Cooking sous vide is easier than its fancy name might suggest. You
simply seal the ingredients in a plastic bag (you can also use a canning jar) and place them in a water bath, a combi oven,
or any other cooker that can set and hold a target temperature to
within a degree or two. When the food reaches your target temperature or
time, you take it out, give it a quick sear or other finish, and serve
it. That’s it.
The sous vide method
yields results that are nearly impossible to achieve by traditional
means. In the photo above, both of the tenderloins started at the same
weight. The steak on the left was cooked in a pan to a core temperature
of 52 °C / 126 °F, but more than 40% of the meat was overcooked. The
other steak was cooked sous vide to the same temperature and then seared
with a blowtorch to yield a juicier steak that is done to perfection
from edge to edge.
Similarly, beef short ribs braised at 58 °C / 136 °F for 72 hours are
melt-in-your-mouth tender, yet pink and juicy. And the delicate,
custard-like texture of an egg poached at precisely 65 °C / 149 °F is
amazing.
Sous vide is especially useful for cooking meats and seafood, for
which the window of proper doneness is often vanishingly small when
traditional methods are used. When you fry a piece of fish, the flesh is
most succulent and tender within a very narrow temperature range.
Because the cooking temperature of the pan is at least 200 °C / 392 °F
hotter than the ideal core temperature of the fish, the edges will
inevitably be far more cooked than the center when pan-fried.
Chicken breasts and other poultry cuts and poultry products are often
held at a target temperature for a different reason: to kill potential
pathogens and improve the safety of the food.
The idea of preserving and cooking food in sealed packages is
ancient. Throughout culinary history, food has been wrapped in leaves,
potted in fat, packed in salt, or sealed inside animal bladders before
being cooked. People have long known that isolating food from air—
accomplished more completely by
vacuum sealing—, can arrest the decay of food. Packaging food also prevents it from drying out.
Although
sous vide literally means “under vacuum” in French,
the defining feature of the sous vide method is not packaging or vacuum
sealing; it is accurate temperature control. A computer-controlled
heater can warm a water bath to any low temperature you set, and it can
keep it there for hours—or even days, if needed.
Such mastery over heat pays off in several important ways, most
notably, freeing the cook from the tyranny of the clock. Traditional
cooking with a range, oven, or grill uses high and fluctuating
temperatures, so you must time the cooking exactly; there is little
margin for error. With just a moment’s inattention, conventional cooking
can quickly overshoot perfection.
When cooking sous vide, in contrast, most foods will taste just as
good even if they spend a few extra minutes at a target temperature, so
you can relax and devote your attention to the more interesting and
creative aspects of cooking.
Precise temperature control and uniformity of temperature has two
other big advantages. First, it allows you to cook food to an even
doneness all the way through—no more dry edges and rare centers. Second,
you get highly repeatable results. The steak emerges from the bag juicy
and pink every time.
A final important benefit is that the closed bag creates a fully
humid environment that effectively braises the food, so ingredients
cooked this way are often noticeably juicier and more tender. Food
cooked sous vide doesn’t brown, but a simple sear adds that traditional
flavor where needed so that you can have the best of both worlds.
We’
have been asked many times about the safety of cooking plastic bags.
The bottom line is that bags made expressly for cooking sous vide are
perfectly safe —as are
oven bags, popular brands of zip-top bags, and stretchy plastic wrap such as Saran Wrap.
The plastic that these products are made of is called polyethylene.
It is widely used in containers for biology and chemistry labs, and it
has been studied extensively. It is safe. But, do avoid very cheap
plastic wraps when cooking. These are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
and heating them presents a risk of chemicals leaching into the food.
–Adapted from
Modernist Cuisine at Home and
Modernist Cuisine
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