used air as the heat transfer medium in his
experiments while attempting to see if he could roast
meat in a machine which he had created to dry
potatoes. In Thompson’s own words, the meat was
“not merely eatable, but perfectly done, and most
singularly well-tasted.”
Preparation of food under pressure, with or without
heat, was developed by American and French
engineers in the mid-1960s as an industrial food
preservation method. As with Rumford, the
researchers learned that the food had
distinctive improvements in flavor
and texture. As this method was
pioneered, applying pressure to
food through vacuum sealing
was sometimes called “cryovaccing.”
The pressure notably
concentrated the flavors of
fruits, even without cooking.
The method was adopted by
Georges Pralus, a French chef, in
1974 for the Restaurant Troisgros (of
Pierre and Michel Troisgros) in Roanne,
France. He discovered that when foie gras was
cooked in this manner it kept its original appearance,
did not lose excess amounts of fat and had better
texture.
Another pioneer in sous vide is Bruno Goussault,
chief scientist of Sterling, Virginia-based food
manufacturer Cuisine Solutions. He researched the
effects of temperature on various foods and became
well known for training top chefs in the method.
Goussault developed the parameters of cooking
times and temperatures for various foods. He and
Pralus worked independently on the development of
sous vide in the 1970s, and eventually became
collaborators.
It was Goussault who pioneered the marriage of
vacuum sealing with low-temperature cooking. Pralus,
considered the father of modern sous vide, cooked
at higher temperatures.
Fast forward to today's local chefs whose patrons
want quality food at faster pace. Sous vide allows
them to marinate, or partially cook the food and finish
it off on a grill in half the time. It eliminates the head
lamps in a restaurant and drying out of the food,
especially poultry and fish.
Schiro said that when you pressurize the item,
whether it be steak, chicken or vegetables, the
enzymes compress into themselves. The coveted
marbling on steak will disappear and actually
become a tenderizer.
You can do this at home with the purchase of
the right equipment. You will need a pressure
packaging machine, or you can use Ziploc-style
freezer bags ... but don't go over 158 degrees
with those. The totally-sealed bags work best on
vegetables.
You will also need the sous vide
thermometer to keep water temperature
at a certain degree for so
many hours, and the plastic tub
or stock pot to put the bath in.
Schiro recommends the
Polyscience and Joule
thermometers for home use.
One can purchase the
equipment from $200 to
$600.
Next, select your cut of steak
and clean it as usual. Add a little oil,
add spices and herbs of your choice
(even a marinade sauce), then seal the bag. Heat
the water to the temperature you want your
steak to be (professional chefs are very secretive
about their heating temperatures and length of
time in the “water bath”). A rare steak might
mean 134 degrees to one person and 138
degrees for the next person. A one-inch thick
steak should cook in the bath at 134 degrees for
about one hour, to a maximum of four hours.
With this type of cooking the water never boils
and the steak never touches a metal surface. You
may fix the other components of your meal, go
walk the dog, or go for a dip in the pool while
the meat is “bathing.” Once your ideal temperature
is reached you may remove the meat and
sear it on the grill for about one or two minutes
each side. You may also put the finished steaks in
the refrigerator or freezer and get them out at
later time to heat them up.
With our busy lives, as well as our quest for
instant gratification and good quality food in our
processed food world, sous vide just might suit
your palette and be a time saver for dinner in a
busy week. G
M
34GASPARILLA ISLAND July/August 2018