Science & Cooking at Niles West High School
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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.
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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
The 2011 CHOW 13
Chow’s third annual awards, honoring the people pushing the food world in new and adventurous directions, includes Philip Preston. Read the full profile here
Portrait of Philip Preston on "The 2011 Chow 13"
PlateCooks 2011
Here are some impressions from PlateCooks 2011. It was a three action-packed days of cooking, networking and tasting with some of the most innovative chefs in America. PolyScience was there to support the event and some hands on sous vide workshops with Chef Dominique Crenn from Atelier Crenn in San Francisco and Chef Pat Sheerin from Signature Room in Chicago.
Photo courtesy of MTG (www.meatingplace.com)
Bill Kim (right) from Urban Belly and Belly Shack
line up of the usual suspects
122.0 F
Joe Strybel, PolyScience
Pat Sheerin, Signature Room - Chicago (right)
Our friend Stephen from "Australian Lamb"
Joe Strybel, PolyScience
Dominique Crenn from Atelier Crenn - San Francisco
HOST in Italy
A big thank you to the whole team at ULISSE FOODSERVICE in Italy for putting together this incredible presentation of PolyScience products at the show HOST! Contact ULISSE for PolyScience products in Italy.
The great Francesco Gotti presenting sous vide cooking!
- Danilo from Ulisse, PolyScience distributor in Italy
Getting ready for the crowd...
Warm foams and soups at the iSi booth.
Bill Gates: Can Science Improve Cooking?
Can Science Improve Cooking? A blog post and video on Bill Gates’ blog thegatesnotes
"The pictures alone make the book a masterpiece. You can see how food changes as it cooks, and understand how different flavors come together to make something really great."
The Sous Vide Professional at Nathan Myhrvold's kitchen lab
