The most important culinary revolution of the recent period: What is Sous-Vide, who invented it?

Culinary science is actually a science that is still at its very beginning levels. For example, we know in detail about the composition of the soil on the Martian surface, but there is not yet a valid scientific explanation for why the souffle rises.

Man has been using butter for 6000 years, but the scientific world has not found the answer to the question "How does milk in liquid form turn into a solid fat form". We try to understand many culinary phenomena with only approximate explanations. The scientists behind the modern culinary movement called molecular gastronomy and chefs such as Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, and Pierre Gagnaire, who displayed their creative skills on the path these academicians opened, started a broad period of learning and discovery in food science.

This wind of understanding and discovery in gastronomy will continue seriously in the next ten years, and the science underlying the food will be understood more and creative cuisines will develop unbelievably. So, today I want to talk to you about the first and most important culinary revolution of the 21st Century: Sous-Vide.

INVENTORY PROCESS

The emergence of the idea of ​​sous-vide dates back to the 1960s. Those were the years when vacuum packaging techniques first emerged with plastic packages suitable for food storage. The vacuum technique has been developed by French and US researchers in order to pasteurize foods by cooking them in hot water in vacuum packages and thus extend their shelf life. In other words, the aim is not to develop a perfect cooking technique for refined restaurants, but to provide solutions to the efficiency and economic needs of the food industry. However, as a result of an interesting initiative in 1974, the sous-vide method is starting to enter refined restaurants.

WASTE FOUND WHEN SEEKING A REMEDY

The famous 3-star chef Pierre Troisgros, who owns a restaurant in Roanne, France, suffers from the fact that the fat melts too much and the waste rate reaches 50% while cooking fua-gra, that is, specially fattened foie gras. Fua-gra is one of the most luxurious and expensive foodstuffs, and since it consists almost entirely of oil, it can melt completely if you hold it a little too long in the pan. Based on this problem, Troisgros asks a local delicatessen named Georges Pralus, who is famous for his research and curiosity, to find a technique that will cure his problem. Pralus discovers that when fua-gray is wrapped in several layers of plastic and cooked in low-temperature water, the volume loss does not exceed 5%. As soon as it determines that stability is achieved by doing this in vacuum packages, the sous-vide technique starts to enter the kitchen of refined restaurants for the first time.

The most important company producing vacuum bags of that period was Cryovac. Following this discovery, Pralus begins to work more closely with the company Cryovac and, with the support of the company, opens a school to train chefs from all over the world in the sous-vide. However, Pralus' sous vide technique is a technique developed as a result of experiments and has no scientific basis yet. Just craft. But since relying solely on craftsmanship for sous-vide cooking can be extremely dangerous, the Cryovac company turned to Pralus, the most famous industrial scientist of the time for vacuuming food, Dr. He suggests working with Bruno Goussault. After all, Pralus focuses on the craft and Goussault on the science, and together they begin to develop this technique and then teach it to thousands of chefs.

3 STARS AT 160 KILOMETER SPEED

In 1980, the French railway company SNCF plans to offer a top-class dining experience in the restaurants of the trains to revive the waning interest in its long-haul trains, and for this purpose, it approaches one of the world's most important chefs, Joel Robuchon. He wonders if he can apply his 3-star cuisine on a train traveling at 160 kilometers per hour. “Yes,” Robuchon says, “but only if you can guarantee that you can deliver the quality and stability I want from the staff in my own kitchen”. SNCF then recommends Pralus and Goussault work with Robuchon on this project.

First, Goussault conducts a long and tedious survey in chef Robuchon's kitchen, measuring and recording the internal temperatures at each of the cooking stages of the desired food. For example, he finds that the perfect soft-boiled egg is cooked in water at 64.5 degrees C for 45 minutes. According to Gossault, "It's all about temperature". Chef Robuchon and scientist Gossault worked together for 2 years to prepare the SNCF menu. Meals are first prepared with the sous to vide method in Robuchon's kitchen and cooled, then sent to trains, where they are reheated at the last moment, creating a premium dining experience as if you were eating at Robuchon's 3-star Jamin restaurant. This is how sous-vide enters the world of refined restaurants with firm acceptance.

THOMAS KELLER WROTE THE BOOK

Later, Robuchon also starts to support the cooking school. One of the students who joined this school in 1987 is Stanislas Vilgrain, whose family has been in the food industry for 7 generations. Vilgrain immediately sees the tremendous potential of the sous-vide technique in the commercial food industry and calls on Goussault to support their new US-based company, Cuisine Solutions (cuisinesolutions.com). Gossault, who first started as a consultant, soon became the company's chief scientist. Founded from the ground up, Cuisine Solutions is today tens of million-dollar food company. They even produce 130,000 packages a day of excellent meals that they prepare and chill or freeze using the sous-vide technique and ship to TJI Fridays in Japan.

With the help of Gaussault, the company contacted New York's very famous French chef Daniel Boulud in 2000 to introduce the sous-vide technique, and with his support, it managed to attract the attention of many chefs. The most important of these chefs is Thomas Keller. Keller published the first and only sous-vide book in English, “Under Pressure”, which describes all the details of the sous vide technique and how this technique frees chefs from bondage in the kitchen and opens new horizons for creativity, and gives the recipes they have developed. I think this extraordinary technique will be much better understood and widespread thanks to 'Under Pressure' and it will bring us together with more striking new food designs.

WHAT IS SOUS-VIDE?

Sous-vide is a French definition that means to cook under pressure. It is a cooking method that was first tried in France in 1974, and therefore the name is French.

What is done is simply this: First of all, you put the food you want to cook, such as steak, meat, fish, vegetables or fruit, in a vacuum bag and in the pressurized vacuuming machines specially developed for this purpose, you expel the oxygen in them, that is, you vacuum them.

The removal of oxygen prevents color loss due to oxidation in foods such as artichokes and potatoes, and you get perfectly cooked vegetables. This is the first of the two phases of the sous-vide technique. In fact, the name "under pressure" is essentially related to this phase.

But the most important stage of this technique is the second stage: slow cooking in constant and low-temperature water. For that, you need another device. The name of this device is Immersion Circulator. You immerse this immersed circulation device in a container of clear water, and thanks to the device (a) you heat the water, keep its temperature at a constant constant level, and (b) give the water a slow and steady circulation. Here, you put the foods that you have placed in vacuum bags and pre-cooled in this constant temperature water bath, then you cook a steak, for example, at 65C for 48 hours. And your steak comes before you as well cooked inside and out, preserving all its flavor and aroma and not losing any water.

FULL CONSENT AND ODORLESS

So, for example, if you want a medium-rare steak, your steak cooked in sous-vide will be medium-rare in the middle and the outside. However, if you want to make the middle of the steak medium-cooked when grilled or pan-cooked, you need to make the outside well-done or even burnt. However, this problem is overcome in a wonderful way with the sous-vide technique. When you grill steak, everything smells like grilled meat; However, in the low-constant temperature sous vide technique, all odors, aromas, and natural waters remain inside the bag and therefore the food.

Sous-vide devices and this extraordinary cooking technique are not yet suitable for the home. The devices are expensive. Sous-vide is a more suitable technique for the restaurant world for now. Also, learning to use 'hygienic' is risky, as this is still a very new technology. Because if used incorrectly, it can carry a serious risk of food poisoning. In fact, these risks already exist in every kitchen, but this is a technique that should be used with more care and care, since bacteria growth will be much easier in a vacuum and long-term temperature environment.

WHY SOUS - VIDE?

Sous-vide is an extraordinary, striking technique that allows you to capture every extraordinary flavor and provides nutritional, flavor, and presentation benefits that no cooking technique in history has ever achieved. If iconic chefs such as Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, Daniel Boulud, Grant Achatz (Alinea), Heston Blumenthal (Fat Duck), Joel Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire, and Alain Senderenes, who are already the most important stars of world gastronomy, also use and defend this new technique, we are sous. It's not about questioning and judging -vide, just learning.

So why are these powerful cooks so sympathetic to this new revolutionary technique when they gain their strength on the basis of traditional cooking techniques?

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Once sous-vide allows you to determine the core temperature of foods precisely and precisely. For example, you can cook a lamb arm from the outside to the inside without drying it out and at an even degree of doneness. Since the temperature of the water never exceeds 85 degrees in the sous-vide technique, you can cook delicate foods, such as fish, in a way that retains all its flavor and obtains a completely pure flavor. While eating, you get the pure and refined flavor of the fish, not the taste-smell of grilled charcoal. Root vegetables give great results and their color, smell and texture are perfect. However, when you cook it in water, all these beauties pass into the water. Carrot has a very different texture and vibrant color in the sous-vide. It can provide cooking 'stability', you can cook it at an equal degree of doneness every time. As a result of forgetting, there is no risk of burning or undercooking. Fast oxidized fruits have an incredibly bright and vibrant color when cooked with the sous-vide technique. It increases efficiency in restaurants: It reduces the space occupied by the stoves; As it cooks guaranteed and stable, it eliminates dependence on the cook; Perfect results can be obtained by cooking and cooling it long before the moment of service, and cooking 'a la minute' at the last minute at the time of service.