Trendsurfing: "Sous vide" cooking (The Times)
By David Rowan
You may be in for a surprise if you peek into the kitchen when next at your local gastropub. That freshly marinated beef in Guinness may actually have been cooked weeks earlier in a distant industrial plant. Faced with growing demand for low-priced gourmet meals, restaurants are rediscovering a 30-year-old food-preservation process by which portions are cooked in plastic bags, vacuum-packed for later reheating. The resulting concoctions can then await a customer's order weeks or even months later - usually without diners being any the wiser.
The process is called "sous-vide" cooking, from the French phrase meaning "under vacuum", and as a culinary trend it has lately been seized upon both by industrial caterers and world-class chefs. By slow-cooking food in the bag at low temperatures, big-name chefs such as Joel Robuchon and Grant Achatz have found that they can retain the texture, nutrients and flavour that conventional cooking would destroy. The bags are then chilled and stored, ready to be warmed up at some later stage to produce a meal that to the untrained palate would pass as freshly cooked.
The Sous-Vide Food Company, which supplies tens of thousands of ready-made meals each week from its Aylesbury plant, is receiving growing calls from restaurants and pub chains for its 60-odd meal options. "It's mainly prepared entrées and terrines made by the sous-vide method, but we're also looking at pears in red-wine sauce," explains Lucy Stoutt, MD of the fast-growing, three-year-old company. "We tried the pears this morning and they tasted really good. They'd still be fine to eat weeks away."
Restaurants will simply reheat the dessert in the bag. "They've got portion control and they don't have to throw away what isn't used," Stoutt explains. "It's as if they had a skilled chef in the kitchen. One of our customers says they want that gastropub effect but by buying it in, as they all have trouble keeping staff. Sous vide gives them succulent, moist meats which retain all the flavours and the nutrients." And, of course, the economic benefits of longevity. Last month, the Sous-Vide Food Company developed a duck confit which, cooked and then chilled, it claims will keep for 100 days. "Bacteria need certain things to grow, but with sous vide you're taking the air out," Stoutt says. "We sent it for lab testing which showed it was safe." But how did it taste after three months? "Oh, absolutely fine."
It was safety concerns that caused sous vide to fade away the last time it caused a buzz among Britain's restaurateurs. Developed in France in 1974 to cook foie gras, the process was popularised here by the Roux brothers in the Eighties, only to decline again due to worries about botulism poisoning. But specialist cooking equipment has advanced since then, offering enough control over temperature and timings to reassure health inspectors about its safety. It has helped, too, that sous vide has been embraced by the chefs of Michelin-starred restaurants such as El Bulli near Barcelona and Le Meurice in Paris.
Still, there remains a teeny little image problem. "Some people still look at sous vide as boil-in-the-bag, but we hate that expression," Stoutt says, a little affronted. "That was simply a method of packaging. This is not the same product at all."
(The Times Magazine, September 3 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
You may be in for a surprise if you peek into the kitchen when next at your local gastropub. That freshly marinated beef in Guinness may actually have been cooked weeks earlier in a distant industrial plant. Faced with growing demand for low-priced gourmet meals, restaurants are rediscovering a 30-year-old food-preservation process by which portions are cooked in plastic bags, vacuum-packed for later reheating. The resulting concoctions can then await a customer's order weeks or even months later - usually without diners being any the wiser.
The process is called "sous-vide" cooking, from the French phrase meaning "under vacuum", and as a culinary trend it has lately been seized upon both by industrial caterers and world-class chefs. By slow-cooking food in the bag at low temperatures, big-name chefs such as Joel Robuchon and Grant Achatz have found that they can retain the texture, nutrients and flavour that conventional cooking would destroy. The bags are then chilled and stored, ready to be warmed up at some later stage to produce a meal that to the untrained palate would pass as freshly cooked.
The Sous-Vide Food Company, which supplies tens of thousands of ready-made meals each week from its Aylesbury plant, is receiving growing calls from restaurants and pub chains for its 60-odd meal options. "It's mainly prepared entrées and terrines made by the sous-vide method, but we're also looking at pears in red-wine sauce," explains Lucy Stoutt, MD of the fast-growing, three-year-old company. "We tried the pears this morning and they tasted really good. They'd still be fine to eat weeks away."
Restaurants will simply reheat the dessert in the bag. "They've got portion control and they don't have to throw away what isn't used," Stoutt explains. "It's as if they had a skilled chef in the kitchen. One of our customers says they want that gastropub effect but by buying it in, as they all have trouble keeping staff. Sous vide gives them succulent, moist meats which retain all the flavours and the nutrients." And, of course, the economic benefits of longevity. Last month, the Sous-Vide Food Company developed a duck confit which, cooked and then chilled, it claims will keep for 100 days. "Bacteria need certain things to grow, but with sous vide you're taking the air out," Stoutt says. "We sent it for lab testing which showed it was safe." But how did it taste after three months? "Oh, absolutely fine."
It was safety concerns that caused sous vide to fade away the last time it caused a buzz among Britain's restaurateurs. Developed in France in 1974 to cook foie gras, the process was popularised here by the Roux brothers in the Eighties, only to decline again due to worries about botulism poisoning. But specialist cooking equipment has advanced since then, offering enough control over temperature and timings to reassure health inspectors about its safety. It has helped, too, that sous vide has been embraced by the chefs of Michelin-starred restaurants such as El Bulli near Barcelona and Le Meurice in Paris.
Still, there remains a teeny little image problem. "Some people still look at sous vide as boil-in-the-bag, but we hate that expression," Stoutt says, a little affronted. "That was simply a method of packaging. This is not the same product at all."
(The Times Magazine, September 3 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
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