Also Extraction?

tangma27

Can someone explain how to cook under a vaccuum and all the cryo freezing or just what that technique is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bcI3c7ddMs

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brian_martin2001

Vacuum cooking is just that, cooking in a reduced atmosphere. There are specialized devices (such as a rotary evaporator or a vacuum oven) which will decrease the atmospheric pressure by pulling a vacuum which will surround the product being cooked. A rotary evaporator is often used for flavor extraction, usually from a liquid or a blended solid, as the flavor volatiles are evaporated out of the fluid and then re-condensed. With the vacuum oven, a solid can be fully cooked, without raising the temperatures as much, as water will boil at much lower temperatures under a vacuum. Cryo-freeze is used to concentrate the flavors. This is oversimplifying it, but is essentially a freeze dryer. The liquid is chilled far below the freezing point, then it is subjected to a vacuum, to sublimate the water out of the liquid. This results in an extremely flavorful liquid, without subjecting it to heat, which would damage the flavor compounds. That's my basic understanding of it, I could be completely wrong, but that's what it looks like to me.

tangma27

Thanks Brian! You're always so helpful. The picture they had with the pot over the fire was a bit misleading, I know of rotary evaporators but didn't see the connection until you brought it up. Never heard of a vacuum oven but I'll google that.

Oh ok...i didn't realize cryofreezing was akin to a freeze dryer. That helps a lot! Thanks!

That brings up another question:

Let's say a medium rare steak is 57C at atmospheric. Under vacuum, is medium rare at a lower temperature? What happens when the steak is no longer under vacuum after you've cooked it in a vacuum oven?

brian_martin2001

Honestly, I haven't the foggiest idea. I used vacuum ovens in the lab to analyse total solids, to dry lab equipment, etc, but i've never used one in culinary application. And sadly, I no longer work at that particular lab, so I don't have access to one at the moment. Sorry

tshewman

My understanding is it simply cooks at a lower temperature. Once the steak is "cooked" and removed, it's basically a cold medium-rare steak. So the water inside the steak (which is what a steak mostly is, just not as high a water content as veggies) will cook at a lower temp.

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

This is tooooooo haaaaard! I'm having another glass/bottle of wine and I'm deep frying my frozen filet for 2.5 minutes and SVing it at 128F...

tangma27

I'M JUST CURIOUS

tangma27

Oh. hmmm but like...do the proteins constrict at the same temperature under vacuum etc?

tangma27

Somehow..I've managed to stump you. At least it's probably a useless concern with probably not many applications LOL

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

messing with you...My-Cull

tangma27

Did you reply with a comment about Chris Young? It's in my notifications but I can't find it

Brandon_Byrd_40557

I don't really trust anything they say in this video since its description of nouvelle cuisine is fundamentally wrong and there's a huge gap between that movement and the magic moment that Yannick Alleno supposedly developed a fantastic and revolutionary way to make sauces. Apart from that, it's clear that the person giving us the information has no idea what they're talking about.... "Prior to Yannick Alleno, fermentation had always been seen as a preservation tool, and not a taste enhancer! Thank God Alleno came along and fermented for flavor!" WTF? Maybe what they were trying to say got lost in translation from French into English. Anyway...

From what I can gather from the few articles I found on this, there's nothing especially amazing or interesting going on with this technique and Homeboy (or his marketing team) is pushing it as revolutionary. Here's how I understand the technique as it was described in a Fine Dining Lover's article:

Step 1: Place a product into a sous vide bag with some added water, seal, and then cook with a circulator. Nothing's under vacuum during the cooking process... it's just in a bag in a water bath. (It's astonishing that they say it's cooked "under vacuum" everywhere... come on, people...)

Step 2: Strain and reserve the liquid.

Step 3: "Cryoconcentrate" the liquid by freezing it "into a sorbet style ice" and then spin it in a centrifuge. As the ice melts, the portions with the highest amount of flavor compounds will thaw faster (because they're less pure) and leave behind a layer of mostly-pure ice which can then be discarded. You'll be left with a concentrated version of the stock you originally started with. This process can be repeated multiple times.

Step 4: Profit?

Making stock in sous vide bags is nothing new. Cryoconcentration is nothing new. Bruno Goussault has a great discussion of the technique in which he explains that cryoconcentration has a long history in industrial food production. Goussault worked with Joel Robuchon and Regis Marcon before consulting with Alleno on his sauces (pardon me... his "extracts"). Goussault describes the process as "We make chunks of frozen juice and then remove the ice to leave nothing but the concentrated juice." Astonishing!

Anyway, not a particularly revolutionary or innovative or interesting from my perspective. Horribly described in the misleading video featured in the original post. Ushering in a new epoch in French Culinary History?! I think not.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Turns out that the technique involves neither cooking under a vacuum nor subjecting frozen liquids to a vacuum (at least as I understand it). It's much more mundane, and the video totally mischaracterized the process.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Here's another article where they outline his process for making a celeriac extraction: SV + low temp cook + freeze + thaw.

brian_martin2001

Lame. Oh well.

tangma27

HAHA I did take the animation with a grain of salt but those steps you layed out for me really helped clarify the subject. I've never heard of cryoconcentrating before but that's a pretty cool concept to me! Makes sense at least.

Does he sous vide...fermented juice then?

" This involves taking the extracted liquid and adding it to a sorbet style ice" ---Does anyone know what this entails?

tangma27

damn it.

robert.c.brown15

I did it here - https://www.chefsteps.com/forum/posts/yannick-allenos-celery-root-extraction-sauce

It's pretty cool. The extraction has body to it, like a syrup. Coats your palate.

I did his Corn Extraction last night for a sauce to accompany poached chicken breasts. He doesn't call for the cryoconcentration step for any of the Extraction recipes in the book I have. Maybe he figures home cooks won't bother and the results aren't different enough for a home cook to care. The corn tasted great straight out of the bag for what it's worth.

I may reserve some of the Extraction and then put the rest of it through a cryoconcentration cycle and compare the two.