Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide. . . at home?
Submitted by Stuart Broz on Fri, 10/23/2009 - 2:20pm
I've been very excited about the possibilities of sous vide cookery. For those who don't know, sous vide involves vacuum-packing (and sealing) raw food and cooking it in a controlled, low-temperature water bath. The idea is that the food maintains its shape and appearance while becoming equally cooked throughout. For example, if you cook a steak sous vide to a particular temperature, it will be exactly that temperature throughout - not rarer in the center and more well-done on the outside. The technique it great for anything that you want to be cooked to a precise temperature, which can be particularly useful when dealing with proteins. It is also, apparently, remarkably good with vegetables. Think of sous vide as having all the benefits of braising (tenderizing, flavor-enriching) without the drawbacks (food that falls apart, loss of natural liquids, overcooking).
Why don't we see sous vide being used more often? It is used in some high-end restaurants, but the immersion circulators that are available are pieces of lab equipment which often sell for over $1,000 - out of the price range of most home cooks. Angela picked me up a copy of Thomas Keller's book Under Pressure for my birthday. This is the definitive book on sous vide, and it does include some suggestions for using the technique at home. For instance, it can put your FoodSaver vacuum sealer
Comments
any restaurants you know use this?
I'd like to try sous vide. I've had some ribs that I suspect were cooked using sous vide but I didn't really like them... they had a too-tender texture. I like meat to have a little tooth to it---which is why I find tenderloin boring and generally prefer choice ribeye to prime---but maybe it was that place. (Where? I can't recall.)
Many (mostly high-end) places
Many (mostly high-end) places use it. In NYC? Ummm... Per Se is the obvious one. Momofuko. Cru. Town and Country.
I've cooked eggs kind of this
I've cooked eggs kind of this way... four ramekins, slice of cooked turkey bacon on the bottom, an egg cracked on top, grated cheese and herbs. Then carefully put the ramekins in a larger casserole dish. (I have a square pyrex, so four ramekins for me... I guess you could go with six if you have a rectangle.) The ramekins should not be much taller than the baking dish. Then fill the baking dish with water and put it in the oven until the whites are set. Dip toast into the yolk when they're out. Heaven.
Moist baking
Now that I think about it, "moist baking" is the same basic idea, too. I posted a trick to make non-dessicated well-done meat based on this principle. I've used it a few times now and it works like a charm.
It's the vacuum principle that alters things, and the VERY low temperatures, comparatively. The notion of braising a ribeye at 130 and then using a blowtorch to put grill marks on just seems... wrong somehow.
That's not really sous vide,
That's not really sous vide, since it is neither under pressure nor in a temperature controlled water bath. One feature of sous vide is that you can't overcook using it. in baking, for instance, if you turn the oven to 350 degrees, the oven will heat above that and gradually cool. There will be parts of the oven that are hotter than 350 and parts that are cooler. Your goal might be to get the food you are cooking to 140 degrees, but... in a 350 degree oven it will often get above that... and overcooked. With sous vide, you cook in a bath of the exact temperature that you want the food to be and there aren't any variations in the environmental temperature, so the "cooking" of the dish is just an evening out of the temperature. You can leave something cooking sous vide for days and it won't overcook.
yeah, ovens have hotspots
Of course adding mass to the oven, e.g., some pyrex baking dishes, a cast iron pan or some bricks, help even things out, but still, you will have hotspots.
And sous vide has the whole vacuum sealed thing going, which means that the food never loses its juice.
In my mind the fact that the
In my mind the fact that the sous vide cooking environment is equal to the temperature that you want your food to be is the biggest difference. You don't do that in an oven. Ovens are hotter than you want your food...
Yeah, that's what I meant by
Yeah, that's what I meant by the very low temperature.
I suspect that if you don't know what you're doing you can end up turning sous vide into "ideal bacteria incubation environment" so... read up first.
One other thing on
One other thing on this:
Unless I'm sorely mistaken, moist baking does reduce the temp. While the oven is hotter, what you're baking has a lower temp. You have the fact that boiling water is at 212F until it's gone.
Sous vide takes this to the next step, which (it seems) is qualitatively different.
Sous VIde Magic
The SVM1400 came out way before Under Pressure did. It is pretty cheap and very awesome. Very psyched to see what the SousVide Supreme is like.