cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11493972
If your friends ask what youre doing, just tell them that youre a French chef.
“Sous vide” doesn’t mean “enclosed in plastic;” it means “under vacuum.” It doesn’t fucking work if there’s air between the food and the container!
Condoms doing what they were made for. Keeping the weiner juices in
Yum, extra microplastics 🤤
how traditional is something that involves plastic???
It’s not traditional. Also it’s not similar to the pic. It was invented in the 1970s by a French Chef. The technique involves “vacuum sealed” ingredients, ensuring there is no air between the ingredient and water. Water is kept at a constant temperature, much lower than usual cooking temperature, and the ingredients are cooked for a very long time.
End result is an evenly cooked ingredient with full moisture content. But there won’t be any browning (Maillard reaction), which is key in many recipes.
Don’t forget the part where it’s held at almost-ready temps for a long time. Having worked a restaurant - but thankfully FoH - I’ve seen the struggle when a dish is ruined and you’re serving 7 plates while the kitchen is crunching to make the redo 8th.
Having something that can be seared and served is likely fantastic.
As explained by another its kinda shit anyways. But to answer the question, this sort of thing would have been done using leathery parts of animal intestines before plastic was a thing. Just like with sausages.
The benefit of sous vide for a restaurant is you can hold multiple steaks at rare and give them a quick sear when ordered. The soaking breaks down the collagen which ultimately makes the steak tender.
However, for a home cook a reverse sear will give a superior steak. It will similarly break down the collagen, but also creates a nice crust that sous vide can’t create.
Restaurants don’t reverse sear because it’s unpredictable and takes too much time.
Boiling plastic… Doesn’t seem safe
What if I told you that nearly every canned food or sealed tetrapak carton you can buy on the shelves was essentially sealed with plastic and boiled, sometimes under pressure that allows it to get even hotter than regular boiling temp?