This post was first published by Jamie Calvetti on LinkedIn
Sous Vide cooking isn’t new, it’s been around since the mid 1960’s. I’ve writtenabout it before, when I pointed out that there are some imposters in the market. Today I want to reiterate what’s so great about “real” French style sous vide cooked foods and why the trend continues to rise in popularity.
I love a good steak, a roasted chicken or a delicious slice of pork belly. We’ve all had them before and thought it was fairly ordinary; a bit too dry or a little undercooked. There is a solution for these problems and I’m not going to keep it a secret. It’s sous vide cooking. The concept of Sous Vide, the French term for ‘under vacuum’, is a method of preparing food, vacuum-sealing it and then cooking it in perfectly controlled water tanks at a precise temperature for an extended period of time. This results in a perfectly cooked product, every time. And isn’t perfection what you want?
There are a multitude of benefits to cooking the sous vide way, but let’s highlight the two main ones – precision and consistency, because we certainly want a precise method that produces the most delicious consistency of meat, every time.
We can precisely cook our food to perfection:
Traditional cooking methods like broiling, searing in a skillet or grilling leave us with temperature gradient issues within the product. In a skillet, heat flows from the burner to the pan, cooking the steak or in the case of an oven-roasted chicken, the heat surrounds the meat, cooking it from the outside in. When food is taken out of the skillet or oven too early, it can be undercooked, taken out too late and it’s overcooked. In the case of the pan fried steak, it’s being cooked from the middle of the meat to the outside edges. So while you might find the center of that grilled steak a perfectly medium rare, the outside texture proves to be dry and chewy. There is a better way to consume your steak and sous vide cooking. Water transfers heat through vacuum-sealed food at an even rate, much more efficiently than air or steam. And because this sous vide style cooking allows us to bring the water to the exact temperature, the food can cook precisely at the desired serving temperature. This creates a perfectly and evenly cooked product throughout, providing a tenderness and flavor that are of the highest quality.
We can consistently have great meat consistency:
Not only does this method create the most precisely delicious food you will ever eat, but also the nutrition-rich, color and mouthfeel-preserved amazing result can be replicated every single time. High temperatures can cause foods to lose their flavor and moisture, whereas low temperature cooking allows the flavor to stay within the food. You can cook just about anything using the method of sous vide, including vegetables and fruits. Have your ever tried a sous vide seasonal pear drizzled with a red wine reduction? Amazing! Sous Vide’s efficient heat transfer and precise temperature control promises wonderful flavor and texture each and every time.
And let’s just think about the trends of the time for a moment. No one wants fake food any more. Everyone wants simple, fresh, made to eat food that can easily be consumed at home but is also delicious.
So if you want to be part of the rise, get on board now!