Cooling down in stages

How come some kitchens cool food (from sous-vide or otherwise) in large ice bins, and others in stages,

first at room temp then luke warm water, then Ice water.

Is it to not melt all the ice and need to replenish it ?

ie Anne Sophie Pic use this process for all her proteins cooked sous-vide.. I think so does Heston from if my memory serves me right.

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Johan_Edstrom_5586

Might be a volume of scale thing, Heston recommends that you chill directly in a 50% ice bath.

You definitely don't want to leave things at an ambient temperature for too long.

I think 6 h is the outmost max for chilling from 130F to 41F

davidattala

In an overview of a course given by Bruno Goussault, it's explained here:

Bruno Goussault

http://blog.khymos.org/2011/04/01/tfp-2011-sous-vide-master-class-part-2/

Bruno Goussault

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@David -- Thanks!

Jason_37238

thank you

Chris_Young_80640

I will add the following:

I tried to replicate Bruno's claims while working on Modernist Cuisine—showing that juices are reabsorbed by slow, step-wise cooling. We were never able to show that to be true. Bruno offers no actual evidence, so I continue to be very skeptical.

If anyone here can replicate the results of step-wise slow cooling allowing the protein to remain more juices than rapid chilling in an ice bath, I would love to see the data.

In general, it's more practical to allow the food to cool from cooking temperature to ambient for an hour or so, before moving into a fridge. This has the advantage of not putting a bunch of hot food in a refrigerator, which will tend to raise the temperature in the fridge.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@Chris, I will add that I thank you for that comment.

I thought the whole thing was bullshit based on my findings but now I can stand strong defending lack of evidence

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Chris - thanks for the insight. I read the article and was also skeptical.