Sous Vide Prep Table by Unified Brands, PolyScience and Minipack
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A little something different…
With over 7000 known varieties, nothing makes me happier than apple season. It brings me back to my childhood, lugging a bushel basket and beat up wood ladder around the apple orchards with my Dad. Red and Golden Delicious, Jonah Golds, Braeburns, even the petite Lady Apple would make their way home. Sunday apple pies, my grandfather’s apple stuffing at Thanksgiving, even my grandmother’s get-em-while-they’re-hot cider donuts showcased the harvest. Those first signs of autumn – the crisp air, the falling leaves, that first bite into a Honey Crisp bring it all back. Still, no apple makes me giddy like the Mountain Rose from Oregon. The first round of these delicate beauties made their way to my doorstep two weeks ago.
Having a tinted flesh that varies from faintly rose colored to a shocking hot pink, the Mountain Rose has a tart, crisp flavor with notes of strawberries and cotton candy. Having such beautifully rare natural qualities, I set out to treat the Mountain Rose very differently.
First, there were some flavor combinations to consider. Toast, nuts, tea, strawberry and celery came to mind. I wanted delicate profiles to compliment the apple and not drive away the candy-like aromatics. Chamomile. Almond. Leaves of celery heart. Time to go shopping.
A few weeks prior, I had experimented with creating dairy free milks using our Sonicprep ultrasonic homogenizer. Tests yielded stable, semi-milklike results at normal milk fat ratios. Unimpressive. For the apples, I wanted to infuse them under vacuum with almond oil and chamomile tea. To achieve a satisfactory homogenization, I stuck to the vinaigrette ratio. The chamomile flower steeped for four minutes and was passed and cooled. Three parts tea combined with one part roasted almond oil were homogenized until the two came together completely. The homogenization was then placed in a blender, where .5% Xanthan Gum was sheered in to create a heat stable emulsion.
The apples were then cut in sixths to reveal their hot pink flesh (my favorite part). They were then vacuum sealed with two fluid ounces of the emulsion. They sat under compression for one hour. The apples were then poached for 5 minutes at 82°C (179.6°F). This yielded a just-tender, evenly cooked apple that unloaded with the previously tame sweetness, almond fat and finished with the subtlety of chamomile a few bites in. What wasn’t expected was how much the fatty mouth feel of the emulsion permeated the porous flesh. It brought a level of umami to the apple that was completely surprising.
For a melt in your mouth confit approach, the apples can be cooked for up to thirty minutes. I kept the time down for this batch to preserve the vibrant pink color.
I created an almond soil that started out as blanched, whole almonds. They were toasted in a 210°C (410°F) oven and allowed to cool. The almonds were pulverized with a few quick pulses and scrapes in the food processor, being careful not to take it too far into the butter phase. The chopped almonds were then spread out in the dehydrator, set to 57°C (135°F) for 24 hours. Almonds, at harvest, contain roughly 61% oil and ≤7% water. The dehydrator took care of the water, enough for a few more pulses in the processor. The ground almonds were then toasted further at 175°C (350°F). A few more pulses and we started making progress. The fat content had to be absorbed and that was handled by adding tapioca maltodextrin to the mix. Some fried panko was ground down slightly and folded throughout. The end result was light and fluffy, with a bit of dry crunch. It looked, well, like sand.
The plate was garnished with the almond soil, raw apple, freeze dried strawberry powder, celery heart leaves, “almond milk” and a turbinado reduction.
Article and photos by Joe Strybel
Seasons Greetings
Preparation Methods: What’s hot in 2012?
The US National Restaurant Association just released the results of their annual Chef’s Survey.Under PREPARATION METHODS, the survey lists:
1. Pickling
2. Fermenting
3. Sous Vide
4. Liquid Nitrogen chilling/freezing
5. Oil-poaching
PolyScience has the technology for most three out of these five points. We certainly like that! One way of pickling is called “rapid pickling” and is done in a chamber vacuum sealer (video link). Next to sous vide, we also provide the main tool for oil-poaching – an immersion circulator.
In fact, when looking at the points “sous vide” and “oil-poaching”, we wish we could group this into “precise liquid temperature cooking”. Essentially and from what we see in the hottest restaurants, these 2 methods have more in common than not – getting liquid temperature exactly right every single time! That in mind, we simply can’t resist to share our perspective and comment.
“Sous Vide” has been on this “What’s hot?” list for probably 2-3 years, but the term is unfortunate. Its translation means “under vacuum” and creates this strong focus on what is only one step in the process (vacuum sealing) – and that step of the process isn’t always required or even desired to achieve the key benefit of what chefs do when they say they are cooking sous vide. Leading (and hot!) chefs understand that the real revolutionary element of “sous vide” cooking is precision and repeatability.
When observing them in their kitchens, the concept of sous vide has long evolved from a narrowly defined “sous vide” technique of cooking Foie gras in plastic wrap with an immersion circulator. These chefs focus on the idea of precise liquid temperature control, and apply many creative variations as steps of the cooking process. When talking to successful chefs about what they consider the difference between “sous vide” and “poaching in oil” the argument would be: A lot of our “sous vide” recipes include poaching in oil or butter – either inside a bag or in direct contact of a circulated liquid that can be clarified butter, olive oil, duck fat or even a mix of fat and maple syrup.
That also points out that many chefs think that vacuum-sealing isn’t always required or even desired. We’ve seen many kitchens cooking food directly in the circulated liquid or in a small open container that is placed in a controlled water bath (like a deep, narrow hotel pan filled with any type of liquid). Vacuum sealing becomes relevant when compression of product texture is desired, loss of flavor to surrounding liquid is to be prevented, most efficient distribution of expensive ingredients for product infusion (truffle, saffron, etc) is the goal, and of course when other economic advantages like preparation, portion control, storage, shelf life and convenient handling are important.
We are curious to hear your take on the survey results, learn about your approach if it isn’t covered and are happy to answer any questions!
Science & Cooking at Niles West High School
Sous Vide Technique Tip: Entire Meals
Can you cook an entire meal at the same time in a Sous Vide™ Professional?
Yes. There are different ways of doing this – with different temperatures or not.
For foods that you’d like to cook at different temperatures, you have 2 options:
Staged approach – stage it, hold it, finish it, serve it
Since food doesn’t overcook when holding at a lower temperature, one simply organizes the sequence from high to low temperatures. For example, first cook carrots and potatoes at 185°F/85°F for 45 minutes, then lower the temperature to 138°F/59°C for medium-rare beef tenderloin. Adding ice cubes helps to speed up the cool-down process.
The cook-chill-reheat approach
Pre-cook different foods, chill in an ice-bath and store in the refrigerator. Later re-heat all foods at the temperature that you’ve used for the food with the lowest temperature, which would be at 138°F/59°C for example when serving medium-rare meats. Note: an ice bath is the most efficient and safest way to chill down a vacuum sealed pouch of food. Do not put it in the refrigerator to chill down, because it can take days and warms up the rest of your fridge content.
If you like to cook food at the same temperature, but don’t want to lose the other benefits of sous vide:
Slow Cooker concept – one-pot meals and stews
A Sous Vide™ Professional can be used like a slow cooker. Simply vacuum seal your stew into a bag or fill into a container that sits in the water bath and will be cooked by the surrounding temperature-controlled liquid.
Comment to this blog post with your questions, or share it on our FB wall.
Smoky Baltic Punch
Just in time for the holidays, we’d like to share with you Rafal Ciesielski’s recipe for a Smoky Baltic Punch. Check out more from Rafal in the Polish Barmagazyn (barmagazyn.pl)!
Ingredients:
1 part vodka
½ part Orange Curacao
½ part Blue Curacao (infused with citrus peel)
¼ part Campari
1 part pressed apple juice (not sweet but as sour as possible)
¼ part lemon shrub (see recipe below)
4 cinnamon sticks and vanilla pods for smoking
Steps:
1. Mix all ingredients and chill for 2 hours before serving and smoking
2. Load combustion chamber of Smoking Gun with crushed pieces of cinnamon stick and vanilla pod
3. Cover Punch bowl with plastic wrap or lid
4. Inject smoke into bowl with nozzle extension while slightly stirring the punch
5. Repeat 1-3 times depending on your desired level of smoke
Alternative method:
1. Prepare punch
2. Place punch glasses upside down and fill with vanilla and cinnamon smoke. Rest glass with smoke for 30-60 seconds. The smoke will build a fine film on the glass wall and transfer its aroma into the punch when serving.
3. Put glass upright and serve punch in the smoked glass.
Lemon shrub:
Take the peel off the lemons first and roughly ribbon. Juice the lemons, and however many cups of juice are extracted match that with the same amount of sugar. Layer the sugar and zests in a Boston tin, and muddle thoroughly until all the sugar is damp. Let the zest and lemon compound rest at room temperature for at least half an hour, then give another muddle and stir. Add the lemon juice, and stir until all the sugar has dissolved. Fine strain the zests out of the mixture.
Make sure Santa Claus knows about this!
Techniques: Flash-Freeze on Anti-Griddle with iSi Thermo Whip
Claudio Urru, Chef de Cuisine at Restaurant “Top Air” in Stuttgart, Germany is using the iSi Thermo Whip Plus to flash-freeze red Oxalis Parfait on the Anti-Griddle.
TASTE MAKER
This exciting Smoking Gun listing appears in the Gift Guide of the 11/2011 edition of Hemisphere Inflight Magazine:
Former “Top Chef” contestant Sam Talbot, executive chef of Surf Lodge in Montauk, N.Y., and Imperial No.9 in New York City, is a huge fan of PolyScience’s The Smoking Gun, a handheld cool-smoker that can add smoke flavor to everything from oysters to butter. “The other day I had these berries picked fresh in Amagansett. I smoked them with a touch of cinnamon, Truvia and olive oil,” he says. “They were amazing.” www.cuisinetechnology.com
