the office. But that, as my coauthor and friend Meesha is wont to say, was BC—Before Children. Five years later, my passion for cooking delicious meals at home hasn’t slowed down, but neither has life. As my company continues to grow, so do the two mini people I created—my wonderful son and daughter, Zech and Mari. Crazy busy has become my norm.
Then I had a revelation. While I was crisscrossing the country evangelizing sous vide as the perfect tool for making exceptional restaurant-quality meals at home, it dawned on me that it could solve the unglamorous but more pressing challenge of getting food on the table every night.
Despite its rapidly expanding popularity, sous vide—the technique of cooking sealed food in a precise temperature water bath—is still widely misunderstood as something meant only for top chefs and other culinary obsessives. Even among those who already own home immersion circulators—1 million converts and counting—it still tends to be reserved for special occasions or ambitious projects. I want to change all that! That’s why I launched Nomiku Meals, a frozen-food meal delivery service that brings ready-to- reheat sous vide meals to your door. But for those of us who want both convenience an the satisfaction of cooking a homemade meal, this book teaches you how to prepare your own delicious sous vide weeknight meals with ease.
In contrast to my first book, Sous Vide at Home, which showed ambitious home cooks how to re-create
elaborate dishes like duck confit and butter-poached lobster, this book is aimed at home cooks (sous vide novices and old hands alike) who simply want to make delicious everyday meals with readily available ingredients and with minimal effort. The key is preparing everyday standbys like chicken or salmon in advance, to be used as the building blocks for an endless variety of delicious, unfussy meals on short notice. I want you to be able to come home from work, open up your fridge, and quickly whip up a tasty, nutritious dinner—which is why you won’t find me calling for exotic ingredients that will take up more of your precious time to hunt down. The recipes in this book require only common ingredients that you either already have in your pantry or can easily pick up at a local Mexican bodega, Asian market, or in the international aisle of a grocery store. And anything you can’t sleuth out on foot can be ordered online and shipped to your door. Whether you’re craving cheesy chicken parm, juicy grilled pork chops, or Korean barbecue–style beef, the recipes in this book are impressive enough to serve to guests, yet quick and simple enough to make for your family on a Monday night.
Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Q. Fetterman with Scott Peabody and Meesha Halm. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
