Try this at home: Sous-vide, a mainstay of restaurant kitchens for years, goes DIY.
COOKING UNDER PRESSURE
— by Sandra McKenzie
Tracey Kusiewicz In the foreground, salmon is about to be vacuum-packed in preparation for immersion in a water bath. In the background is the Poly-science thermal circulator that will keep the water temperature consistent while the fish is poached gently.
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EAT MAGAZINE MAY | JUNE 2010
It began, as so much does, with an egg. And not just any egg. It was, Peter, my husband and gourmand extraordinaire, declared, the finest egg he had ever tasted, with a silky, moist white surrounding a perfectly formed orb of custard-like yolk. This minor miracle, poached in a water bath held at a precise temperature of 63°C for an hour or more, owed more to the laws of physics than to the culinary wizardry of chef David Hawksworth, (who is soon to open his eponymous restaurant at the Hotel Georgia) who prepared the egg as part of a demonstration of sous-vide cookery at Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks. No longer considered revolutionary, sous vide (the term means “under vacuum”), has been a mainstay of high-end restaurant kitchens for nearly two decades now. The method, originally developed in Europe for the catering industry, involves gently poaching food that has been vacuum-sealed. This has several advantages for commercial food preparation: it’s hygienic, energy-efficient and produces standardized results impossible to achieve with any other cooking method. Once sealed and cooked, then cooled rapidly, the food can be refrigerated or frozen, then reheated in its bag for serving with little or no deterioration in quality. Because the food is never in direct contact with water, there is no leaching of flavours or nutrients. The vacuum packing, coupled with long, slow cooking, reduces shrinkage, tenderizes meats and intensifies flavours. Food is cooked to a specific internal temperature, then held there, so the risk of overcooking is minimal (though not quite impossible, according to Thomas Keller, restaurateur and author of Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide). What sous-vide cooking can do for tougher, less expensive cuts of meat is a revelation—beef short ribs, for instance, cooked at 56°C for 24 hours, melt into tender, flavourful, medium-rare perfection. So sous vide is here to stay, at least in restaurant kitchens. How about at home? Is there a purely domestic life in this beast’s future? Peter thinks so. Beyond the perfectly prepared egg, chef Hawksworth also produced beef that was rare throughout, with no overcooked bits at either end, and salmon with the taste and texture of sashimi-grade seafood. Peter was convinced enough to invest in the necessary equipment. That equipment does not come cheap. My husband is a perfectionist, so only the professional-quality stuff would do – specifically, a VacMaster vacuum chamber sealing unit, a Poly Science thermal circulator, guaranteed accurate to within a half-degree, and a Comark temperature probe, which added up to about the cost of a mid-price Alaskan cruise for two. But there are less-expensive set-ups, and DIY solutions abound. We’ll get to those later.
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