Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide

Product Details

The technique has been in the pipeline for awhile--one forerunner is the boil-in bag mom used to put veggies on the table--but has only recently attracted top chefs. One is Thomas Keller, famed chef-proprietor of The French Laundry and Per Se. His mightily sized, gorgeously produced Under Pressure explores every inch of sous vide, including the ramifications of using this precision-cooking technique (once time and temperature are established, best results follow automatically) on the craft of cooking, which has always meant a potentially rewarding engagement with the possibility of failure.

The book makes no bones about being addressed to professionals. Typical recipes, like Marinated Toy Box Tomatoes with Compressed Cucumber-Red Onion Relish, Toasted Brioche, and Diane St. Claire Butter, involve multiple preparations and dernier cri ingredients, and thus resist home duplication. Theres also the matter of the pricey equipment required--chamber vacuum packers and temperature-maintaining immersion circulators--not to mention the precautions required to ensure that foods, usually cooked at low temps, are safe to eat.

What the book does offer the home cook is, however, thrilling. It introduces something new under the sun--an exciting, transformative technique of great potential. Anyone interested in food and cooking--not to mention lovers of extraordinarily well produced books--will want to explore Under Pressure. --Arthur Boehm

Product Reviews

(4 stars) - Not for everyone but you can do this
First of all I'm going to address the topic of whether or not you need this cookbook. If you are looking to cook meals in 30 minutes, buy Rachel Ray's cookbook and be done with it.

If, on the other hand, you are an experienced chef and are looking for a completely new cooking technique then you are looking in the right place. There is an investment required to get the bare minimum equipment needed but you can buy everything you need for under $250.

In order to cook Sous Vide, you need the following:
1) A PID temperature controler like the SousVideMagic 3rd Gen 1500C which costs $139 plus shipping
2) A rice cooker like the Black & Decker 20-Cup Rice Cooker - Stainless Steel (RC866) for $40
3) A vacuum food sealer like the Reynolds Consumer Produ Handi Vac Starter Kit 00590 for $14
4) A propane torch like the Bernzomatic - Turner Brass Propane Torch Kit (TU100K) for $19
5) A fish tank air bubbler for under $20

That's everything you need except for the food ingedients. Yes, there are some ingedients that you'll need to get by mail order but that's no problem. I'm sure if you're reading this you've ordered stuff from the web before.

There is one thing I'm trying to rationalize and haven't fully come to terms with yet: Is cooking with plastic safe? With the exception of Sous Vide, I NEVER cook my food in contact with plastic. I always think of that high school girl who put some plastic wrap in olive oil, microwaved it and sent it to a lab for testing resulting in some really nasty results.

So why would I cook Sous Vide knowing this... The answer is two-fold: first, I'm not subjecting the plastic to high enough temperatures to cause it to leach too many chemicals into my food and second there's simply no other way to do this.

The other concern is bacterial growth during the cooking process. They get around this by saying to use foods you could eat raw. Hmm... Where do I get beef, chicken or pork that I would consider safe to be eaten raw? Botulism thrives between 90 and 100 degrees Farenheight so stay away from that but other food-born bacterias can survive temperatures up to 155 degrees. Generally, most bacteria can't survive temperatures over 130 degree so I feel safe enough.

Under Pressure was not written for a beginner cook; rather, it's just the opposite. The only cookbook I have that is more complicated is Alinea.

I've made many of the recipes in this book and I've adjusted some of the cooking times to my liking. I like the technique but be prepared to wait a long time (up to 2 days) for your food to cook.

If you were wondering about my equipment list, the PID temperature controller regulates the rice cookier to within 1 degree. The air bubbler helps to circulate the water. The blow torch is used to brown up meat to make it look more like conventionally prepared meals.

(5 stars) - Vacum vin food saver container use those much easier.
I have tried to use those vacum "food saver" type machines but an even easier thing to use that amazon sells is the VacuVin marinating container:
[....]

It says you should not cook with it, but you also are not supposed to heat ziplock and food saver bags....unless it spcifically says you can.
You can buy special plastic bags for boiling or else the ziplock bags and other plastics can release harmful chemicals into your food (like the banned water bottles last year......if anyone remembers).

But since this container is top rack dishwasher safe, I am assuming it is ok to put into a boiling pot of in heated water without too many ill effects.
Can't say I've tried any of the books receipies here as I usually just make up my own....other people have liked them so far as well!

(1 stars) - Cooking Sous vide for home kitchens?!!!
I was so excited to see this book and thought "finally someone wrote a cook book on Sous Vide for the home foodie,"Alas but my hopes were dashed!!! Why doesn't someone with expertise write one for us at home? We love to cook, we "get it" and we have tried with all sorts of home appliances and digital meters to achieve Sous Vide at home. You know if Rachel Ray can get sauce pans and knives made and sold in the color orange, why can't someone get a home appliance for Sous Vide??? Really we are out here ready and willing to buy one that doesn't take an arm and a leg and a trust fund to purchase!!! All we want to do is enjoy the same benefits that a restaurant does but on a smaller scale with our own ideas and some really great recipes. So how about it someone with an insider ability? A two-fer, a cook book AND an appliance by 2010!!!

(5 stars) - Great Book!
You can't go wrong with this book. I bought it for my boyfriend, Keller is one of his favorite chefs, Anthony Bourdain being his other favorite. Seeing the world of Thomas Keller is always a great buy!

(5 stars) - Inspiring
Under Pressure offers something that comes along in cooking perhaps once in a lifetime. That is, a comprehensive book on an emerging major technique from a major chef.

The characterization of Thomas Keller as a major chef is no exaggeration and should surprise no-one, as he is the owner of several highly-celebrated restaurants, notably the French Laundry. Describing sous vide as a major emerging technique requires some perspective, however. The technique itself has roots in experimentation decades ago, and can also be superficially compared to other in-bag cooking and re-heating techniques. What distinguishes sous vide from these is precision - precise control of both vacuum and temperature to produce both predictable results and, in some cases, results obtainable with no other technique. The latter alone elevates the status of sous vide to that of a major technique. Combined with its commercial applicability and ability to predictably produce top-quality results and the status is assured.

Under Pressure provides a very full picture of where sous vide sits in the technique spectrum. This is accomplished in the first section of the book in several ways, including descriptive and instructional material, and in comments throughout the volume. Similarly, the techniques are described in several ways: descriptively in the opening chapters, in application detail in recipes, and by way of reference information in the back. Anyone reading this book will come away with a good feel for sous vide's best applications (i.e., types of recipes), the ingredients for which it is best suited, the effects which it produces, its limitations, safety considerations, and process implications.

The last item segues into the target audience for this book. It is not only clearly aimed at the professional - stated in both the book and in interviews with Keller - it is organized for the restaurant chef. As a practical matter, that means the recipes are typically large, the recipe instructions are not sequentially ordered but are by component along restaurant kitchen station lines, component recipes themselves aren't necessarily tailored in size to the recipe, and the recipes presume a knowledge of, and use a variety of sophisticated techniques in addition to sous vide (part of which, of course, provides the technique perspective mentioned above). Assembly and plating instructions are not provided, as the assumption is that these will materially differ restaurant-to-restaurant, and chef-to-chef.

Sous vide can be broached at home, but full control of the technique across its various applications absolutely requires a chamber-type vacuum sealer with controllable vacuum level settings. Cooking temperature control for sous vide at home can be accurately accomplished in a variety of ways without an immersion circulator. You can also use a Food Saver sealer to do sous vide for a number of things. What you cannot do with a non chamber-type sealer like the Food Saver is high compression, gas extraction from liquids, and other, more sophisticated techniques associated with sous vide. That said, Under Pressure will give you sufficient knowledge to know where you can and can't apply the equipment you have. Let me be clear on that - it will not give you instructions concerning home equipment, but it will give you a very full picture of how different sous vide techniques are applied. It's up to you to then take your knowledge of your equipment's limitations and apply sous vide as you are able.

Chamber sealers are expensive. The sources given in the book, such as PolyScience and Koch, have sealers starting at approximately $2,000. A quick search, however, reveals that there are somewhat less expensive units on the market. Cabela's for example, sells one for about $1,500. Most people at home, however, are more likely to use a Food Saver or similar within its limitations for sous vide. And that will still get you quite a lot.

If you are wondering about the difference between chamber vacuum sealers and non chamber-types like the Food Saver, consider this: A Food Saver merely has to evacuate ambient air from a bag. The size of the pump required is small, it's slow, and it can be quite tricky to evacuate all the air. Actually, it's impossible, even with a chamber sealer, but with the Food Saver type, it's even difficult to eliminate visible bubbles. Bags with liquids are difficult to handle with a Food Saver type. You can do it (I do), but be aware that there's a certain risk to the machine if you don't do it properly, and also that the seal is easily compromised by the liquid starting to flow across the seal bar as you start the sealing process. The chamber sealer, by contrast, is physically larger to contain the bag, has a very large, powerful pump to evacuate the entire chamber and to a very high vacuum (more accurately, to user-controlled vacuum levels), is capable of holding the vacuum long enough to extract gasses from the contents of the bag (not just ambient air, i.e., bubbles aren't even an issue), and can seal bags with liquid without issue. Pumps range upwards from a full horsepower, the chamber seals are high-quality, a variety of seal arrangements are available, including double seals and both upper and lower heating elements, and so on. Chamber sealers, which are invariably commercial units, are also more adapable to a variety of bag types and thicknesses. No-one should confuse simple air-evacuation bagging with high-vacuum sealing. The good news is that quite a few sous vide techniques only require simple bag evacuation.

Under Pressure emphasizes sanitation and safety again and again. It is critical to understand why and critical to apply in home use as well. In short, most sous vide cooking involves cooking food in temperature ranges and under anaerobic conditions that, if not sensibly done with precautions, are ideal for growth of particularly dangerous bacteria. You MUST work in a sanitary fashion, MUST chill foods properly and at the right temps, monitor storage and hot holding times, and so on. Properly done, sous vide is completely safe and accepted by health authorities for restaurant use (where procedures have to be documented). Improper application can result in - using a term from the book itself - a "bacterial bomb." Process details related to safety are embedded in recipe instructions as well as address in the safety chapter.

I found the book inspiring, encouraging experimentation in particular at home with meats and seafood, where home equipment is readily adaptable to sous vide. Moreover, some of sous vide's best effects are with these - perfect edge-to-edge doneness for meats, control over tenderizing, texture control for fish, and so on.

While I cannot recommend this book for the casual cookbook buyer interested in follow-the-numbers recipe application, I heartily recommend Under Pressure for any serious home chef interested in extending his or her repetoire. I expect Under Pressure to become a classic.

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