The Costco Connection - September 2015

By Fiona Sims

I’VE NEVER BEEN able to get okra right. It’s
always slimy. Then one day I had okra in a
restaurant that was perfectly cooked. No glu-
eyness. Perfectly tender, and singing with
spices. I asked the chef how he had cooked it,
and he replied, “Sous vide.”
I knew that this cooking technique revo-
lutionized the cooking of meat and fish in
restaurants, and because of it I haven’t had a
badly cooked piece of meat at a banquet in the
last 10 years. For anyone wondering how on
earth the chefs at big events can turn out steak
after perfect steak, sous vide is your answer. I
guess that applies to vegetables now, too.

Until recently sous vide cooking has been a restaurant thing, requiring expensive machinery—including a scientific immersion circulator that costs about the same as a week’s vacation in the sun. In the last five years, however, sous vide technology has come a long way, and affordable models are now available for the home. In fact, it has become the latest must-have for passionate home cooks, alongside the likes of a steam oven and a Big Green Egg barbecue. So if you are still fantasizing about the 72-hour braised beef short ribs that you enjoyed recently in a top restaurant—you can now live the dream and make your own.

Sous vide, pronounced soo-veed, is
French for “under vacuum.” You seal ingredi-
ents in a plastic bag and place it in a water
bath, a combi oven or any cooker that can
set—and, most important, hold—a target
temperature to within a degree or two. When
the food reaches the target temperature or
time, you take it out. If it’s a piece of meat, this
is your cue to sear it quickly. Then you serve
it. It’s as simple as that. Cooking times vary, of
course. Certain vegetables can be finished in
as little as 30 minutes and large cuts of meat
can take as long as 72 hours.
You can see why banquet chefs love this
technique so much, and why many restaurant
chefs can’t do without it. When they’re under
pressure, it’s one less thing to worry about, as
most food cooked this way can handle a few
extra minutes of hanging around at its target
temperature without compromising on flavor
or texture.
I should point out that the idea of pre-
serving and cooking food in a sealed package
is not new. We’ve been doing it for centuries:
potting food in fat, packing food in salt and
wrapping food in leaves, in an effort to keep
out the air and prevent it from spoiling. Sous
vide just takes it to a whole new level.
Sous vide is essentially braising the food,
which means all those juices and vitamins are
retained, and not boiled off or steamed away
as in conventional cooking. It retains color,
too, and shape, and you don’t need to add but-
ter and oil, so it can be a healthier way to cook
(ignoring those restaurant chefs who undo
the good by serving said item in a puddle of
buttery sauce). And here’s another plus: It
allows you to cook food evenly all the way
through. If you want juicy pink steak, you can
have juicy pink steak—every time, with a uni-
form pinkness from edge to edge. And fish
retains that pearly just-cooked state long after
conventional cooking would have spoiled it.

In short, sous vide can cook steaks evenly all the way through, deliver juicy chicken and produce perfectly cooked vegetables, even okra. What’s not to like? C