Sous vide cooking can save your restaurant time and money and allow you to create perfect results every time.
Sous vide is a cooking technique that uses precise temperature control to deliver consistent results. Sous vide means ‘under vacuum’ in French. The food is vacuum-sealed in a plastic pouch and cooked in a water bath, usually at much lower temperatures and for longer periods than normally used for cooking.
The result is food that is evenly cooked – the outside doesn’t over cook and the inside is at exactly the level of ‘doneness’ that you want.
According to Grant Creative Cuisine, there are a number of benefits to sous vide cooking:
Cost savings
Sous vide allows you to reduce costs by delivering premium quality dishes with lower cost cuts of meat. The equipment also often has a lower energy consumption than other cooking equipment. Cost savings can be made through less portion shrinkage, and less food wastage.
Grant Creative Cuisine estimates the overall overall cost savings potential for a medium sized independent restaurant to be about £200-500 per week .
Time savings
The sous vide technique allows you to prepare ingredients well in advance of service, helping you to cook and serve ingredients quickly and efficiently when needed. Any ingredients not used in that service, can be refrigerated and used again later with no loss in quality.
Preparation advantages
Once ingredients reach the desired cooking temperature, they will never go above or below this. With the exception of a few very delicate ingredients, this means the ingredients can't overcook, and there's no loss of quality even if the ingredients have been in the sous vide water bath up to four hours longer than the original set time.
Flexibility
Sous vide can be used to cook meats, fish, vegetables and fruit. It’s also an excellent way to infuse alcohols and spirits together.
Health advantages
All nutrients and minerals are captured in a vacuum sealed pouch, so they can’t escape during the cooking process.
Read more:
The sous vide cooking technique: Frequently asked questions
