Sous Vide Cooking

I am currently gathering information about culinary instituts, universities, courses where you can learn sous vide cooking. Wherever you are located, feel free to post a comment with the country, name of the culinary school, internet site link…I’ll group this information and make a specific page about it in some weeks.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Jean-François

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In France, during Christmas time, eating foie gras is very popular. Remember that the sous vide method was developed by Georges Pralus in the 70s  in order to cook foie gras in an optimal way.
For the first time I tried to cook myself a duck foie gras sous vide.
First issue is to choose a good raw foie gras of quality…The South Ouest of France is the region where the foie gras is originally produced. If you choose one of those, there is a small risk to make mistakes.

Then, you must take off the veins of the foie gras (sometimes you can purchase the foie gras without the veins). This is where the problem started…This is not an easy part of work. I looked on internet some videos illustrated the key points and technique to take off veins of a foie gras and then I tried myself. The difficult thing is to find the veins, take them off without destroying the whole structure of the foie gras.

It was very hard to do. On the right you can see the pieces of foie gras containing the veins and on the left the foie gras I almost totally destroyed!

Then I added 13g salt per kilo and 3g of pepper per kilo of foie gras. Some people recommend seasoning the foie gras with Armagnac or Porto. I put no alcohol at all.
Next step is to create a “ballotine”.

The “ballotine” was also not easy to form. I took a food grade plastic wrap, put the foie gras pieces inside and compressed them, first to take off the air but also to create a cylinder. Several plastics wrap pieces were necessary to fulfill this step.

Next step was to vacuum the foie gras in a pouch. I read on internet that the best way to keep a frame while cooking was to use a “shrink” bag. I didn’t have any so I did it with a regular cuisson sous vide bag.

Cooking the foie gras ballotine: my foie gras cylinder was approx. 17 cm long and 6 cm of diameter. The more an ingredient is fat the best it conducts heat. I cooked my ballotine at 58°C during 47 minutes with immersion circulator.
During the cooking process air appeared in the ballotine and my pouche started to float on the surface. I have probably not compressed enough the foie gras and not vacuumed enough the pouch. Therefore I fixed the pouch with a heavy tool down in my cooking pot.

Next step was to chill the ballotine. As you can see I took this task very seriously.

My foie gras became slightly brown and a significant amount of yellow fat appeared on one side of the pouch (unfortunately you can’t see it on the picture). I was surprised to see that by ballotine kept its cylinder frame. My worry was to maintain this frame until the total cool down of the foie gras. For this purpose I took a piece of carton I curved like a half-cylinder and place the ballotine inside. After I left the ballotine in the fridge for a night with the carton, the whole ballotine kept its perfect frame of a cylinder.

The result was really not so bad! With a little bit of fig, the taste was marvelous and the texture fantastic.

In addition, a little bit of Sauterne Château de Rolland (Barsac) 2004…Très, très bon!

Jean-François

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Santa Clause brought me a very interesting gift: a DVD full of videos, interviews and information about sous vide. This DVD was made by Bruno Goussault who is a worldwide authority in sous vide cooking. It seems to be available in French only for EUR 37. The Title of this DVD is “Recettes et techniques culinaires en vidéo – La cuissons sous vide à juste température”.

I have not seen all the videos so far but I have already noted some very interesting information I’ll share with you soon. Click here for a preview of this DVD.

Jean-François

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Remember end August Fresh Meals Solutions announced the launch (end 2009) of the FreshMealsMagic.
In the meantime Frank Hsu (you secretive thing!) has put up the SousVideMagic 1500D for sale.

What is new with the SousVideMagic 1500D compared to the 1500 B/C versions?

• The power capacity has been raised from 2,000 W to 3,000 W
• 2 digit screens are now available (one for the temperature and one for the timer)
• Possibility to control the temperature of a large pot, up to 35 L

The price of te SousVideMagic 1500D is still very competitive USD 159!
For your information the global cost for the SousVideMagic 1500D to be sent to Europe should be around:

• SousVideMagic 1500D: USD 159 + USD 25 = USD 184 incl. sending to Europe
• Custom duties: EUR 35
• Basic rice cooker: EUR 45
• Input power cord and socket adaptor: approx EUR 16.

Grant total (1 EUR = 1.5 USD): EUR 218

Frank, what about the FreshMealsMagic Bubbler? When will you launch it?

Jean-François

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I received several questions of people interested by the swid of addelice. Their main worry was to determine if the swid is for professional purposes or for home cooks. To all of them I replied and said that I am not a professional and therefore don’t know their expectations as a professional. I realized that I tried the swid in  3.5 litres and 8.5 litres pots only. The manual of the swid indicates that the stability of the temperature is optimized up to 20 litres.

I went inside my uncle cellar and found an Ikea plastic box (€ 3) that I filled with 20 litres water.

I had to face a problem with the plastic container which is very flexible. Attaching the swid with the clamp to the container was not possible as the swid was too heavy. Therefore I found a glass cutting board that was perfectly the hight of the container. I put this board between the plastic container and the clamp. This generated an excellent stability for the swid to be attached.

I set the swid at 55°C only because I am not realy trusting in the Ikea container that could melt or not resit to higher temperatures. The manual of the swid indicates the Adaptive PID controller (that assesses the amount of the water i n the pot) was optimized if the starting temperature is at least 15°C lower than the target temperature. It took 15 minutes to heat the water from 25°C to 55°C and, after 5 more minute,s the stability of the water bath was excellent.

I decided to make an addition test: immersing a bottle of cold water (3°C) simulating a cold pouch in a water bath.

It worked perfectly.

To sum up I confirm the swid thermal circulator can heat easily a 20 litres water bath.

Jean-François

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