The Royal Chef At Home: Easy Seasonal Entertaining

meat or fish, dry it with a paper towel and then give it a quick sear or other finish and serve it. But here’s the thing: the defining feature of the sous vide method is not the elimination of air; it is accurate temperature control. A computer controlled heater can warm a water bath to any temperature you set, and it can keep it there for hours, if needed. By controlling temperature so closely, sous vide cooking can yield results that are nearly impossible to achieve by other cooking techniques. For example, a perfectly medium rare steak achieves an internal temperature of 139ºF. In sous vide cooking you can place your sealed steak into a 139 degree water bath and in one hour the steak’s internal temperature matches that of the water bath. Now, you have several options. Remove the steak from the water bath, give a quick turn on the grill and serve, or decide to keep the steak in the water bath for up to an additional three hours with no change in its internal temperature. For restaurateurs, sous vide effectively frees the chef from incessantly worrying about the time.

The steak is perfect now and will continue to be perfect and ready to serve for hours to come. Same is true for salmon, one of my favorite dishes to cook via the sous vide technique. A perfectly cooked salmon, still moist and slightly pink in the center, is done at 123ºF, a mere thirty minutes in a sous vide bath. You can then serve it right away or hold the fish for up to an additional three hours. This is a boon to chefs for whom perfectly cooked fish is typically achieved within a very tight time frame. Plus your sous vide fish (or beef or poultry) will be cooked evenly throughout. There are no dry edges to your salmon or shrinkage due to evaporation. That salmon on your plate is just as big as when you purchased it. A final benefit to sous vide cooking is that the closed bag effectively braises food, so ingredients cooked this way are often juicier and more tender. So that dinner guest who just texted you that they are stuck in traffic and will be 30 minutes late? Relax and have another drink. Dinner is still going to be perfect.

FALL · TECHNIQUE SPOTLIGHT

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