What is Sous Vide?Everything you need to know.
Everyone from expert chefs to home cooks and social media foodies has taken an interest in, practiced, and enjoyed sous vide cooking during the past few years. When used properly, this cooking technique produces picture-perfect results with minimum effort and precise temperatures.
What is Sous Vide?
This is a French phrase that means “under pressure” OR “under vacuum”. It is a technique of modern cooking which implies food to be cooked under pressure. It requires a vacuum sealer, a sous vide machine, and a pan for cooking.
It is pronounced as “Sous vide” (pronounced sue veed). Sous Vide is a part of Sous Vide Cooking this technique of cooking that requires a Sous vide cooker.
Procedure of cooking through Sous Vide method
The steps for cooking food sous vide include putting the food you want to cook in a plastic bag, putting the bag into a water container with the sous vide machine, adjusting the machine to the temperature you want, and leaving the food in the water until it achieves that temperature. The temperature of the water is precisely controlled by sous vide devices, which allows your food to reach that degree and cook through evenly without ever exceeding that temperature.
If you’ve ever eaten beef that was pink in the middle and gray around the edges, a cut cooked sous vide will be a consistent pink, or whatever your preference is, from edge to edge.
What is the History of Sous Vide?
In reality, the invention of sous vide did not take place in a prestigious and avant-garde professional kitchen. Actually, it is the work of US Army colonel Ambrose McGuckian, who was the first to cook meat and vegetables that were packed in plastic bags and submerged in a water bath in an effort to raise the caliber of hospital cuisine.
In 1968, McGuckian was tasked with enhancing the meals in the South Carolina Greenville Hospital system while controlling manufacturing costs. After doing some investigation, he learned that cooking food in plastic bags not only produced nicer results when done under controlled conditions, but also increased the food’s shelf life. This was good news for those in charge of providing the hospital meals because hospital cuisine is notoriously bland.
In May 1969, McGuckian reported his discovery in Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, and professional chefs adopted the idea in the years that followed.
Two chefs, Bruno Goussault and George Paulus, are largely acknowledged as having used water bath cooking for the first time in the culinary world. In 1971, Goussault used immersion cooking to increase roast beef’s suppleness, and in 1974, Pralus used it to keep foie gras’s fattiness. The two chefs eventually teamed up and collaborated to create and perfect the technique, which they called sous vide, utilizing the tools and techniques that are still in use today.
When did the Sous Vide technique become famous?
After Goussault and Praulus introduced sous vide to commercial kitchens in the 1970s, it gained popularity, but for a long time, it was kept a well-guarded secret inside the professional cooking community. It has only recently become a cooking technique for the beginner, household chef, finding its way into the kitchen of the home cook. In fact, British chef Heston Blumenthal is one of the most well-known, impassioned proponents for sous vide, calling it, “the single biggest improvement in cooking technology in decades,” according to Sous Vide Equipment.
Because immersion circulators and other necessary equipment have only lately become accessible to the average cook, sous vide has lagged behind in popularity. True sous vide cooking was previously exclusively available to chefs and professional cooks employed in high-end establishments. Currently, sous vide cookers can be purchased for roughly $100 at well-known chain stores like Target or online from retailers like Amazon.