Sous Vide Cookbook: the Effortless Technique for Perfectly Cooked Meals

By LEANNE BAKER

With full macro calculations and recipe images included!
 

Sous vide has been a fashionable cooking technique in restaurants for years, offering tender and mouthwatering dishes cooked to perfection.

Now, from the creator of some of the best sous vide recipes – the gourmet chef Leanne Baker - comes this easy-to-follow cookbook that clearly illustrates how to harness the power of sous vide technology to achieve restaurant-quality dishes in the comfort of your own home. Discover the stress-free way to cook a delicious Turbot with Mushroom Salad and Apricot Dressing, classics like Juicy Sous Vide Steak, and next-level desserts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LEANNE BAKER
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781985886001

Book preview

Sous-vide

Sous-vide is a style of cooking where specific food items are stored in a vacuum-sealed plastic pouch, sometimes a glass jar, and then submerged in a water bath for a relatively long period of time. The food can remain in the water bath anywhere from 6 hours, and in some cases, as long as two days. The temperature of the water is lower than normal cooking temperatures. Generally, the water temperature ranges from fifty-five to sixty Celsius for meat and a little higher for vegetables. This blend of lower temperature and extended cooking times allows the food to retain moisture, while not overcooking the surface.

History

For anyone cooking by the sous-vide method, there are three main characteristics that give the food a unique taste and texture. The first of the three is low-temperature cooking. This is important because the low heat is able to slowly seep through the entire food. In turn, trapping moisture and giving the specific food a level of tenderness that is unmatched. The second characteristic is food that is enclosed and separated from its heating environment. Because the food is enclosed, the flavors are unable to be cooked out. This gives the food a substantial amount of flavor that can be lost in other methods of cooking. The third, and final, characteristic of sous-vide cooking is the pressurized vacuum-sealed enclosure. This vacuum-sealed wrapping is the only way to fully contain both the heat and the flavor for long amounts of time. The interesting thing about all three characteristics is that they were all developed separately.

The first characteristic, low-temperature cooking, was created by Benjamin Thompson in 1799. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford was physicist and inventor. His progressive experiments led to the 19th-century revolution in thermodynamics. Before being a titan of industry in thermodynamic, Thompson served as a lieutenant-colonel for the British Loyalists in the American Revolutionary War. However, it was his experiments on heat transfer that led him becoming the father of sous-vide cooking. While learning about heat transfer, Benjamin Thompson ran an experiment with a mutton-shoulder and a machine meant to dry potatoes. Every since this seemingly insignificant experiment, sous-vide was born.

The second characteristic, food preparation under pressure, was created by two engineers in the mid 1960’s. This project started off as a food preservation method, however, upon further inspection, the engineers realized that the food had better taste and texture. This method, once called cryovacing, was able to bring a variety of flavors out of different foods, without even being cooked.

The third characteristic was developed by a French Chef by the name of Georges Pralus. George had discovered that when foie gras was cooked in a vacuum sealed wrapper, it did not lose the fat, had great texture, and still looked just as appetizing. Georges began to expand this project from a simple kitchen experiment to training his employees in sous-vide cooking, and, inevitably, expanding this style of cooking to the world. 

Sous-vide has a history that spans hundreds of years and through a handful of countries and cultures. This unique past has brought together a scientist, two engineers, and one world-renowned chef, to create a method of cooking that is hard to rival. Sous-vide cooking blends the science of low heat energy transfer, with an enclose vacuum-sealed, to create some of the most tender and flavorful meals that have ever been consumed. In the end, Sous-vide’s rich history only adds to the prestigious nature of this style of cooking.

Essential Features

Sous-vide cooking has several key features, that makes this style of cooking like no other. One of the main features of this cooking method is the sealing of food in a durable plastic bag. This allows the food to retain its natural flavors and juices. In almost any other method of cooking, these flavors would be lost.

The next key feature is the placing of the food in a water bath. The water bath should be preset to the final cooking temperature of the food. This will prevent overcooking. In other methods of cooking, many times the food is exposed to temperature levels that far exceed the desired internal food temperatures. This causes the food to be overcooked if left too long, or undercooked if removed too early. Either way, it is much more difficult to cook properly when trying to grill or oven roast various foods. On the other hand, this bath cooking allows the cook to maintain a lot of control over their meal. 

Using unconventionally lower cooking temperatures is another key feature to properly using the sous-vide method. As the cell walls in the food begin to slowly break down, the food becomes quite tender. Because meats can have higher protein amounts, many times they can be tougher to cook tenderly. Thankfully, sous-vide is able to slowly penetrate the toughness of any meat, to tenderize and flavor in a new and unique way.  On the other hand, vegetables are generally expected to be crisp and not so tender. The sous-vide ability to cook any veggie under boiling point, gives vegetables a firm and crisp texture. 

Sous-vide has a variety of features that are integral to a successful cooking endeavor. Sealing the food allows the aroma and flavors to be retained by the food. This is not common among other styles of cooking. Along with this feature, keeping the food in a preheated water bath gives the chef a precise way to cook both meats and vegetables. The final feature, and arguably most important, is the sous-vide’s ability to cook food at low temperatures. This is what blends great flavors, with extreme tenderness. In the end, the sous-vide’s cooking features are unique, user-friendly, and, most importantly, help create a fantastic meal.

Food Safety

Understanding food safety is a fundamental aspect of cooking with the sous-vide method. Time and temperature are the biggest factors that