Sous Vide

Sous Vide means “under vacuum” in French. It represents a new dimension in kitchen. From now on you can prepare yours meat or fish dishes rare, medium or well done with no variation, no error nor overcooking. Just pushing a button and forgetting it. It will be ready after some hours.

With Sous Vide technique, you will have more time for yourself, for preparing sauces, desserts or just for presenting dishes like a professional chef. Beside, you can prepare several portions at the same time with no more attention than preparing only one. Guaranteed!

Pack the food in sealed food-grade plastic bag and immerses it in a precise heated water bath. Keep the bag immersed as long as needed for your desired (rare, medium or well-done) cooking.
Time and temperature depend of the kind and the size of food but it usually take longer time and lower temperature than tradicional cooking.

This new technique has come truth because the developement of modern machines like Roner, Sous Vide Supreme and Sous Vide Demi.They are able to keep the temperature in a narrow range (0,1-0,5 Celsius)

Water bath is preferred to convection oven because water transmits heat faster than air.

Gourmetologia sells Roner model for professional use and, as a novelty, the new Sous Vide Supreme and Sous Vide Demi for home cooks.

Vacuun is only needed to keep the bag under water and not floating, so heat can be transferred homogenously to the whole piece with no cool pockets.
Some theories claimed than vacuum sealed pouches would keep the food with no oxygen and then no oxidation reaction could take place. Recent studies have demonstrated there is no difference at this respect.

The main advantage of Sous Vide is the repetitibility. You will get the same texture as far as you use the same temperature.

Doneness depends highest reached temperature.
Tenderness, for colagen-rich meat piece, depends on cooking time.

Food, mainly meat and fish but vegetables too, are cooked at the desired final temperature you want into the core, until the whole piece of food reaches that temperature and thus is done at the desired texture.

Meats are cooked between 50 and 70 Celsius, fishes are cooked between 40 and 60 Celsius and vegetables between 80 and 90 Celsius.

In traditional cooking, the heat source is much hotter than final desired temperature. This difference means that time between under- and over-cooked steaks is less than a minute. So far, when you cook at the desired final temperature, food never overcook.
Besides, in traditional cooking the food develops a gradient of textures according to the highest reached temperature in every layer. In Sous Vide, the whole piece of food reaches the same desired final temperature and thus the same final doneness.

Final doneness depends on a lot of factors. Some of them are previous to cooking (animal age, time since slaughter, temperature and time of storage, etc) and thus we do not comment them.

Despites its evident advantages, Sous Vide has two disadvantages:
- Food does not develope Maillard reaction (it occurs over 150 Celsius)
- Food is not sterilized

Both of them can be easily rectifiable.

Maillard reaction can be carried out just before put it on the plate, either in an iron pan with smoking oil or with a blowtorch during few seconds.

One of the advantages of Sous Vide Cooking is the possibilty to prepare the food and store it with no quality losses.
This permits to prepare a great amount of food in advance, ready to serve it at the same time just re-heating it.
This is very interested to hospitals, catering companies, big restaurants, hotel room food service or even to the home gourmet who can prepare during weekend the food for the whole week.

Read more about Sous Vide meat cooking
Read more about Sous Vide fish cooking
Read more about Sous Vide vegetables cooking
Sous Vide Videos .