If you’re looking for consistent results, maximum profits, and labor savings, try cooking these five ingredients sous vide.
By David Pietranczyk, Product Expert | Marketing Manager
From beef steaks to chicken breasts and fish filets, this is where many chefs become complacent with sous vide, and for good reason. Quick-cooking cuts are expensive and preparing them sous vide before finishing over a grill, in a smoker, or under the broiler, ensures perfect doneness, consistent results and extreme repeatability. The ability to hold hundreds of whole poached eggs for brunch service makes sous vide a no brainer for large seatings, but sous vide is capable of so much more. If you’re looking for consistent results, maximum profits, and labor savings, try cooking these 5 things sous vide if you’re not already.
Tough Cuts – Consider using sous vide for long cooking items that you may be braising traditionally like pork bellies, beef cheeks, duck legs, and lamb shanks. Because of the ability of the vacuum bag to take the exact shape of the ingredients in the pouch, you can use significantly less aromatics and braising liquids, saving on food cost. Additionally, because the foods are vacuum packaged, these braises can be safely and quickly cooled in an ice bath without the need for any special equipment.
Vegetables – Chefs take a tremendous amount of time and care in sourcing their produce including the labor to clean it, prep it, and cook it. Traditional big pot blanching of vegetables causes a loss of flavor, nutrients, color and aroma. Shocking them in an ice bath to cool them causes them to be waterlogged. From carrots to kohlrabi, asparagus, and brussels sprouts, sous vide ensures a perfect crisp-tender texture every time. Storing these vegetables in their vacuum pouch after cooking optimizes their shelf life, portion control and inventory control.
Dried Legumes and Lentils – Cooking legumes like chickpeas and navy beans or lentils from scratch is an easy way to save on food cost and it produces a more delicious product than canned alternatives. Sous vide ensures that the skins of legumes and lentils won’t blow out and the interior is perfectly creamy and silky.
Behind the Bar – Every operator can order the same spirits. Sous Vide infusions like banana bourbon gives you the opportunity to create flavors unique to your business that will keep guests coming back to get drinks they can only have at your bar. Cooking whole batched cocktails like a sous vide-infused mint julep enables bartenders to get drinks out quicker and make more sales. Because the spirits are cooked in a sealed pouch, there is no evaporation of alcohol. With the addition of precise low heat, bartenders can create a faster and more consistent product than relying on cold infusion techniques like maceration.
Custards – From set custards like Pots de Crème and Crème brûlée to fluid custards like Creme Anglaise and Sabayon, sous vide ensures a perfectly silky set without ever needing to stir. Because of the high cooking temperature for these products, they are pasteurized as part of the cooking process. This means they have a lengthy shelf life if properly chilled and held cold which helps you get ahead on mise en place.
A new era of sous vide has begun!
Breville | PolyScience is thrilled to introduce the next generation of sous vide cooking appliances with the HydroPro™ and the HydroPro™ Plus. Their robust design, precision, and power surpass that of even our own industry-leading predecessors. These are the most affordable commercial immersion circulators we have ever designed, available at hundreds of dollars less than our previous flagship models and a fraction of the cost of our closest competitors.
Smarter – The HydroPro™ and the HydroPro™ Plus feature Sous Vide Toolbox™, an intuitive guided cooking experience. It simplifies sous vide cooking & pasteurization times and temperatures for a wide array of foods by using scientific algorithms applied to the thermal conductivity of what is being cooked. Food types include – animal proteins, eggs, vegetables, fruit, legumes, lentils, custard, and yogurt. Exclusive to the HydroPro™ Plus is a digital needle probe that displays the core temperature of the food as it cooks, enabling sous vide delta cooking (cooking food at a higher water temperature than the final desired food temperature). Delta cooking delivers shorter cooking times while preserving the precision results of Sous Vide. Core food cooking and cooling temperatures are effortlessly recorded for HACCP compliance.
More Robust – IPX7 water resistant construction for protection against accidental submersion, NSF Food Equipment Certified and cUL commercial approved for use in professional environments.
More Powerful – A powerful 1450W heater and variable speed 17 liter per minute pumping system with 360° adjustable flow direction delivers precision control (+/- 0.1ºC) up to a 45-liter bath with lid.
Easier to Clean – Smooth construction and tool-less disassembly of commercial dishwasher safe components make the circulator easy to clean. Access to the pump assembly is possible through a removable foot and magnetic impeller. The exterior only needs to be wiped with a soft cloth after removing an adjustable, quick-release clamp. A padded carrying case for storage and transport is included.
Explore the HydroPro™ immersion circulators at www.PolyScienceCulinary.com.
Sponsored content by Breville | PolyScience