Many moons ago, I created a class at The Chopping Block called Modernist Boot Camp. This class was… long. And complicated to put on. And expensive. And of limited appeal. For these reasons, the class is currently on hiatus, but I'm still quite proud of what I made, so I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you all here. What follows are some excerpts from the sous vide section of Modernist Boot Camp, as well as a recipe to put some of the theory into practice.
Sous Vide Cooking
Sous vide is a French term that translates to “under vacuum.” Indeed, one of the most emblematic aspects of this type of cooking is the plastic bags that the food being cooked is sealed in under a vacuum in order to ensure good heat transfer, and no flavor loss when being cooked in a temperature controlled water bath. However, the term now refers to much more than just the vacuum in the minds of most modern cooks, professional and amateur alike. These days when most people think of sous-vide, the main thing that comes to mind is the device used to control the temperature of a liquid (usually water) bath in which foods are cooked. These devices, professionally referred to as immersion circulators (or simply “circulators”), are now colloquially known as “sous-vide machines” despite them having nothing to do with pulling a vacuum, or sealing food in bags.
Immersion circulators have their origins in laboratory work, and were originally extremely expensive, making them pretty much exclusively the domain of high end fine dining restaurants or large corporate hotel kitchens. Now though, a number of circulators aimed at the home cook demographic have penetrated the market, and some can be had for under $100.
There are many benefits to cooking sous vide, but it is this precise temperature control that most cooks are primarily interested in. Immersion circulators are capable of maintaining the temperature of a water bath accurate to within 0.1º F, and consistent throughout the entire bath with no hot or cool spots. This is the heart of sous vide cooking. Yes, many foods are cooked in bags, but there are lots of ways to pack foods in bags for sous vide cooking, including ones where there is no vacuum used at any step of the process. When we talk about sous vide, we really mean precise temperature control allowing foods to be cooked to perfection without thought or interference from a cook after the temperature is set.
Sous vide cooking most typically makes use of a heating method known as low ∆T (delta-T). This means that the temperature of the cooking environment is offset very little, if at all, from the desired finished core temp of the food you’re cooking. If you cook a steak sous vide at 140 ºF/ 60 ºC for a finished doneness temp of 135 ºF/ 57 ºC, that is a very low ∆T compared to cooking the same steak in a 400 ºF/ 204 ºC oven. The lower the ∆T the more evenly cooked your product will be, but the longer it will take to finish. The steak in the oven might be done in a matter of a few minutes, but the steak being cooked sous vide may take an hour or more depending on thickness. Knowing this allows you to manipulate your ∆T during cooking to achieve the best balance of speed and precision for your needs.
Water Displacement Method for Sealing Sous-Vide Cooking Bags
Adapted from Dave Arnold
This guide is for using a gallon size Ziploc bag to seal food for cooking sous vide.
- Fill a container with water deep enough to easily submerge your food and bag. You can use the heated water bath for this if you’d rather not fill up an extra container just to pour all the water down the drain, but it's more difficult to execute in hot water.
- Always add some sort of liquid to the bag: fat, neutral oil, stock, sauce, etc. The liquid is necessary to fill the gaps around your food and expel the air from the bag. Usually 2-3 tablespoons is enough unless your food item is an unusual shape or has a lot of surface area.
- Add your food item. If you are searing meat and adding it directly to the Ziploc bag make sure the surface of the meat is cool enough to prevent the bag melting (around 212 ºF/ 100 ºC). Be especially careful to not touch the bag with a hot set of tongs or spatula.
- Close the seal of the bag almost to the edge, leaving the last portion of the seal open, and make sure you have correctly sealed the bag. Put your finger in the corner to make sure that part of the seal is open.
- Carefully immerse the bag in the water starting with the closed corner, not the open one. Make sure you do this step carefully, allowing air to escape up and out of the open corner. You can use a utensil or your hand to manipulate the bag underwater and move any trapped air to the surface.
- Just as the open part of the seal is about to go under the water, close it up. Your bag should now have very little air left in it and should sink in a water bath.
Salmon Mi Cuit
Adapted from ChefSteps
Mi cuit means “half cooked” in French, and that's exactly what this technique produces: salmon that's somewhere between raw and cooked. The texture is like nothing else. Almost fudgy. If that sounds off-putting to you you are not alone. This technique is a bit divisive. Some people hate the result and some really love it. I happen to be in the latter camp, but I think it's worth a try regardless just because of the novelty and the fact that you're unlikely to come across this eating experience unless you do it for yourself.
This recipe presumes ownership of an immersion circulator and basic familiarity with how to use it.
Scroll down for a printable version of this recipe
Yield: 4 servings as appetizer
Active Time: 20 minutes
Start to Finish: 6 hours
400 g boneless skinless salmon filet
500 g water
500 g ice
100 g salt
50 g sugar
- Heat a water bath to 104 ºF/ 40 ºC using an immersion circulator.
- In a medium saucepan, dissolve salt and sugar in the water over medium high heat stirring frequently.
- Remove pan from heat and add ice. Stir to rapidly chill brine.
- Add salmon to brine and refrigerate for 45 minutes.
- Remove salmon from brine and pat dry. Seal salmon in a gallon size Ziploc freezer bag with 2-3 Tbsp of neutral oil, excluding as much air as possible using the water displacement method.
- Cook in the water bath for 60 minutes.
- Remove bag from the bath and place in an ice bath to chill. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, and up to 24.
- Serve chilled with reheatable hollandaise and parsley fluid gel. (we may cover these in a later post).
Note: Brining the salmon not only aids in seasoning and achieving a pleasing texture, but also prevents any white albumen protein from leaking out during cooking.
Equipment:
- Immersion circulator and water bath container
- Ziploc freezer bag
- Kitchen scale
Some Notes on Brining
Brining, a technique in which—in its most basic form—a food item is submerged in a salt water bath, is an extremely useful method for preparing many proteins, and even some fruits and vegetables. When the salt from the brine comes in contact with the muscle cells it disrupts the structure of the muscle fibers on the surface, which allows them to cook without letting as much moisture escape during the process.
A typical brine will have a salt concentration of between 3-6% by weight, and the salt penetrates at a set rate from the outside in via osmosis. The saltier the brine, the higher the osmotic pressure and the quicker brine penetrates the meat. You can think of this as analogous to how meat cooks in an oven; if you want your meat cooked fast, you can turn the oven up high, but you risk overcooking the meat close to the surface. The lower and slower you go, the more perfect your doneness becomes, but the longer you have to wait to accomplish it. Taken to its extreme this is the logic behind sous-vide or low-temp meat cookery where you set your oven or water bath to the exact doneness temperature you want, and never have to worry about any portion of your meat overcooking.
There is a modern method of brining that is the analogue of the low-temp cooking methodology called equilibrium brining. In equilibrium brining, you take the total weight of the protein you’re brining, and the water in which it will be submerged, and calculate the exact percentage of salt you want it to pick up (usually between 1.5-2%) to achieve perfect seasoning of the protein. Then dissolve that salt in the water, add your protein, and simply wait. You will never have to worry about any parts of your protein being over-seasoned because you have made that occurrence physically impossible.
I hope this has been an interesting and inspiring dip into the waters of modernist cooking, and perhaps I’ll share more bits from this class in the future. For now, if you want to continue to increase your technical skill, I recommend checking out our upcoming Essential Building Blocks class to really lay a great groundwork for kitchen competence.
Salmon Mi Cuit
Ingredients
- 400 g boneless skinless salmon filet
- 500 g water
- 500 g ice
- 100 g salt
- 50 g sugar
Instructions
- Heat a water bath to 104 ºF/ 40 ºC using an immersion circulator.
- In a medium saucepan, dissolve salt and sugar in the water over medium high heat stirring frequently.
- Remove pan from heat and add ice. Stir to rapidly chill brine.
- Add salmon to brine and refrigerate for 45 minutes.
- Remove salmon from brine and pat dry. Seal salmon in a gallon size Ziploc freezer bag with 2-3 Tbsp of neutral oil, excluding as much air as possible using the water displacement method.
- Cook in the water bath for 60 minutes.
- Remove bag from the bath and place in an ice bath to chill. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, and up to 24.
- Serve chilled.
