“Sous Vide” Cooking: The Basics
“Sous-vide” is fashionable French for a method of cooking that involves longer cooking times at lower temperatures and reduced atmospheric pressures. It means, literally, “under vacuum.” Commonly, food is sealed in plastic vacuum bags and cooked at temperatures well below the boiling point of water for dozens of hours, although the particular parameters vary widely with the food to be cooked. The point, really, is that the equipment involved is capable of finer automated control of those parameters than your conventional range, oven, and/or microwave, and the quality and flavor of the natural ingredients can be vastly improved—without sacrificing safety—by using it.
