The Selection of Ingredients for Sous Vide Cooking
With the characteristic of cooking food at temperatures below 158℉ (70℃), low-temperature technology is more suitable for taste-conscious ingredients like foie gras, salmon, high-quality beef, etc.
Sous vide cooking method can be adopted for all kinds of ingredients, particularly for seafood and red meat. Red meat has crude fiber and is easy to cook. After sous vide, its connective tissue can be allowed to fully dissolve. And the effective control of low temperature can well prevent the meat from being cooked for too long so that its taste will be more tender than that of food cooked in other methods, and the juice will be retained more.
The sirloin will be chosen by the chef for sous vide steak. And its best cooking temperature is 140℉ (60℃). The steak is cut into 4-6 pieces in advance, then sealed in a vacuum-sealing bag and cooked in the sous vide cooker for 50 minutes. After taking out the steak, spread some butter on it and bake it on the griddle at 446-482℉ (230-250℃) until the liquid on the surface is slightly reduced and absorbed. At this time, the steak is a little charred outside and red and juicy inside.
For seafood, oily fish, such as tuna, sablefish and salmon, is also suitable for sous vide cooking. Tuna is rich in fish oil and tastes tender and smooth. We can marinate it with salt, bay leaf, onion, rosemary and thyme for 1 hour, then soak it in the water at 146.8℉ (63.8℃) for 3.5 hours. And it just looks like the fresh fish when being served. In sous vide sablefish, we can choose the meat near the middle part of the fish spine, which is appropriate for long-time cooking because it has a little belly and high oil. We can first make the dill oil with dill, star anise, Sichuan pepper and olive oil, and then season the sablefish with the oil. Sous vide sablefish at 122℉ (50℃) for 30 minutes to achieve the ideal tenderness. As for the salmon, take out the fillet of the salmon with skin, and marinate it with dill oil for 45 minutes. Then cook it in the sous vide bath at 131℉ (55℃) for 15 minutes, with the taste being rich and smooth.
Foie gras, an important ingredient in western food, can also be cooked by the sous-vide method. Marinate it with red wine, onion, celery, black pepper and bat leaf for two weeks, and cook it in sous vide machine at 154.4℉ (68℃) for 25 minutes, preserving the moisture and oil of foie gras.
