I got to handle sous-vide cooked foods in one of the restaurants I have recently worked at. The sous-vide cooking was a whole new experience for me, and so I decided to learn more about the history and the details of the sous-vide cooking method, and to share what I had learnt about the sous-vide cooking in my blog.
Sous-vide, the french word for "under vacuum" is a method of mordern cooking in which food is sealed in a vacuumed plastic bag and then placed under temperature controlled water bath for long time cooking. The food is cooked at 55 to 60°C (140°F) just high enough to kill the bacteria in the food but low enough to keep the food fresh, evenly cooked throughout. Foods are cooked without being overcooked on the outside.
The Sous-Vide cooking was first designed by Sir Benjamin Thompson in 1799. His method used air as the heat tansfer medium.
Centuries later, the Sous-Vide cooking was re-invented by American and French engineers in the mid 1960's as industrial food preservation method.
The Sous-Vide cooking was first adopted to kitchen by Georges Pralus in 1974 for Restaurant Troisgros in France. He has discovered that the food cooked in sous-vide method kept its original shape and appearance, and did not lose the flavour, texture and moist of it. Bruno Goussault, one of the pioneers of sous-vide, has further researched the effect of temperature on foods and became the top chef in the sous-vide. He has developed the standard parameters of the cooking times and temperatures of various foods.
Cooking times and temperatures vary depending on ingredient, ingredient thickness, and other factors. Most temperatures will hover above 55°C above where bacteria can grow.
Some ingredients, like fish, will call for lower temperatures, but are generally still safe to eat as long as ingredients were well sourced.
Because ingredients are cooked completely underwater, no maillard or caramelization effect occurs. Therefore, in commercial cooking, ingredients will be quickly seared or torched to not only improve taste, but appearance as well.
Some ingredients, like fish, will call for lower temperatures, but are generally still safe to eat as long as ingredients were well sourced.
Because ingredients are cooked completely underwater, no maillard or caramelization effect occurs. Therefore, in commercial cooking, ingredients will be quickly seared or torched to not only improve taste, but appearance as well.
The reason why I think that the sous-vide method cooking is such a great development is that I have always believed that culinary and art have some sort of strong relationship. They are both created from the hands of the artists, the chefs using ingredients, or medium. As the art has met its modernism era, I have always believed that there must be something for the cooking as well and I think the sous-vide cooking is what we can call as modern cooking.