France's new labeling system

Brendan_Lee_56950

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10967352/France-introduces-label-to-ensure-food-is-really-home-made.html

How is this going to impact sous vide cooking? As far as I can tell, anything that has been pre-cooked/heated previously cannot be considered "homemade" under the new labeling system. Seems like they will have to pull directly from the bath rather than retherm if they wan't to use that designation.

Seems kind of well intended but designed by people who have no idea what is actually going on in a kitchen.

cwizou

Actually this is really not an issue for sous vide, the original article isn't really clear. If you speak french, here's a document that shows the intent of the law :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/235218021/Le-guide-du-Fait-Maison-envoye-par-l-UMIH-a-ses-restaurateurs-adherents

Some clarification, it all started because restaurants were putting "Fait Maison" on their menu on items that would not qualify by common sense. Reheated stuff, or "assemblage" from prebought products where there's really no cooking at all.

The intent was to make sure that consumers could distinguish between something that has been prepared from "raw" ingredients and simple reheating of bought from a supplier prepackaged food.

It doesn't in any case restrict what techniques you would apply in your cooking. As long as you start from "raw" ingredients.

This is where it gets tricky as "raw" ingredient doesn't mean much. The idea was to make sure that you can't buy, say, some duck precooked in sauce, reheat, and label that "Fait maison". Any marinated meat, fish, that you buy from a supplier would not qualify. Not homemade sauce could be served, but only separately and can't be in the plate.

If you think about the intent, it sounds pretty good. It does fail in several ways. First is the fact that you can use frozen ingredients, even things such as precut frozen vegetables. We can argue about whether those are good or not (and I'm sure they are convenient for restaurateurs) but that's not something you'd expect as a client for something "home made". They did make an exception for potatoes to not allow frozen french fries (even only cut/parboiled) as they understood this was an issue, but they didn't push it enough in my opinion.

So on one side, you have some restaurateurs that say this is a bad law because it restricts them (note that the only restriction is you can't say "Fait Maison", you can actually do anything you want if you don't put that mention on your menu) and that it makes no "common" sense, and on the other end some that say it's way too permissive and being able to sell frozen meat as "fait maison" is a sham.