Cooking Class: Sous Vide

If you're a regular to our markets, there's a good chance you've encountered the newest trend in cooking meat and seafood: sous vide (pronounced sue veed). In French, sous vide means "under vacuum," referring to the fact that the sous vide technique involves cooking vacuum-sealed food. This technique produces consistent, restaurant-quality results because food reaches an exact level of doneness throughout, not just the center, even in irregularly shaped and unevenly thick pieces.

Two key aspects of sous vide are:

• Low Temperature

This prevents overcooking because food cannot get hotter than the environment it is cooked in. In this case, that's a precise temperature-controlled water bath. No more overcooking the exterior of food to reach a desired internal temperature! In fact, it's literally impossible to overcook food via sous vide.

• Pressurizing Packaging

Vacuum-sealing food before cooking helps retain moisture and aroma, both of which produce flavor. As with pressure cookers (i.e. Instant Pots), pressure notably concentrates flavors and improves the texture of many foods.

Both the temperature and packaging elements of the sous vide technique combine to produce less volume loss.

What equipment do I need?

You need just three things to cook sous vide: a device to control the temperature of the water, a container to hold the water, and packaging in which to seal the food. That's it! Simply attach a sous vide temperature-controlling device to a vessel filled with water and immerse vacuum-sealed food.

What foods are best for sous vide?

You can sous vide almost any protein you can imagine, but it’s desirable for foods that are subject to chronic overcooking. Steaks, salmon, pork chops and duck are good choices, and burgers and sausage turn out great, too. The technique also makes amazing poached eggs. It can be used for vegetables and even desserts where a smooth, silky texture is preferred (think cheesecake!).