Michael Bauer, food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, spoke out against sous vide. Outrageous!
Sous vide is the (rather poorly named) modernist cuisine technique in which food is sealed in a pouch and cooked in a water bath at a precise temperature. Until a few years ago, it was strictly a restaurant procedure since the equipment cost thousands of dollars, but now home cooks, like me, have available gadgets for $200-500 which work wonderfully.
I love what it does for meats, especially. Medium-rare from edge-to-edge is not just possible, but easy. Meat that slow cooks well, such as short ribs, can cook literally for days at the perfectly controlled temperature. And for delicate custards, eggs, and confections which need to reach finely chosen temperatures, it's like magic.
So what's Michael Bauer's beef? Mushy beef. Flabby fish.
He's right. Every sous vide chef learns, pretty quickly (the hard way — ask me how I know), that cooking fine meats, especially finely textured, lean muscle such as loin cuts, become spongy when cooked too long. But it's easy to avoid: don't cook lean, already tender meats longer than an hour or two and chill it when done.
Apparently not all the fine restaurants have figured this out.
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