Bag, Bath & Beyond: Pernicious Effects of Sous-Vide "Cooking" 1.

[joethefoodie]

But I think poached eggs (done classically) are just a completely different product than an egg cooked, in its shell, in a water bath, at 62℃, for an hour.

[joethefoodie]

You know, at a large breakfast or brunch service, most places aren't poaching your eggs to order. They're poaching them ahead, holding them in the fridge, and reheating them to serve.

[voyager]

 

 

I have found that I prefer poaching an egg in water with a bit of vinegar as opposed to cooking an egg sous vide. It is a hell of a lot easier cooking for the masses sous vide but, the end results are better in my opinion poaching eggs one a time in water.. I don't know the science behind it, i just know what my personal preference is..

 

I followed all of the instructions and the charts and crap online.. And for years I served it that way.. But, one day, I forgot my sous vide machine and I had to poach 30 eggs for an event.. I liked how the came out much better..

 

 

I am the only person in the world who detests the so-called "perfect 60degree egg". Give me a runny water-poached or even peelable soft-boiled any day.

[voyager]

... For the rest of you short-sided folks, ask yourself how long it will take before you see glorified airline food served on the ground because that's the way we're headed. Complaining or holding people's feet to the fire is a form of public service for people yet unknown, and if more people did it, it would lay waste to the dictum "restaurants only get worse". The only matter I question is that I should be helping the unfortunate instead of being a consumer advocate for the rich.

 

We may have had this chat before, Robert. I don't consider myself short-"sided". We patronize restaurants that cook from scratch. Period. I watch them prep. I watch them cook. They are not behind walls that conceal their sous vide apparati. There is more need now than ever for support for small restaurants that do things by hand, and it is with this long-sighted vision that we spend our dining dollars and euros. And if by chance we find that kind of meat on our plates, we simply don't return. My advice to them, written or not, will not change a kitchen if it finds enough custom for its style of cooking.

 

(Margaret)

[Sneakeater]

But PLEASE don't get the idea that sous vide is only used by large restaurants trying to cut corners.

 

Plenty of "authentic" "visionary" whatever-bullshit-you-want-to-call-it small restaurants use it as a tool to get certain effects they want. I may not like it, usually, but it's part of their style.

 

Go to Luksus in Brooklyn. The circulator is right there in front of the kitchen dining counter. Wiley didn't hide his circulator in the open kitchen of WD-50, either.

[voyager]

But PLEASE don't get the idea that sous vide is only used by large restaurants trying to cut corners.

 

Plenty of "authentic" "visionary" whatever-bullshit-you-want-to-call-it small restaurants use it as a tool to get certain effects they want. I may not like it, usually, but it's part of their style.

 

Go to Luksus in Brooklyn. The circulator is right there in front of the kitchen dining counter. Wiley didn't hide his circulator in the open kitchen of WD-50, either.

Absolutely. It's strictly a matter of style. It boils down to whether something arrives to your taste regardless of prep. If it consistently does not, move on.

[Daniel]

But PLEASE don't get the idea that sous vide is only used by large restaurants trying to cut corners.

 

Plenty of "authentic" "visionary" whatever-bullshit-you-want-to-call-it small restaurants use it as a tool to get certain effects they want. I may not like it, usually, but it's part of their style.

 

Go to Luksus in Brooklyn. The circulator is right there in front of the kitchen dining counter. Wiley didn't hide his circulator in the open kitchen of WD-50, either.

 

No, lots of small restaurants use sous vide too.. I can tell because I consistently hate their proteins.. I that's what I usually always ask.. But, i have to retell the story about the chef I know with a Michelin Star and a great reputation who told me that he loves sous vide meat because he can keep it for weeks and just put a char on it without having to do much else.

[Robert Brown]

Holy smokes. Did I write "sided" instead of "sighted"? And are you SF Margaret?

 

I don't pretend to know how Ferran Adria, Massimo Buttura, Grant Achatz, etc. use sous-vide in avant-garde cooking or the tricks that the practitioners of avant-garde, Modernist, whatever you want to call it. I would say that about half the meals at the hands of such chefs I greatly enjoyed. But that's neither here nor there. It's when restaurants use sous-vide to make dishes that they could make better by time-tested means that raise my hackles. (You can see a Per Se menu from 2006 by going on-line to the New York Public Library's collection of old menu and which has in large capital letters "CUIT SOUS-VIDE" in some of the descriptions of the dishes. I'm assuming Keller did it to coincide with the publication of his sous-vide cookbook at the time. But now when I recently wrote the restaurant to ask which dishes they were cooking sous-vide, the woman with the Mexican-sounding name resolutely refused to tell me even when I said to point out such dishes on the current on-line menu.) When a restaurant won't come out and simply tell you either in an e-mail reply or on its menu, what are they hiding and why? What we have instead is a growing vocabulary of furtive terms such as "slowly-cooked" "cooked x hours", "twice-cooked" "cooked at low-temperature" that cooks often invoke to cover up sous-vide "cooking".

[joethefoodie]

I always knew something was funny about that "twice-cooked pork" my local Chinese place was serving.

 

What's a "Mexican sounding" name?

[mitchells]

 

But PLEASE don't get the idea that sous vide is only used by large restaurants trying to cut corners.

 

Plenty of "authentic" "visionary" whatever-bullshit-you-want-to-call-it small restaurants use it as a tool to get certain effects they want. I may not like it, usually, but it's part of their style.

 

Go to Luksus in Brooklyn. The circulator is right there in front of the kitchen dining counter. Wiley didn't hide his circulator in the open kitchen of WD-50, either.

Absolutely. It's strictly a matter of style. It boils down to whether something arrives to your taste regardless of prep. If it consistently does not, move on.

 

Move this to the "What makes me laugh" thread.

[Sneakeater]

Except sous vide doesn't boil.

 

So I guess "it doesn't boil down to whether something arrives to your taste regardless of prep."

[Daniel]

I am not a religious guy so does anyone know what happens to the soul of the particular animal once it sucked out during the sous vide process?

[voyager]

Holy smokes....are you SF Margaret?

 

...when restaurants use sous-vide to make dishes that they could make better by time-tested means that raise my hackles.

 

I am she; she is me; we're one and the same.

 

Sous-vide has always seemed to me to be a technique that benefits restaurants and home cooks who work late and want a fast meal. It has never tempted me as a diner or a cook. My taunt referred to your trying to guarantee a cooking method before visiting. It's just an alien concept to me. I am not surprised that an underling would not comment on kitchen technique. In the same situation, I wouldn't give out any information that wasn't in my "script". Nor do I recommend irritating the chef before dining at a place. (I subscribe to the old joke, "Never try to teach a pig to dance. It won't be able to do it well and you'll just make the pig mad.")

 

I do encourage you to visit your restaurant and ask your questions at table, order your steak if you still believe in it, and create a unholy scene if you are sure that you have in fact been served a "twice cooked" meat. And I would write about it. Everywhere. Not the fact that the process was sous-vide but that you had been deceived.

 

My real confufflement is having this question at the level of restaurant at which I believe you dine. There are so many things on a menu that are, IMHO, far better options than steak, which i prefer to grill at home, that I would think you would consider or even lust for first. But obviously YMV.

[Robert Brown]

Dear Margaret,

 

All I can tell you is that when I visit a restaurant on short notice, I'll ask there which dishes are "cooked" sous-vide. So far I usually get an honest answer. But for me not to write ahead and ask wouldn't be prudent, besides which I like to see how forthcoming the restaurant is. If a restaurant doesn't answer or gives a vague or evasive answer, I will think twice about going there. Other times I have to grin and bear it such as when a friend wants to try a certain restaurant that may or may not be a sous-vide place and turns out to be one. Where you really have to careful, if you care about what I do, are the little restaurants with one person in the kitchen. To be honest, I don't want to contend that anything cooked sous-vide is automatically bad, and that without doubt I have eaten perfectly acceptable dishes without knowing or thinking about it. However, I believe I have gotten better at recognizing them and identifying the various code words for applicable restaurant dishes. My obsession is not limited to dishes themselves, but also what the growing use of sous-vide portends for the future of restaurant cuisine.

 

All the best,

 

Robert

[Really Nice!]

I always knew something was funny about that "twice-cooked pork" my local Chinese place was serving.

 

What's a "Mexican sounding" name?

I was going ask that and then ask how it sounds different from a Nicaraguan sounding name.