The Everything Guide to Cooking Sous Vide by Steve Cylka Read Free Book Online Page B

Gourmet Whips
    Usually, people think of soda siphons or gourmet whips as a way to make seltzer or whipped cream, but this kitchen gadget can do so much more. The gourmet whip has become an essential tool for modern cuisine and is used to make fancy foams, froths, creams, sauces, and even soup. These gourmet whips can be clamped on to the side of a sous vide water bath, allowing the ingredients inside the stainless steel canister to gently cook or simmer. This is excellent for egg-based sauces like hollandaise or anglaise. The iSi Gourmet Whip is an excellent product and a welcome addition to any foodie’s kitchen tool chest.
    Here are a couple of recipes that can utilize the gourmet whip with great results:
     
Pumpkin and Apple Soup (Chapter 7)
Hollandaise Sauce (Chapter 5)
Crème Anglaise (Chapter 14)
    Molecular Gastronomy Chemicals
    Chemistry is an important aspect of molecular gastronomy. Adding specific food additives or chemicals can produce amazing results. Small amounts of agar, calcium lactate, sodium alginate, soy lecithin, tapioca maltodextrin, and others can change the look and taste of food. With these ingredients home cooks can make foams, gel spheres, films, and emulsions out of food that one never thought possible.
    These additives can really help the sous vide home cook create sauces that stay syrupy, emulsifications that do not separate, and vinaigrettes that have the perfect consistency. Molecule-R is a company that makes an excellent starter pack for molecular gastronomy. The packets are portion sized and perfect for someone wanting to give this form of cooking a test run.
    Making Life Simpler Sous Vide Style
    The hectic pace of life can sometimes cause stress when you think about mealtime. Families can struggle balancing multiple schedules, tasks, chores, work, school, and extracurricular activities, so that even the idea of cooking dinner can bring about weariness. People often look for ways to make the actual preparation for supper simpler. Sous vide cooking definitely provides options for anyone who is strained for time, as there is an element of “set it and forget it” that comes with sous vide cooking.
    Reheating Previously Cooked Food
    Not only is sous vide an excellent way to cook meat, vegetables, and other foods, but it is also a great way to reheat food that was previously cooked. Food that has already gone through the process of being vacuum sealed and cooked in the sous vide is perfectly safe to be reheated at a later date. Simply leave the food in the bag, chill the food immediately after it is removed from the sous vide water bath, and place it in the fridge or freezer. Vacuum-sealed cooked meat should be good in the fridge for a day or two, while frozen meat will be good for weeks or possibly months.

If you are cooking food sous vide to eat on a different date, make sure to place the bag of food in an ice bath immediately after it comes out of the sous vide water bath. Let the bag chill in the ice bath to bring the temperature down rapidly and after that, it can be placed in the fridge or freezer, ready to go for a future sous vide reheat session.
    To reheat food, simply set the sous vide machine to the desired serving temperature. Place the bagged, precooked food into the water bath and after about 45–60 minutes it should be reheated and ready to serve. Obviously the time to reheat would vary based on the thickness of the food in the bag, with thicker food taking a bit longer. It is not recommended to reheat thick cuts of meat, because the cooking, chilling, and cooking of larger pieces of meat creates too many opportunities for food spoilage and the growth of bacteria.
    It is also possible to use sous vide as a way to reheat food that was previously cooked using other methods. In these cases, food cooked on the stovetop, in the oven, on the grill, or even outside in a smoker can be vacuum sealed and frozen. Then, at a later date, this food can be reheated in the sous vide water