Sous Vide Cooking
If you have been watching any cooking shows lately you noticed they always want to Sous-Vide a chicken Breast or a Piece of Salmon.
Cooking the perfect piece of fish with Sous-Vide
So What's Sous-Vide?
Sous Vide it's more than just another fancy French name!
Sous Vide Cooking: The Secret Of Top Chefs
It's not just television cooking shows using Sous Vide, you'll find many international restaurants jumping onboard this cooking method.
“Sous vide cooking is the single greatest advancement in cooking technology in decades”Heston Blumenthal
In the 70's a french Chef Georges Pralus was experimenting trying to get the perfect foie gras. He discovered if he placed a Ducks fatted Liver in a sealed plastic bag & immersed it in water at constant temperature. The result the foie gras kept its original appearance with better texture and didn't lose excess amounts of fat.
The other French pioneer of Sous-Vide is Bruno Goussault who researched the effects of temperature on different foods. He found cooking vacuum-sealed beef in a low temperature-controlled water bath extended its shelf life.
Bruno continued to refine his scientific Sous-Vide techniques so he could apply then to industrial cooking. He then started training Chefs in the Sous-Vide cooking.
Restaurants started using Sous-Vide like Thomas Keller's French Laundry and Per Se.
Thomas Keller describes the benefits of Sous-Vide Cooking in his book, Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide.
“For one, it's a new toy and we all love new toys. And two, sous vide definitely goes beyond cooking in a bag. It's used for precise, à la minute cooking. When you order a steak medium, that's the temperature in the center, but the outside is cooked well done and the next layer is medium-well, et cetera. But with sous vide, that piece of meat is medium from edge to edge. Before now, few people have had a short rib rare.”Thomas Keller
Sous Vide is French cooking technique, which translates to “under vacuum” but that's only part of the equation.
To cook sous vide, you put the food in a sealed airtight plastic pouch and immerse it in an accurate temperature controlled water bath. Water gently circulates around the food, bringing it to a precise temperature and holding it there for a set of time. So you get, consistent perfect results every time.
Cooking Time and Temperature
The secret to Sous Vide cooking is mastering time and temperature. So once you get a handle on how long and at what temperature you like your food cooked it's easy. So deciding the correct cooking temperature is all about knowing your desired doneness.
As a chef, you need precise temperature because it allows you to cook food to an even doneness all the way through. So no more dry edges and rare centres.
Perfect Beef Short Ribs Sous Vide Cooked
Do you want to cook a perfect steak?
If you have to cook a medium-rare Steak, I'm sure you would prefer serve the same consistent juicy and pink Steak every time.
Let's look how to cook a perfect Medium-Rare Porterhouse Steak
Cooking a Porterhouse Steak The Old School Way
- Season your steak...
- Heat up your Frypan...
- Cook a 2cm-thick piece of steak for 4 minutes each side for medium. Or...
- Cook your steak in the pan to a core temperature of 54°C...
- Then let it rest for 5 minutes so the juices to settle...
I'm sure you have your own version of cooking a Steak but you only have a small window of proper doneness when using a frypan. When you fry your porterhouse, the steak is only succulent and tender within a narrow temperature range. Because the cooking temperature of the pan is at least 200°C hotter than the ideal core temperature of your steak, the edges will be far more cooked than the centre when pan-fried.
So here's the Tricky bit...
When you cook with traditional methods, the heat flows from the burner to a pan then into your food, Or... Your oven heats the air around the food, cooking it. So your problem is now the air in the oven and the metal in the pan are much hotter than you want your food to reach.
You now have a timing issue. You've have to take it away from the heat at just the right time. If you take it off too early, then you get an undercooked steak. Or... if you leave too long on the heat then you get an overcooked Steak.
This is why it's so hard to keep serving perfectly cooked Steaks...
Sous vide cooking makes it easy to cook a perfect steak...
To get a perfect medium-rare Porterhouse steak
- Season your steak...
- Submerged your vacuum sealed Porterhouse Steaks in Water controlled bath...
- The water is held at your final temperature you want the food to reach and the food is left submerged until it reaches that temperature...
- Set & forget temperature: For your Medium-rare Porterhouse Steak you will need 54°C to 57°C for 1 to 4 hours. 2 1/2 hours for temperatures under 57°C...
- So now you can get on with your other prep work because you're not chained to Stove
- You can take it out as soon as it's done cooking, or let it rest in the water until it’s ready to serve...
- Then seared your steak with a blowtorch to yield a juicier steak. Cooked to perfection from edge to edge...
One of the limitations of Sous-Vide cooking getting browning (Maillard reactions). Because browning occurs at a higher temperature than boiling point of water. So to get the flavours and "crust" texture developed by browning you will have sear it at high heat before it's sealed in the bag or afterwards.
So there you have the Porterhouse Steak cooked to perfection.
So now do you see why restaurants love using Sous-VideNo more tired food you expect to get from an 80's bistro. Hopefully, these are just fading memory long gone.
- No more steaks cooked to death like eating an old boot...
- No more serving up dry rubber chicken...
- No more would overcooked fish leave the pass
Chefs around the world use sous vide cooking to prepare food to the perfect level of doneness while also retaining its nutrients.
Sous Vide technique isn’t just limited to high-end restaurants, now any restaurant can use this technique.
To get started with Sous-vide Cooking, you only need:
Vacuum Sealer- ORVED VM315 Commercial Vacuum Sealers
Check out the INSTANTA SV38 Sous Vide Water Bath or
Check out the ORVED VM315 Commercial Vacuum Sealers or
Immersion Circulator - SOUS VIDE PS7001 Professional Classic Immersion Circulator
Check out the SOUS VIDE PS7005 Professional Classic Immersion Circulator
Water Tank - SOUS VIDE SVACB002 Classic Series 30 Ltr Cambro Tank
Check out the Water Tank - SOUS VIDE SVACB002 Classic Series 30 Ltr Cambro Tank
To get started using Sous- Vide talk to Sydney Commercial Kitchens to see how easy it's to set up.