How to prepare "under a vacuum" – Or Vacuum Cooking

Website design By BotEap.comWe’re just talking about cooking, not food preservation, here.

Website design By BotEap.comOf course, without a vacuum machine it is not possible to get a perfect vacuum in a bag or plastic bag; but it is possible to have a partial “sous vide”, sufficient to carry out this cooking method.

This method can be adapted for cooking at home or for small restaurants.

Website design By BotEap.comWhy prepare food this way? What are the benefits of this method?

Website design By BotEap.com– You can prepare the food one or two days, or more, in advance. You can keep the food in the fridge or even freeze the preparations, keep them for a few weeks or a month, then reheat and serve when needed.

Website design By BotEap.comImagine having a party next week with 10 people coming home. What a lot of food to store and handle on the last day! You may feel overwhelmed by such a task. With this method, most of the work can already be done before the day of the party.

Website design By BotEap.comYou can prepare the food when you have plenty of time and you don’t need to rush to be ready when your guests arrive. You look calm, and I’m sure you’ll handle the situation much more easily.)

Website design By BotEap.com– By preparing in this way, the food is more delicious because the food is cooked in its own juice, the flavor does not disappear into thin air. Remember when you walk into a kitchen and smell all the wonderful perfumes that reach your nose. This is the taste of food that disappears into thin air. With this method, the tastes stay inside.

Website design By BotEap.com– Another benefit of this method is that it gives you the opportunity and simplicity to cook at a low temperature, 70°C/158°F.

Website design By BotEap.comLet me explain this point about temperature: when you cook in the “normal” way, it is above 70°C/158°F. In fact, boiling water is 100°C/212°F; when roasting, an average temperature of 200°C/392°F is used, this is certainly much higher than 70°C/158°F.

Website design By BotEap.comHere, speaking of temperatures, we are reaching a crucial point. Meats, fish too but less, when cooked at high temperatures they become hard. This is because collagen (a fibrous protein that makes up a large part of meat) contracts and hardens above 70°C/158°F. Therefore, the advice is to cook below this temperature to keep the meat tender. (Since the use of “sous vide” technology, the food industry prepares roast meat with parts of the animal that would never have been roasted in the past because these parts are normally too hard. This is only possible due to the low temperature.)

Website design By BotEap.com(Low temperature cooking can be done by different means, but you won’t have all the benefits of the sous vide technique, nor all the benefits of my method.

Website design By BotEap.comIt can be cooked at a low temperature with a normal pot. In the market there are electric slow cookers, available for all kinds of recipes)

Website design By BotEap.comHow to prepare “sous vide”, or vacuum cooking, without a vacuum machine.

Website design By BotEap.comI give first, here, mainly for those who already know how to prepare sous vide food, a brief description of the process, then more details that you can read if you are interested in trying this method:

Website design By BotEap.comInstead of placing food to cook in a plastic bag and vacuuming it up, simply wrap or roll the food in at least 5-6 layers of plastic wrap. Be sure to secure the plastic, then proceed in the same way as you would for normal sous vide cooking. Of course, how long you can keep food with this process has nothing to do with actual sous vide cooking, as there is no control over the percentage of vacuum in the package you have prepared with this method. I recommend that you follow the same rules that you follow for non-vacuumed food.

Website design By BotEap.comdetailed process

Start with this very basic recipe if you want to try sous vide, as it is very easy to make. Then you can adapt my method to different meats, poultry or fish or find a recipe among those that we propose on this website.

Website design By BotEap.comChicken breast prepared in plastic wrap (sous vide style)

Website design By BotEap.comUse chicken breast with or without skin, stuffed or not, marinated or not according to the recipe or your choice. Use it plain or brown it in a pan before wrapping for a more toasty flavor. The meat when serving it after cooking, of course, will no longer be crispy; but you can place it in a pan for 2 or 3 minutes to recover its crispness just before placing it on the plates.

Website design By BotEap.com1- Put the seasoned chicken breast pieces, already stuffed, on plastic wrap.

Website design By BotEap.com2- Roll the chicken breast tightly in the plastic wrap, making sure to press hard against the meat as you roll it to get as much air out of the package. (We’re not trying to compete with a vacuum machine here, but we’re trying to keep the air in as little as possible, mainly because if there’s too much air left in, the package will float to the top of the water when poaching and slow cooking.) . bad).

Wrap around the meat at least 5 or 6 times to obtain a sufficiently firm and strong package.

Website design By BotEap.com3- Make a knot on each side of the package with a string or with the same plastic if you have extra. Now the chicken breast is ready to cook.

Website design By BotEap.com4- Put the packet in a pot with water at 70°C/158°F. Use a thermometer to make sure you have the right temperature.

Website design By BotEap.com5- Continue cooking for about 20 minutes, making sure the temperature is still 70°C/158°F, checking from time to time. The cooking time depends on the size of the chicken breast. This example is for a 6 oz/180 g piece and should not last more than 20 minutes.

Website design By BotEap.comIf you cook a stuffed chicken breast, be sure to adjust the cooking time for the size and also for the filling. (If stuffed with cooked mushrooms, the cook size will be shorter than a stuffing made with raw meat, for example.)

6- When ready, serve immediately with the sauce of your choice. (Slice the chicken breast for a nicer presentation)

Website design By BotEap.comRatings

If you have chosen to prepare the chicken breast ahead of time, do not cook them, place them in the refrigerator for up to a day. If you want to serve the chicken breasts later, freeze them. Keep up to a few weeks. (It is best not to keep food in the freezer for long, as it will begin to dry out and “burn” from the cold after a few months. Be sure to thaw meat before you start cooking.

Website design By BotEap.comIf you have a slow cooker at home, you can use it to prepare this recipe. Fill it with water and set the thermometer (if available) to 70°C/158°F.

Website design By BotEap.comJean-Louis Vosgien

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