The writer uses in his kitchen an immersion circulator and a polycarbonate Cambro water bath with an expandable sous vide rack.
IN THE movie “Burnt” (released in 2015), Langhams restaurant’s sous chef Helene (Sienna Miller) finds her chef de cuisine Adam Jones’ (Bradley Cooper) cooking and flavors too old-fashioned, saying his is no longer the way chefs cook food.
Helene brings in a new machine into the kitchen, introducing Adam to cooking sous vide.
That is how I first learned about sous vide (say “soo veed”), French for “under vacuum.”
While the name of this method sounds fancy, cooking sous vide actually simplifies the cooking process, especially when we do meats and seafood, where temperature and time are most critical for achieving the proper doneness.
By cooking vacuum-sealed food in a water bath, the sous vide method gives us the results–the perfect color and texture, and even succulence–that are nearly impossible to pull off by traditional methods.
So how does sous vide do it? Whether we use a water oven (try SousVide Supreme), or an immersion circulator (if you’re a homecook, look for brands like Anova, Joule, Sansaire, or PolyScience), the idea of this culinary technique is to cook food at a controlled and precise temperature (usually much lower than in conventional cooking methods) over a particular length of cooking time (longer than we do often by traditional means).
This way, our food is not exposed to heat levels (the high heat that flows from the pan or the grill to our food, or the heat of the air around the food in the oven) higher than the desired internal cooking temperature of our meat.
Thus, we need not worry about overcooking or undercooking our food. Even with irregularly cut meat, or thick meat cuts, we are assured that our food is cooked evenly, from the outside to the inside.
There is a small window for proper doneness of our meats when cooking by traditional methods. We have to always pay close attention to the temperature of the cooking vessel and the time the meat is exposed to such temperature.
Also, we need to constantly check the internal temperature of the meat to ensure food safety, among others. Sous vide cooking, thus, relieves us of the stress of babysitting our steak, and allows us to do other aspects of preparing our meal. Another essential feature of cooking sous vide is the exclusion of air in the cooking process.
Vacuum-packing food seals in all the juice and flavor of the meat while maintaining its texture when being cooked in the sous vide water bath.
That same principle applies to vacuum-sealing fruits (have you heard of compressed strawberries or any other fruit in your desserts?), for enhanced flavor, texture and color.