The sous vide cooking process has been growing in popularity over the past decade. You can get a lot of wonderful flavors by slowly pressure cooking foods under water for a long period of time—especially since those foods are typically sealed in plastic or glass, preventing the juices from escaping and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Since sous viders are already wrapping it (their food) before they tap it (cook it), writer Dennis Lee decided to take it to the next level by sous videing various sausage-shaped delicacies with condoms place of the usual plastic bags. Basically, he saw this popular meme format and decided to take it way too literally.
Lee regales the details of his grand experiment on his Substack newsletter, the appropriately-titled Food Is Stupid. The writing is delectable, as one might expect. And so, it seems, was the food. Lee tests the culinary contraception with a few different phallic feasts, including pre-cooked Vienna Beef frankfurters, sauted Lil' Smokies, and even some beer-basted Brats.
The end results sound, well, rather mouth-watering:
This could have been my imagination, but this particular Vienna Beef dog was absolutely delicious, and my theory is because it was cooked in the condom. That way none of its dogginess could sweat out of its hot dog pores into any cooking liquid, and it all had no choice but to remain in the sausage.
The condom did more than just protect the world from unintentional babies and STIs, it protected my hot dog from losing flavor. Perhaps this meme was secretly onto something and I was the fool all along. A deep sadness flowed through my veins, followed by the realization that I just ate a hot dog that I cooked inside a condom.
The only thing that wasn't quite perfect was the Bratwurst—which, Lee hypothesizes, is partially because he opted to wrap the raw meat in a Trojan Raw condom instead, which is made of polyurethane rather than latex.
One thing I noticed is that if you don't give bratwurst at least a little roasted sear on each side, the meat comes off as mildly offal-flavored. I tasted a distinct liver flavor to it. Or was that just the polyurethane, which I'm sure I wasn't supposed to be boiling? All I know is that this Trojan Raw did some Trojan Cooking.
There you have it folks. I know what I'm doing the next time I have to organize a Bachelor's Party.
Can you sous vide sausages in a condom? [Dennis Lee / Food Is Stupid]
Previously:
• Sous vide blackened salmon fillets
• Joule turns sous vide from an experiment into an everyday cooking technique
• Nomiku Sous Vide Immersion Circulator
• Cooking with an Anova sous-vide immersion circulator
• ChefSteps new all-white Joule is $20 cheaper
• My first attempt at smoking meat on a compact bullet smoker
• How to cook a steak from frozen in 30 minutes
