Sous Vide Cooking – A Hot Tub for Food

Joe Agostino loves giving his food a bath. Steak, chicken, vegetables, fruit, even custard. Agostino, the chef at the Broadview Hotel in Toronto, has been dropping vacuum sealed bags of food into pots and vats of temperature-controlled waters for five years now. “It removes the human error,” explains Agostino. The cooking technique is called sous vide (under vacuum) and has been restaurants’ secret prep weapon for decades. Basically, food is vacuum sealed and then left in pots of circulating water that’s maintained at a temperature much lower than boiling for prolonged periods – hours, even days. The result? Perfectly cooked food, evenly heated all the way through. Bacteria aren’t an issue, even at the lower temperatures because the duration of the cooking kills as effectively as higher heat. The advantage? For chefs and home cooks, it means food can be perfectly prepared ahead of time, kept cold until needed then seared, glazed or heated just before serving. Thanks to inexpensive home sous vide units, the technique is making in-roads into home kitchens. Chef Agonisto shows us how it’s done in the our exclusive sous video. Want even more information. Agostino suggests Under Pressure, by Thomas Keller as an ideal primer. Want […]

By Wayne MacPhail

Joe Agostino loves giving his food a bath. Steak, chicken, vegetables, fruit, even custard. Agostino, the chef at the Broadview Hotel in Toronto, has been dropping vacuum sealed bags of food into pots and vats of temperature-controlled waters for five years now. “It removes the human error,” explains Agostino. The cooking technique is called sous vide (under vacuum) and has been restaurants’ secret prep weapon for decades. Basically, food is vacuum sealed and then left in pots of circulating water that’s maintained at a temperature much lower than boiling for prolonged periods – hours, even days. The result? Perfectly cooked food, evenly heated all the way through. Bacteria aren’t an issue, even at the lower temperatures because the duration of the cooking kills as effectively as higher heat. The advantage? For chefs and home cooks, it means food can be perfectly prepared ahead of time, kept cold until needed then seared, glazed or heated just before serving.

Thanks to inexpensive home sous vide units, the technique is making in-roads into home kitchens. Chef Agonisto shows us how it’s done in the our exclusive sous video. Want even more information. Agostino suggests Under Pressure, by Thomas Keller as an ideal primer. Want to try it yourself? Agostino suggests the Anova Circulator.

Sous Vide in Pictures

Wayne MacPhail

Wayne is a digital strategist with extensive experience in traditional, online and communication strategy development. He has assisted clients like Random House (where he helped establish digital outreach programs), the Association of Science and Technology Centers, McMaster Family Medicine, rabble.ca, University of Toronto, Engineering reimagine their communications strategies for an emerging media landscape and new audiences. Wayne brings three decades of rich media content creation, a background in journalism and the ability to creatively understand brand and messaging and create new platforms and opportunities for Moongate’s clients. He has taught and developed online content creation and communications for a variety of colleges and universities in Ontario.

Posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2016

Filed under Food