This special blog post today is sponsored by both Foodbuzz and Electrolux. Electrolux has committed $750,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and Foodbuzz is getting involved not only by sponsoring all the 24x24 posts, but also by donating a matching amount to the OCRF.
Having spent my career working at companies that research cancer-fighting drugs, I find this cause particularly close to my heart. I'm sure all of you know someone who has struggled with cancer and can agree that current treatments are far from satisfactory. Thanks so much to Foodbuzz and Electrolux for investing in this important cause.
Although cooking in a water bath has been a technique that’s been around since medieval times, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that sous vide, a method of cooking food under vacuum in precisely temperature-controlled water baths, was invented in France. It would not be adopted in the US until 2000, when Daniel Boulud learned this fascinating technique from French chef Gerard Bertholon.
With the recent popularity of food shows and celebrity chefs, this method has taken the cooking world by a storm. In fact, many fine dining establishments across America now use this technique.
Despite its popularity in restaurants, it has not really caught on at home. A quick search of Amazon.com only yielded a handful of books about sous vide cooking at home, three of which published within the last six months.
"Sous vide" literally means "under vacuum" in French. Sort of a misnomer, this method of cooking actually involves two parts. Food is first sealed under vacuum in a plastic bag and then cooked in a water bath set at a very precise temperature.
Sous vide cooking has a lot of interesting benefits. First, because you can precisely control the temperature of your water bath, you won't overcook your food. This is great for restaurant cooks who can't always predict exactly when something needs to be served. You can keep a steak at 130�° F (medium rare) for hours in that water bath and take it out to sear just moments before the guests arrive.
Second, this technique allows you to obtain textures of food you could not obtain with traditional cooking. I'll go into this more later, but a sous vide egg has an beautiful velvety creamy texture that is difficult to obtain with traditional methods. Likewise, you can cook shortribs at a low temperature for hours, softening it until it is melt-in-your-mouth tender yet still medium rare at the same time!
Finally, sous vide cooking, in many instances, allows you to reduce significantly the amount of cooking liquid you use. You can marinate with just a small amount marinade in the bag. Similarly, you can confit a piece of meat with just a small amount of fat, unlike the traditional method where you needed to submerge the entire piece of meat in a pot of melted fat.
You can rig your own sous-vide system with a magic cooker, beer cooler, or a cast iron pot. I've tried the magic cooker method, with great success. Alternatively, if you're not the tinkering type, you can use a professional unit, such as the SousVide Supreme
An Exploration of Sous Vide Cooking Applied to Various Cuisines
Thanks to Foodbuzz, I was able to create a meal exploring sous vide through various cultures for this month's 24, 24. I decided to be ambitious and try using this method on a variety of different cuisines and different "classes" of restaurants.
First, we will look at traditional French cooking done in super high-end fashion as interpreted by Thomas Keller. This fancy take on the traditional French duck confit bistro salad, uses sous vide in several of the components. This is a recipe for a dish actually served at his flagship restaurants per se and The French Laundry.
Second, we will explore homestyle Italian cuisine. I have taken a traditional Italian recipe by Marcella Hazan for spaghetti carbonara but have "deconstructed" it by removing the eggs from the sauce. Instead, we will cook an egg sous vide and break it over the top during service.
Finally, we will look at Korean cuisine via David Chang of Momofuku
. His 48-hour short ribs are served at Ko, his Michelin-starred flagship restaurant. He transforms a humble piece of meat into something glorious partly by using the sous vide method.
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