Sous-Vide Cooking with Heston Blumenthal
"It's going to revolutionize home cooking in ways that the microwave didn't even dream of doing."
[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
The principles of sous-vide (French for "under vacuum") cookery are simple: seal the raw food in a vacuum-sealed plastic pouch, then submerge it in a water bath that is kept at the final temperature you want to serve the food.
So, for example, a chicken breast reaches the precise point where its proteins have set, but have yet to start squeezing moisture out of the muscle fibers at 140°F. So if you have your chicken in a pouch in a water bath kept at exactly 140°F, you will have perfect chicken every time, with absolutely no possibility of overcooking.
Now that Top Chef has brought sous-vide awareness to home cooks everywhere (and if you've eaten at a fancy restaurant in the last five years, chances are, at least part of your food was cooked sous-vide), it was only a matter of time before a home version of the $1,000-plus thermal water circulators required for controlling the water baths was brought into the market.
And who better to unashamedly shill for the brand new Sous-Vide Supreme (on sale now for an "introductory" price of $399) but three-Michelin star, molecular-gastro-uber-chef Heston Blumenthal, also of 30-hour hamburger fame.
His flagship restaurant, The Fat Duck, along with its dedicated experimental kitchen, is located in Bray, a small town outside of London. It's widely regarded as one of the top five restaurants in the world, and it's no coincidence 100% of their proteins, and a great deal of their vegetables, are cooked via the sous-vide method.
According to Blumenthal, "sous-vide cooking is the single greatest advancement in cooking technology in decades." Last Friday, I attended a demonstration of the new machine in the beautiful wine-tasting room at Astor Center. The early parts of the demo were hosted by the creators of the machine, Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades and gave me uncomfortable flashbacks of late-night Ronco infomercials.
That said, the thing does look pretty. A brushed stainless steel box about the size of a bread machine with a glowing control panel on the front for setting time and temperature, it contains a well for water and a computer-controlled heating element that sends power to various points on the bottom of the box to form convection currents that flow around the food, cooking it with a precision of one-tenth of a degree. Although it's called the Sous-Vide Supreme, the name is a bit of a misnomer. It's missing the "sous-vide" part—you have to buy a vacuum sealer with heat-safe bags separately.
After the sales pitch, chef Blumenthal came on with his assistant, chef Kyle Connaughton, who was taking a break from his job of running The Fat Duck's Experimental Kitchen. The room—which was full of a dozen odd reporters, chefs, doctors, and one Michael Ruhlman—got visibly excited. This was going to be an edible demo.
Heston's intro consisted of a mind-bending talk about one of his more fantastical dishes (the Mock Turtle Soup he created for the BBC series Heston's Victorian Feast) that involved cooking, ice filtering, re-freezing at negative 80 degrees, centrifuging, and freeze-drying just to make a stock. After we were sufficiently awestruck, he served us our first course: Gently Cooked Scrambled Eggs.
As Blumenthal spoke about egg proteins and how they coagulate, chef Connaughton carefully squeezed the eggs—which had been cooking in a 163.8°F water bath for 20 minutes—out of their plastic pouches before drizzling them with clarified beurre noiette, and a generous shaving of white truffles. Never in my life have I eaten eggs that were so perfectly cooked: soft, rich, and custard-like with tender, barely set curds. Heston Blumenthal, perfect eggs, and a white truffle all in one room together? If only my wife had been there, I could have died right then, a happy man.
Next up was salmon served two ways—one brined, the other unbrined. Brining, which involves submerging your protein in salt water, changes the shape of some of the muscle fibers on the exterior layers of the meat, allowing them to absorb and retain more moisture as they cook. It's essentially a safe-guarding technique that helps protect the outermost layers of your food from drying out too much through overcooking. With the sous-vide technique, I found the brining to be totally unnecessary— even the unbrined salmon was tender, moist, and evenly cooked from edge to center. Both salmons were a tad overdone for my liking through. An error?
Blumenthal quickly addressed this: "I cooked this salmon at 45°C [113°F], which is a few degrees higher than I like my salmon—I was afraid that the soft, jelly-like texture that I like might have been off-putting for some of your palates."
Chef, in the future, if it's good for you, it's good for me.
Eggplant cooked with olive oil then quickly fried and drizzled with kabayaki glaze was next. "Fruits and vegetables have things like pectin and cellulose that take higher temperatures to break down than meat proteins," explained the professorial Blumenthal. "This eggplant was cooked at 90°C (192°F)." It was melt-in-your-mouth tender, though it was underwhelmed by the store-bought sauce (the chefs arrived in New York only a few hours before the event and didn't have time to make the sauce themselves).
Chicken cooked sous-vide is mind-blowingly incredible.
"You know your chicken breast is perfect when you cut it and you have a smooth surface—you can't even see the muscle fibers," said Blumenthal. And perfect it was: as tender and moist as the world's best pork chop. So soft that teeth were almost unnecessary. It demonstrated what to me is the greatest selling point of the machine. Chicken breasts are the bane of any line cook's existence, and the yardstick to which a good cook can be measured by—even slight overcooking turns them into sawdust.
But in a competition between the greatest line cook in the world cooking chicken via traditional methods and an idiot armed with a sous-vide machine, I'd put my money on the idiot any day.
Think about it: as long as you can set a temperature knob correctly, your chicken is going to be cooked exactly the same way that chicken at the best restaurants in the world is cooked, with no chance whatsoever of screwing it up. Even if you forget and leave the chicken floating in its warm bath for an extra hour, it's still not going to overcook. It's truly a "set it and forget it" appliance.
It's going to revolutionize home cooking in ways that the microwave didn't even dream of doing.
The final savory course was a slow-cooked steak, which Kyle seared after removing it from its pouch (because of the low-temperatures involved, no browning takes place in sous-vide cooked food). Like the other courses, the beef was superlative, although it came out slightly colder than I would have liked it.
This is one thing I've noticed since sous-vide hit restaurants—since the food starts out at cooler temperatures in the kitchen, there's a much higher chance that your food will come to the table lukewarm. A small drawback that careful attention can help avoid.
As we savored our final course—slices of pear cooked sous-vide with vanilla and Riesling—chef Blumenthal answered some of our questions about the quality of the machine. Once it's brought up to temperatures, it uses power at a rate of 60 watts—that's about the same as a lightbulb—which is good to know, considering that some sous-vide recipes for tougher cuts like ribs or tongue call for cooking times as long as 72 hours. Apparently, he's kept one in his laboratory wired with a thermocouple that monitored its temperature for a week and found that it was accurate to within a tenth of a degree—that's even more precise than the restaurant models!
I'll be getting one of these puppies in my kitchen some time in the next couple weeks, and I plan on putting it through some serious paces, so stay tuned to find out what it can do. If the Showtime Rotisserie taught us anything, it's that kitchen appliances come and go. The difference here is that the Sous-Vide Supreme is more than just another well-marketed appliance. If it really does what it claims to do, it offers home cooks something that has never been offered before: the opportunity to cook their food in exactly the same way that every three-Michelin starred restaurant cooks. Not just a pale imitation of how they cook, but exactly how they cook.
So will this really revolutionize home cooking? If we're to believe chef Blumenthal, it's in the bag.
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44 Comments:
$399 seems reasonable for the machine. Not much cleaning up to do once you are done cooking.
redfish at 9:32AM on 10/26/09
Under-pressure is quite the opposite of sous-vide. Sous-vide means in vacuum. Under pressure would be sous-pression.
I don't know where Keller and McGee got that notion, but in terms of language it's just wrong.
SqueezeBottle at 9:36AM on 10/26/09
More wasteful, consumerist silliness from the go-to-any-lengths-for-a-single-delicious-bite school of gourmandise. For one thing, to say this will "revolutionize home cooking in ways that the microwave didn't even dream of doing" presupposes that the microwave revolutionized home cooking in the first place. In fact, all it revolutionized was the reheating of leftovers and stale coffee, as a sort of consolation prize for rendering us stupider and less skilled. It isn't awfully hard to envision the day when thrift-store shelves will be lined with home sous-viderators, alongside all those wedding present bread machines.
Barry Foy at 9:40AM on 10/26/09
ah... the sexiness of brushed metal.
when you show us more in the coming weeks, can it come with a recommendation on how you get those things in those air vacuum plastic looking bags? i'm assuming the machine doesn't do that too..
foodinmouth at 9:40AM on 10/26/09
Barry Foy FTW!
SqueezeBottle at 9:43AM on 10/26/09
@squeezebottle
In fact, the contents of the the bags that have been put in a vacuum sealer are
@Barry Foy
I really believe that this one is different! It's the first time that a product has been introduced to the market that is already in use by every single top restaurant in the world, and not just as a curiosity used once in a while to produce an interesting dish - it is used for pretty much every single protein in every single high-end restaurant. All those chefs can't be wrong!
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at 9:51AM on 10/26/09
Oops - dunno what happened to the first half of that comment. What I was saying was that the contents are under pressure: pressure is defined as the force per area applied perpendicularly to a surface. For air pressure, that force is proportional to the relative air density between two areas. In a sous-vide bag, the air density inside is much lower than the air density outside (because of the vacuum inside), and since it is in a compressible plastic pouch, this means that the outside air "presses" on the contents of the bag, and they end up compressed.
For example, put a cube of watermelon in a sous-vide bag, and when it comes out, is will have been pressed to less than half of its original volume.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at 9:56AM on 10/26/09
Honestly, I've been waiting for something like this for a while.
@foodinmouth -- when you pre-order, they offer you the option of purchasing a $7.99 Reynolds HandiVac system.
dvchurch at 10:00AM on 10/26/09
Thank you J. Kenji, for another informative and interesting article! Nice pun at the end there too.
Some aspects of this product are tempting - the perfectly moist chicken, for example and the custard-like scrambled eggs. The one thing, however, that I couldn't get out of my mind is the idea of BPAs or other plastic chemicals coming from the bags. I'd be concerned about using this every day for that reason. I know you mentioned that consumers must buy their own heat proof bags, but was there any info provided by the presenters on this as a potential problem? Health or taste wise?
yayfood at 10:04AM on 10/26/09
@yayfood - BPA is typically present in hard, clear plastics (think old-school baby bottles). If it's softer or translucent (i.e., not perfectly clear) then it is probably BPA-free.
dvchurch at 10:07AM on 10/26/09
Granted I've never eaten anything sous-vide so this is only a reaction to the visuals but that meat does not look appetizing to me at all, especially the chicken. I'd rather have something roasted, grilled, fried, etc...
bobbob at 10:12AM on 10/26/09
@dvchurch, thank you for the clarification. I'd been wondering about that.
yayfood at 10:16AM on 10/26/09
@J. Kenji Lopez-Alt - I think that all depends on whether or the item you are vacuum packing has air in it or not. I'm pretty a steak packed in a vacuum bag has no more atmospheric pressure exerted on it than when it's out of the bag.
Anyway, my comment was only about the translation of sous-vide and it would seem that the original post has been corrected.
SqueezeBottle at 10:19AM on 10/26/09
Sorry about the hasty typing. The words "not" and "certain" need to go in there somewhere.
SqueezeBottle at 10:21AM on 10/26/09
i'm also tired of all these 'special' gadget. I reminisenced the good old days of hour roasted meals that don't come from a metal container. Granted it is a very useful machine, but let's not let advanced technologies take away the authentic methods of cooking food. Great and informative article though. Learned a lot about sous-vide.
gargupie at 10:23AM on 10/26/09
The idea is intriguing, but this does sound a little bit wasteful. Everything cooked in this has to be vacuum-sealed in plastic? Hmm. Find me some biodegradable bags that can survive cooking in a hot-water bath and we're in business.
@bobbob - I agree, that chicken looks awful. Can't speak to the taste of course, but it's not the most appetizing presentation. Almost chicken-in-a-can level of awfulness.
toad3000 at 10:31AM on 10/26/09
Captain Buzzkill here,
this technology is great when used correctly. Done correctly it is safe, done incorrectly you are dealing with environments that can produce all sorts of problems. When used incorrectly, say cooking something below 140 degrees for 3 days is a potential food safety nightmare. Sous Vide (without air) means you can grow botulism if the finished item is temperature abused, or even during the cooking cycle. Not hitting kill temperatures for salmonella and staph are possible as well. This is where cooking and science can collide, possibly with disastrous consequences, so learn the food safety before you jump into this.
Meat guy at 10:51AM on 10/26/09
"Meat guy" made one of my comments -- I think I read that the NYC health department was very concerned to find some of the cooking temperatures being used...
Also, how many home cooks will want to cook for as long as these recipes require? first there's the prep of the food, then the cooking, then the post production... I just don't see mass adoption of this device.
elisabeth58 at 11:04AM on 10/26/09
I have used sv at home many times, so far so good, no one dead or sick. Cooked steaks at 125* for ten hours in various infusions and marinades, then quickly seared the outsides in clarified butter. Perfect temperature, nice crispy seared crust. It's awesome for making custards for ice cream, sabayon, etc. If you follow basic hygiene rules and use clean, fresh ingredients you will be fine. The NYC DOH has ridiculously draconian rules. They don't even allow restaurants to cure or ferment their own products without following a strict Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan. For a process which has been used by people all over the world for tens of thousands of years. They would rather ban a process like sv just because it's easier for their bureaucracy to deal with.
simon at 11:38AM on 10/26/09
@J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
I attended the Chicago demonstration of the machine, and I went through the exact same menu. Everything I had was extraordinary. I mean, I'd never had a pear that was so beautifully cooked! Just think about it, even the best poached pears have outsides that are mushier than the insides. But this one was the same texture throughout. It's astouding.
Honestly, though, it's the eggs that I keep thinking about. They were flawless. To think that a home cook, or the local diner, could consistently turn out eggs like this is enough to blow my mind. No more overcooked eggs! It really will change everything.
I understand the comments on how the chicken looks. When chicken is cooked like this, the meat doesn't become stringy, so it doesn't look "normal". Like Kenji explained, "you can't even see the muscle fibers". It's initially a strange texture. What it honesty tastes like is eating chicken with gravy built in with every bite. All the juices are still inside the chicken. So every bite is perfect.
In Chicago, Blumenthal presented two versions of the dish. One straight out of the bag, and one that was removed from the bag and then sauteed in a skillet to crisp up the skin. The sauteed version was still unbelievably juicy, but it also had some of those roasted notes that make a solid roast chicken so comforting. I think I preferred the latter.
My mind is boggled with the possiblities of this machine. This instrument doesn't replace other cooking methods like roasting and sauteeing. It's just another tool that can be used in wonderful ways.
Nick Kindelsperger at 12:01PM on 10/26/09
I was just asking my husband yesterday when he thought a home version of sv would hit the stores. It's interesting...I wish I could just rent one for a couple of weeks to try it out.
@simon - I hear you about the proliferation of fermenting/pickling/curing regulations, but keep in mind...10,000 years ago there were fewer lawyers, too!! :-)
arjava at 12:15PM on 10/26/09
Very simply, I need one of these.
funkopolis at 12:21PM on 10/26/09
I guess tasting is probably believing, but I think this would just take out all the fun of cooking. I mean, the challenge of getting something 'perfect' is what keeps me going, even if it's not attainable.
jujyfruit at 12:23PM on 10/26/09
I just ordered one. I'd been looking at putting together an immersion circulator contraption for a while now, but this looks like a much better, easier, and cheaper solution.
rajin at 12:57PM on 10/26/09
The SousVide website offers an option to buy a Reynolds Handi-Vac, however, they should also note that the Handi-Vac has been discontinued by Reynolds.
FlavorCountry at 1:13PM on 10/26/09
@rajin - this is a lot more expensive than using a PID with a rice cooker/slow cooker/electric hotplate.
The Reynolds HandiVac sucks and is not up to the task. The foodsaver is a good investment regardless, and is the bare minimum necessary to do it right without dropping some serious money on a chamber vac.
simon at 2:17PM on 10/26/09
Most restaurants using sous vide techniques are most likely violating county health codes. As stated before, C. botulinum growth will be stimulated under modified atmospheric pressure. Variences are needed, and they are not easy to obtain. A chef a Johnson & Wales University received his varience in sous vide cooking and he showed what was a textbook of information required to be learned, reguarding health deparment regulationss and operating every aspect of the machine. Anyone know if this is still banned in NYC?
Mikey N at 2:25PM on 10/26/09
The ban in NYC was lifted in 2007 but restaurants that wish to use sv in their kitchens must complete and submit a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan, which can be prohibitively expensive for all but the most high end restaurants.
simon at 2:34PM on 10/26/09
@J.Kenji Dude, if they can do steaks in these, imagine how good a burger might be?
Slow cook it for a little while, then take it out and brown it up...or it could be a huge fail. Probably hugely dependant on the blend(s) of meat in the burger patty.
RossS at 3:23PM on 10/26/09
@RossS
Don't think I haven't thought about it! I'll definitey be trying it next week. My concern would be that the patty would get compressed under the pressure of the bag, but we'll see. I've had burgers cooked in a C-vap then finished on a plancha before (That's how Tony Maws does it at Craigie STreet Bistrot), which is a similar concept (C-vap is a fancy steam oven that gives you results somewhat similar to sous-vide style cooking).
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at 3:58PM on 10/26/09
@J. Kenji - I have always wondered why I have never come across a burger cooked sous-vide and then quickly seared for the crust. I'm looking forward to reading about your results.
ESNY1077 at 4:01PM on 10/26/09
I think a revolution has to happen in peoples' idea of food in general before sous vide machines become a common sight in households. This machine is great for those who want to try ferran adria or blumenthal style cooking at home but most people already have a preconceived idea of their 'ideal steak' or 'ideal burger' - one which is inherently tied to traditional cooking techniques.
If this machine is supposed to spearhead a revolution in food - it's got it's work cut out. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great tool but I doubt it will hold as much mass appeal as Heston Blumenthal would like.
foolishpoolish at 5:38PM on 10/26/09
Chef Blumenthal is helping to bring this form of cooking to the current public palate, but I remember writing about similar methods back in the 70s...It is already being used on such long distance railroad lines as Amtrak.
Apparently it must be done under highly controlled conditions so that it does not cause health issues, hence the expensive equipment.
gutreactions at 11:17PM on 10/26/09
Chicken cooked to 140F just isn't safe. The "quality and freshness" of your ingredients don't matter; chickens are biological organisms and they frequently contain salmonella no matter how fresh they are, how free their range or whose backyard they were raised in. Your handling of the ingredients doesn't matter if they're already contaminated. Long holds (I am loathe to call it cooking) at low temperatures in anaerobic conditions is a recipe for disaster. The USDA didn't pick the numbers to be mean or to limit our options, they picked them in an attempt to help people avoid foodbourne illness.
Hannekin at 11:18PM on 10/26/09
@Hannekin: 140°F is potentially safe for cooking chicken, based on the science behind the growth of microorganisms. When dealing with food safety, one must also consider the time held at a certain temperature. While salmonella does not die instantly at 140°F, it will die if held long enough at that temperature. (More precisely, enough will die to no longer be considered a health hazard). The USDA temperature recommendations are total bs. It's more to cover their own ass.
But yes, proper cooking is a huge issue when dealing with low temperature cooking. I hope this equipment comes with the proper food safety documentation detailing temperatures and times. If you're interested in low temp cooking, you really should read Douglas Baldwin's highly informative (and science-based) sous-vide site: http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html
-----
I have a homemade sous-vide setup that was constructed for under $100 using an ebayed Auber Instruments temperature controller, a hot plate and a stock pot. It's just a precise water bath, and is one of the most versatile cooking equipments that I have. If Ron Popeil were selling this, it would go something like this: But wait! It's not just a Sous-Vide Supreme, it's also a yogurt maker, dough proofer, slow-cooker crockpot, grain masher, red wine fermenter, perfect creme-brulee cooker, egg hatcher....
Unfortunately, the Sous-Vide Supreme does not allow you to cook exactly like they do in Michelin-starred restaurants. You still need a $5000 chamber vacuum sealer to be able to do make some of the things that require compression or liquids that shouldn't be frozen beforehand.
Joe MacBu at 12:30AM on 10/27/09
I may be biased having been born in Chile and travelled extensively throughout Argentina but give me a steak cooked on a parrilla by Francis Mallman over a sous vide steak any day of the week. And yes, I have tried the latter. There are certain applications at which sous vide excels. But come on..... No home cook is going to start supper 72 hours in advance.
Humberto at 1:32AM on 10/27/09
I don't know...call me a Luddite, but.there is something about the smell of food simmering, sizzling, and roasting that makes my mouth water and my stomach growl. A kitchen without these delicious aromas wafting through the air seems rather unappetizing. Or maybe, ala elBulli, we can spritz the air with the scent of roasted pork while we gum the sous-vide version.
Pentool at 8:33AM on 10/27/09
Another issue to consider is the quality of the bags you use. commercial vacuum bags are multilayer laminate films, which contain an oxygen barrier. This allows you to pull a tight vacuum , if you have a multi thousand dollar cry o vac. Home machines generally leave levels of residual oxygen in the bag, and the simple cheap bags may not have an oxygen barrier. What does this mean? the long slow cook times, along the presence of salt and air can cause the product to develop warmed over flavor, which means they are beginning to go rancid. If the bag has no oxygen barrier, it means oxygen may be forced through the film after sealing by atmospheric pressure, you may not see a leaking bag, but oxidation can occur.
I have worked with sous vide for years, it really is not a practice you want out in uneducated hands, or in the hands of people who think they can control food safety processes by buying organic and local.
Meat guy at 9:02AM on 10/27/09
I was at this demo, and I have to agree, every bite was amazing.
Regarding the discontinued reynold's bags, their vacuum machine works just fine with the vacuum bags sold by ziploc; I've found they do a better job sucking out the air when there's a lot of liquid in the bag than the hand pump device ziploc provides.
One thing not really emphasized during the sous-vide demo is how great a combination this kind of tool is with a really good grill, like , say, a big green egg. You can sous-vide your pork chops, your steaks, your chicken, toss them on the grill to finish them off to absolute perfection. And if you like grass-fed steaks, but dont like how tough they usually are, sous-viding completely solves the problem.
mrfreddy at 9:02AM on 10/27/09
I want one! Regarding the hygiene concerns, compared to the danger of deep-frying turkeys by amateurs, this seems tame. True, it may not be for everyone, but neither is a mandoline. Anyone who grills can see the control this would give them. Looking forward to more reports.
chanterelle at 9:12PM on 10/27/09
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/6430858/Fat-Duck-food-poisoning-Heston-Blumenthal-will-face-no-action.html
''A health report last month concluded that oysters tainted with sewage and poor staff hygiene led to guests falling ill after eating at the restaurant in Bray, Berks.
However, environmental health officials have now decided not to prosecute the 43-year-old chef over alleged breaches of food safety legislation at the eatery, which is one of only three in Britain to hold three Michelin stars. ''
If Heston Blumenthal can make people sick by not having adequate sanitation, then what is he trying to do getting home cooks to breed bacteria in a bag?
Humberto at 1:34AM on 10/28/09
This is the top of my holiday wishlist!
Kenji, you mentioned that you were getting one....how are you liking it?
FoodMayhem at 4:47PM on 12/04/09
@FoodMayhem
Just finished up testing a few days ago. Pretty good so far. Ups and downs, but mostly ups. Stay tuned for a full report soon.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at 12:40PM on 12/05/09
saw the Flickr set from Tam, can't wait for your usual, detailed reports!
avisualperson at 7:37PM on 12/09/09