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How to apply sous vide in the a la carte kitchen

Bj_rn_Olfenius_39604

Hi everyone,
My question is, how do I apply sous vide cooked meat and fish in an a la carte restaurant ?
The question I have is about waste and calculation , how du I know how much to prepare in time, as I don't know how many costumes I'm going to have for every evening .... It will work out, if I know how many people r coming and what they r going to order , but without knowing that ?
Anyone with practical experience and ideas ?

Thanks

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Comments

Mark_Kalynchuk_34927

@Chris You're comments are really spot on. I often find myself using a constantly boiling veg well or, if space permits, the set up sous vide to reheat pre-sous vide meats. the reheat time depends on the meat (flank steak-1 min, double cut pork chop-10-15 min) but the practical application exists

Chris_Young_80640

@zach -- you're correct. Thanks for adding the clarifying details.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

From the PolyScience Sous Vide App, if you place a 50mm thick short rib (starting at 5C) in a 58.9C water bath it will take 0:53:41 (hh:mm:ss) for the core to reach 58.9C. The remaining 47:06:19 the meat is in the water bath is for tenderness and all the meat will be at the same temp as the water bath.

After the 48hr cook, you chill the meat and throw it in the fridge. Three days later you feel like short rib again and you take the meat out of the 5C fridge and drop it in a 58.9C water bath it will take 0:53:41 until the core is 58.9C. If your hunger pangs cause you to pull the meat after 20 mins the core would be ~55C. As you wolf the meat down you are unlikely to notice the core is 3.9C lower than the surface. The appearance and texture of the core would be effectively the same as a 58.9C core as that is the temp the core was cooked at.

Zach_Novetsky_5096

Chris,

On (3), I did the 48-hour short ribs from the Momofuku cookbook, ice bathed them after the 48 hour sous vide, froze a few packages, and was able to reheat them in a couple of hours (i.e. not 48 hours later again).

While what you said in (3) is correct, for someone who is unfamiliar with the sous vide process, it might be confusing.

What I'm trying to say is that there is an advantage to reheating, namely that reheating the 48 hour short ribs, for example. allows you to cook a whole bunch of 48 hour short ribs potentially months in advance, take them out of the freezer, place them right in your water bath, and have ribs that have the taste and texture of 48 hour ribs in a couple of hours.

Chris_Young_80640

Some thoughts here:

(1) I recommend buying sturdier bags rather than double bagging. It works out to be cheaper.

(2) If a food has been cooked to a pasteurization temperature and held there for long enough, then its safe to chill it and reheat it later. By keeping it vacuum packaged, from experience, most meats can be kept refrigerated for several days without a noticeable change to the quality (several meats were prepared this way at The Fat Duck).

(3) Keep in mind that reheating takes just as long as heating to the desired cooking temperature the first time. The only real advantage of reheating is that if you serve it a few degrees too cool because the order has to go out, then it's likely no one will notice since it will have the appearance, taste, and texture of the meat cooked to the correct temperature.

(4) All of this rarely applies to seafood, because almost no one likes fish cooked to pasteurization temperatures (hotter than 54 °C / 129 °F and held there for quite a while).

(5) For service, I generally advocate having a few orders cooking at the beginning of service, and adding a new one for each one you sell (paperclips help keep things organized here). If you end up with a few unsold, then chill them down and cook again the next day.

(6) Keep cooking times short, when possible, by keeping proteins fairly thin. Remember, cutting something in half will roughly cut the cooking time by a factor of 4.

Zach_Novetsky_5096

This was a charity fundraiser dinner and we used all of the meat.

For your needs, however, I'd suggest the following by way of an analogy. I've cooked 72 hour and 48 hour short ribs and other tough cuts of meat. After the sous vide period, if you ice bath the protein, you are able to store the protein in the freezer for some time (several months) and in the refrigerator for several days (this is per David Chang, Thomas Keller and others). If you freeze your protein, just let it defrost overnight in the refrigerator; reheat it en sous vide; and sear/blowtorch/fry accordingly.

I've done this and the protein comes out perfect. However, you only want to do this with meat that takes a long time to cook en sous vide; for a hanger steak, for example, you wouldn't want to freeze it because of the short sous vide time. Likewise, and echoing what Dave said above, obviously do not do this for seafood.

As for Dave's concern about the bag losing vacuum, if you're cooking en sous vide for more than a few hours, you should be double sealing your bags anyway (as in, seal the first pouch, then put that one in a second pouch and vacuum seal as well).

Hope this helps.

Dave_Butler_38723

I think you're going ot encounter a couple of issues with freezing your vacuum sealed portions after cooking sous vide. The texture of your protien is likely to be compromised because it will throw off liquid, and you may find that particularly in the case of beef the meat fibers can take on an unappealing mouth feel. Secondly, if you're freezing a sealed sous vide pack the thickness of plastic is a big factor. Thinner bags will often lose their vacuum, frequently because jagged ice crystals pierce the bag & release the seal. That said, the more robust the protien the better it's going to hold up freezing after sous vide. I wouldn't recommend for fish and seafood. You can freeze a cryopack before cooking pretty successfully, but make sure to bring back to room temp before putting in the water bath to avoid a big dip in water temp.

Bj_rn_Olfenius_39604

Thanks for your reply,

This might work, but what did u do with the rest of the meat that wasn't sold out ? Did u freeze it ?

We have at least 10 different main courses on our menu, with different meats and fish ... Sometimes we can sell 2 portions of one of them and sometimes 60 ... So that's why I find it difficult to do it the sous vide stile, even if I would like to do it ! So otherwise, is it possible to store the ready made sous vide meat in refrigerator or freezer ? And how is it going to effect the quality of the meat and fish ?

Zach_Novetsky_5096

I recently cooked a meal for 100 people and wondered the same thing. We had a choice of two entrees. One was a hanger steak cooked en sous vide.

After some consideration, I decided the best way to proceed was as follows:

(1) Pre-cook all of the hanger steak (75, I believe, in total) the night before;

(2) ice bath them;

(3) after chilling, I stored them in a refrigerator overnight;

(4) for pre-service, I filled a large sink with hot water, but at a temperature that was no higher than the temperature I cooked the meat en sous vide (this brings the meat to room temperature or higher at a faster rate than just leaving them at room temperature);

(5) It's very important that you give the protein time to come back to at least room temperature;

(6) When the orders came in, I removed the meat from the warm bath, patted the meat dry, and seared until it reached the appropriate serving temperature.

(7) Even though you don't necessarily need to rest the protein because of the sous vide cooking, I think it depends on the sear time (i.e. if you have a long sear to bring up to serving temperature, I think you need a rest).

(8) Either way, I rested my meat by tenting it with foil, which also allowed me to keep the meat warm.

I found that this method worked wonderfully. Apparently, you can keep a protein at room temperature, safely, for a couple of hours. Let me know how it goes.