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Tech-savvy chefs pull off amazing dishes with sous vide, or cooking vacuum-sealed food in temperature-controlled water tanks. If you’ve got an instant-read thermometer and a vacuum sealer, you can produce similarly paradigm-shifting steaks with a DIY sous vide setup.

The Savvy Housekeeping blog suggests that all you really need are those two main components—and there's a good chance you could just borrow your parents' or neighbors' vacuum sealer for a set of steaks, if you can't find one on Craigslist or eBay—to pull off a sous vide technique that doesn't require a $400-plus piece of equipment. There's a few other items required to keep the steaks in the water, but it's stuff you probably have. Savvy Housekeeping also gave their steaks a post-bath pan searing with just salt, pepper, and olive oil, but you can feel free to get nuts with your uncle's secret seasoning or whatnot.

It's not a set-and-forget method, though—you'll need to really watch your sealed-off steaks in their immersion bath:

We wanted to keep the meat between 134-135 degrees. To do this, we set the stovetop on the lowest temperature and the alarm on the thermometer at 136 degrees. When the temperature got that high, the alarm went off and we added 1 cup cold water to the pot. This brought the temperature down to 134 degrees. It took the water 10 minutes to raise the two degrees again, the alarm went off at 136 degrees, and we added another cup of cold water. We did this every ten minutes and it kept the steaks right around 135 degrees.

After your steak gets to that perfect temperature, you give them a little sear on the pan, and, well, the photograph results speak for themselves. You’ve cooked a steak to a healthy temperature at a slow pace, without oxidizing your meat, and without succumbing to your oven’s inconsistency.

Update: Commenter thinkerer posts two helpful notes and links on sous vide cooking in the comments. Douglas Baldwin at the University of Colorado at Boulder has A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking that provides far more depth on the techniques, science, and safety considerations involved. He also points out the Wikipedia entry for sous vide, which suggests that, when cooking sous vide, you should ensure you hit the right temperatures and use meat that’s had minimal exposure to bacteria and other contaminants, as you trade open-air exposure concerns for botulism-related contaminants. Then again, the author herself comments that those fears seem lessened for meat you’re searing and eating immediately.

Pulled off your own submersion cooking stunts before? Do tell, and link or post pictures, in the comments!