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Vegetable Recommended Reading

James_Hoffmann_21713

I'd love recommendations of either recipe books or just general reading with more of a vegetarian focus. I feel like I tend to be a little protein heavy in my sous vide thinking. I'd like to do more cooking that puts vegetables front and centre, rather than an accessory to a dish. (An interesting meal at Dirt Candy in NYC started my brain down this path)

I know I came late for the vegetable focused challenge, but that was a great thread to read.

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Jack_Mayer_85396

@jimseven - most of the more noted SV books have pretty good sections on vegetables. The Voltaggio brother's Volt, Inc, Alinea, even TK's Under Pressure. Might be a good starting point ...

Brendan_Lee_56950

Although painfully not in metric measurements, the Eleven Madison Park book has a ton of vegetable preparations in it. I turn to it a lot for vegetable ideas. I also like to look at the very old school french vegetable dishes in my pepin books and adapt them to SV which is usually pretty simple to do.

michaelnatkin

Hey Jim -

As the resident veg, I get asked this a lot. Here are a few thoughts. Some of these are vegetarian books, and others are omnivorous but with lots of outstanding dishes that are either vegetarian or easily modifiable to be so.

Amanda from Dirt Candy has her own graphic novel cookbook: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307952177/?tag=delvkitc-20

Jerusalem http://www.amazon.com/Jerusalem-A-Cookbook-Yotam-Ottolenghi/dp/1607743949/?tag=delvkitc-20

Plenty http://www.amazon.com/Plenty-Vibrant-Recipes-Londons-Ottolenghi/?tag=delvkitc-20

(My own book) Herbivoracious http://www.amazon.com/Herbivoracious-Revolution-Vibrant-Original-Vegetarian/dp/1558327452/?tag=delvkitc-20

Everything by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford: http://www.amazon.com/Naomi-Duguid/e/B000AP9JTS/?tag=delvkitc-20

Everything by Madhur Jaffrey http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffrey/e/B000APHK8K/?tag=delvkitc-20

Cooking by Hand (Paul Bertolli - not that much veg, but tremendous technique) http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Hand-Paul-Bertolli/dp/0609608932

Kansha http://www.amazon.com/Kansha-Celebrating-Japans-Vegetarian-Traditions/dp/1580089550

Heidi Swansons' books http://www.amazon.com/Heidi-Swanson/e/B001JS2UWI/?tag=delvkitc-20

Most complete Indian cookbook ever: http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Krishnas-Cuisine-Vegetarian-Cooking/dp/0525245642/?tag=delvkitc-20

... this is just top of my head, I can also look through my bookshelf at home for more ideas for you.

michaelnatkin

Sorry, I missed that you were specifically looking for sous vide ideas; still these books are all solid sources of good vegetable-focused dishes and many will be adaptable to incorporate sous vide and other modern methods - I do it all the time.

James_Hoffmann_21713

@Michael Natkin Thanks! (I have a copy of your book on the way). I think I found out about Dirt Candy from your blog.

It isn't just sous vide - I guess it is just the idea of careful and controlled prep to get somewhere new and interesting.

@Brendan Lee I'm curious to check it out (though can already feel the metric deprived rage building...)

@Jack Mayer The Alinea book does look interesting. I've been enjoying following this blog about it.

ren_74229

As far as home-cooking focused books, I'd suggest Mr Wilkinson's Favourite Vegetables, and perhaps A Taste of the Unexpected by Mark Diacono. I like both of them because they have a particular and atypical perspective on vegetables then run with it. Gives you more of the "how to think about vegetables" rather than "1,000 things to do with turnips."

If you're looking for a different kind of inspiration, then you'd be perfectly fine looking through any of the contemporary fine dining cookbooks out there (faviken, mugaritz, noma, L'astrance, L'arpege, etc), since vegetables are a central part of all of their cooking.

He doesn't have a book, but I'd also suggest following Chef Jeremy Fox. To me, he's the yoda of vegetables. He posts stuff on his instagram, and recently on Bon Appetit's instagram as well. To me it's always nice to see what he's up to knowing that I could go to the market that day and apply that inspiration.

Leigh_Jones_66597

I may be a bit late with these suggestions, but I think I have some creative suggestions that can make your sous vide efforts a little less meat-centric.

First of all, recognize that we want to preserve the control of the temperature that meats finish at, and vegetables cook at higher temperatures than are optimal for the meats.

This means that vegetables cook separately from meats with which they will be mixed, and are combined late in the cooking process after the vegetables have cooled significantly. The concept of "blending together" the flavors goes out the window in favor of "making the flavors pop".

But to the degree that flavors will blend, this may be accomplished by techniques such as adding bag juices to the vegetables as they cook or by adding stock to both vegetables and meats while cooking.

Two examples to follow:

Chicken chow mein is usually prepared by 3/4 cooking the meat -- stir fried in a wok. Then the vegetables are cooked, and the meat is added for the last 1/4 of their allotted cooking. With sous vide, the chicken can be prepared ahead fully cooked, seared, and roughly diced, and the vegetables cooked through in the wok with the bag juices. Finally, serve the chicken atop the vegetables, perhaps mixed in slightly and finally garnished with sesame seeds or similar.

Second example:

Gumbo is a soup made with onion, bell pepper, and celery sautéed then added to a roux base, with perhaps chicken, shrimp, and andouille sausage. Instead of leaving the meats to boil in the roux for a long time, you would cook white meat chicken sous vide 140 degrees for two to four hours, reserve the bag juices and cube, fry up the flour, add rice and water, and spice it, then allow it to cool. The shrimp, if not pre-cooked, go into the sous vide for 25 minutes at 123 F while you sautée the vegetables and add them to the roux. The roux cools to about 125-130 degrees before you sear all the meats briefly and add them to the gumbo. The cooling period is to prevent overcooking the meats. Of course, spice up the meats as they are sautéed.

Any recipe that mixes meats with hotter-cooking ingredients will need this modification to preserve all of the advantages of the sous vide technique. Stroganoff, soups and stews, curries, ... The list is immense.

Beyond this, plenty of vegetable and vegetarian dishes can be adapted to sous vide preparation. The limitations are that less textural advantage can be attained vs. steaming or boiling -- sous vide vegetables being cooked, as it were, very close to the boiling point. But flavor-wise an advantage might be gained where very mild flavors require some punch -- there is some potential for maintaining flavors that would be stripped away by water. This is a double-edged sword, and needs to be carefully practiced. I tend to believe that the path to improving your vegetable repertoire is studying Indian cuisine.

seijoed

Actually cooking sous vide gives you a lot of textural advantages over steaming or boiling.

It is more forgiving, you cook it quite a bit below boiling for most veg, thing 84C.

You can infuse flavors and if you combine with compression and shocking techniques you get

really interesting options. Not to mention that you can make things like the perfect tater-tots,

cook greens and things like carrots to a much more palatable texture and flavor for finishing in

a pan if so desired.

seijoed

On a side note, re-reading the thread, veg was one of the main reasons for me getting a second circulator, I've ended up using them more for various veg preparations I think than meats.

Leigh_Jones_66597

I have often thought that I needed multiple water baths with their individual controllers, for the most part to run at different temperatures so I can, for example, cook white meat turkey to 140 F and simultaneously cook dark meat turkey to 155 F.

I also cannot deny that vacuum bagging vegetables for cooking sous vide is a very useful technique.

Most of my questions about the recipe here center around whether or not it is your experience that the results to be obtained with purees of vegetable cooked sous vide at or near the boiling point will vary significantly if the control of the temperature is degraded through the use of less precision equipment.

My own experience suggest that results with vegetables are not nearly as dependent on precise temperature control as meats.

I bag and boil corn cobs, broccoli, squashes, potatoes, bean pods, carrots, cabbages (typically bok choi) and a number of other vegetables, grains, pastas, etc., in a pot on the stove together with butter and/or garlic paste, ginger paste, curry paste, cocoanut milk, salad dressings, bottled sauces, powdered sauces, stock, meat sous vide bag juices, freshly toasted whole cardamom, cumin and other spices and fresh herbs (the list is long, I've barely touched the surface) with results I thought were what I wanted.

What I've been practicing has been a little bit more time-critical than making sous vide chicken, but typically involves dropping the bag in the water after shutting off the gas and letting the temperature drop from the boiling point as much as it will. With an unusually large serving prepared at once or with, for example, corn cobs, I'll bring the water back up to a boil.

I can't recall getting the wrong results very often this way, though I have, on occasion, reboiled things that seemed underdone while still in the bag.

Unlike meat sous vide it doesn't seem that garlic in the bag gets ripe, or that it's difficult to avoid being overpowered by fresh herbs, probably because cooking times are shorter.

But what I don't know is whether it is possible, by the application of precision temperature control to sous vide vegetables, to achieve the kind of superior results with vegetables that precision temperature control brings to meats. I've tried, and haven't found a time/temperature point that results in something special -- just more results like I get by boiling the water.

I don't suppose I'm really looking for a recipe for cabbage purée though. For a purée the texture of the vegetables would predictably be a bit less critical, as it's going to be destroyed beyond recognition anyway. I haven't ever made vegetable purée for my family and wouldn't want to risk their harsh judgement if I did. But vegetables in general, I'd really like to know how to make them better appreciated at home.

I've tried precise temperature in my sous vide cooker with vegetables and seen results that were good, but always found that the only way to make them taste magical like sous vide medium rare 24 hour tri-tip was to spice and flavor the vegetables to th point that the flavors are magical because great texture has always been dependent on cooking for the right length of time. Is there really a great temperature for vegetables that's better than boiling?

Leigh_Jones_66597

PS: I asked this question of a woman in India, and she told me to try a pressure cooker.

Leigh_Jones_66597

PS: I asked this question of a woman in India, and she told me to try a pressure cooker.

Chris_Young_80640

@Leigh Jones — Basically I agree with you that vegetables are not critically dependent on the cooking temperature. It's not like muscle foods where very small temperature differences can radically change the texture. With plant foods, you're basically trying to dissolve the molecular glue that binds cells together. The more you do that, the softer the plant foods become.

This being chemistry, it turns out that this reaction follows temperature kinetics in a predictable way, the higher the cooking temperature, the faster the cells come undone. So, the advantage of cooking at a temperature below the boil is that your "window" of ideal doneness lasts longer so there is a increased chance you'll get them perfect. Think about pressure cooking, it enables you to raises the temperature above 212F /100C because you've raised the boiling point of water. But now, a minute or two too long and most vegetables become mush—timing is everything in a pressure cooker.

But reduce the temperature to, say, 92 °C and the cooking takes longer, but the plant food stays at the ideal texture for a long time during the cooking process.

The reaction, by the way, flattens out a lot below 90 °C, and many vegetables will never really get soft if you try to cook them at temperatures well below the boiling point of water—or at least not for several days or weeks of cooking.

Leigh_Jones_66597

I think that there are more advantages to "tough muscle" sous vide than you've avowed above. Tenderizing over time is another advantage.

For vegetables, I plan to investigate. I'll cook these vegetables sous vide (attached photo), part sous vide at 185F and part ~210 F and note differences in texture -- broccoli, zucchini, carrot, tomatoes, and a Castroville blossom equally seasoned, Brussels sprouts, and more, and see which requires lower (184F) temperature and which benefits from higher temperatures (near boiling). At stake is not the technique but the temperature, and considerable personal preference will come into play. Darn it, I can't send the picture.

Leigh_Jones_66597

Try again

Leigh_Jones_66597

Still working on this. It seems that either my cooker isn't as hot as it claims to be across the 185F range or vegetables require longer to be cooked to a given doneness at 185 F than anticipated.

seijoed

@Leigh Jones, do you have a reference temp?

It'll vary, but small cut taters like 1" x 2" look at 30-45 minutes,

asparagus very short times - like in the recipe.

Artichoke, weeks I presume, I normally do them in a pressure cooker.

Carrots, around 30 minutes depending on size.

Radishes, 45 minutes.

Cauliflower, cut up with everything facing water, 1h to 90 min.

You have a lot of leeway in the times going upwards.

If you have access to MC or Under Pressure times are published there.

Incorporating aromatics, oils, acidic elements and spices can change times and texture.

Leigh_Jones_66597

On the first night the artichoke was first in, after cleaning up dinner dishes. I cut leaf tips off with scissors, quartered it and cut out the fuzzy stuff with a spoon, then bagged each of the four pieces with butter and herbs. Saving two pieces in the fridge, I put one in a boiling crock pot and the other in at 185F. I pulled the boiling one out at a half hour, tasted it, and put it back in for 15 more minutes. I ate it with ranch dressing. At 1:15 the 185F one wasn't done yet. It was bed time.

I don't want to try sous bide asparagus or cauliflower (personal choice), but I found both the boiling sous vide and the 185 F sous vide broccoli were equivalent, except the 185 F took longer to cook. I tried including cheese and seasonings in the bag with broccoli and it worked better than sprinkling it on top after cooking. Broccoli sous vide without butter or other fatty barrier is surprisingly green tasting, and as such would probably displease children.

On to other flavors.

Leigh_Jones_66597

One thing I have noticed. It's just darned difficult to fit sous vide vegetables into my schedule. I come home to 22 hour or 12 hour sous vide meats after work, and the meal preparation time is minuscule from there. To cook the veggies for an hour and a quarter sous vide before dinner pushes the dinner schedule out so far that I couldn't do them on weekdays. This is the reason I can't do 2 hour sous vide chateaubriand except on weekends, so I do 24 hour tri-tip instead and get remarkably satisfying results every time, and why I can't do 2 to 4 hour chicken weekdays so I do chicken for 12 hours instead (perhaps a touch softer than ideal).

seijoed

I do those veggies ahead of time so that I can finish them in a pan, yes fitting it into a dinner schedule as normal, nah, won't work.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

For greens I nuke in a ziploc bag. I add ~20% water to the bag and nuke on high for ~2 mins then leave in the bag for ~2 mins; shake the water off and serve. I've done it with bok choy, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, and a few others. Quick and easy. Test the times for your microwave. I do like my vege Asian style (still with some crunch) and this works well for me.