Sous vide cooking is the preparation of food that has been placed in a cryovac or vacuum bag and is cooked at an exact temperature in a water bath for an extended period of time.  Sous vide in French means under vacuum. There are several top chefs in the world who use the technique regularly including Thomas Keller of the French Laundry,  Anthony Bordain’s favorite chef Ferran Adria of El Bulli who is famous for his “molecular gastronomy” as is Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck

 Some people feel that cooking food especially meats and vegetables in a perfect temperature controlled environment is not really cooking, that it takes away the finesse and the uncertainty that makes cooking an art. If we are using scientific equipment to cook with how are we different than the test kitchens at Dunkin’ Doughnuts or McDonalds? Professional chefs fall into one of two disciplines cooking or pastry. Cooking is an art and pastry is an exact science. Now cooking is falling into the realm of an exact science with sous vide technique leading the way.

What Birdseye already knows:

There are a few things that happen with a piece of meat that is being cooked. In the short term the various proteins such as the hemoglobin that make the meat red and the muscle fibers coagulate at temperatures between 105F and 195F, that is they tighten up folding on themselves or attaching to each other. The transformation of the hemoglobin protein which you should know turns red in the presence of oxygen changes its color from red to white after it has been denatured by heat. In the long term the connective tissue, collagen, will break down and turn into soft gelatin.  

The way to make a perfect prime rib like at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse is to put the piece of meat in a 500F oven for 25 minutes  -- I prefer to just sear it on the stove top -- then cook it at 250F for 3 hours and finally keep it at serving temperature of 131F in a warmer. The idea is never let the meat over a certain temperature therefore never giving the different proteins the opportunity to denature and coagulate by using low temperatures to cook with. Sous vide takes it to the next level. With sous vide the food is kept at the ideal cooking temperature for several hours, even days. Collagen breaks down over time and it’s possible to cook a medium rare roast over 72 hours.

Vegetables are also cooked in sous vide. Sadly, all the uber famous chefs who have made careers from this technique have to admit that it was first pioneered by Birdseye food scientists and their “Boil in a Bag”. I once heard rumors that Thomas Keller went with his sous-chefs to the Birdseye factory to learn about the technique. I think that years ago I also read it somewhere but unfortunately I can’t find the source.

There are two major components that make up the texture of a vegetable, the pectin which breaks down at 183F and the starch which gelatinizes starting at around 120F – 140F and more effectively above 170F. Pectin holds the cells together, think of it as the active ingredient that makes jam thick and raw starch is just yukky. Cooking potatoes or carrots at 182F or 1 degree lower than the temperature the pectin brakes down allows for the total breakdown of the starch while the pectin structure remains intact creating brilliant textures.

Since meats and vegetables are cooked in a hermetically sealed bag with sous vide the juices never have the opportunity to escape and the flavor remains sealed inside of the food. My first experience with sous vide was in the late 90’s making Artichoke Hearts en Barigoule which is artichokes with white wine, olive oil, bay leaf, garlic, sprigs of thyme, crushed garlic cloves, lemon and cracked black pepper. I prepared, then vacuum packed them and cooked them in a water bath. I let them sit in the fridge over night and the next day I had the best tasting artichokes I have ever had.

I was looking at some cookbooks (from The Triton’s online cookbook store that I might have made $500 with but will never know – inside joke) and there was Thomas Keller’s cookbook on sous vide. I got to thinking if there was technology out there that would enable yacht chefs to safely and easily use this technique. That’s when I found the Poly Science machine.  I’m also wondering if any yacht chefs have used sous vide?