Unilateral Cooking

I'm interested in learning more about unilateral cooking. I know it's "popular" with fish, and there's a restaurant in Atlanta, 5 Church, that does it with their "60 second strip." But I'm wondering what other, creative applications there could be for the technique. Anybody out there have some wisdom they'd like to share?

Find more posts tagged with

Recipes Q's

Comments

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

Never new what it was called...been doing it for many years with scallops and tuna....three completely different textures and favors in each bite..

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Grant Achatz once did a sous vide wagyu steak that he seared extremely hard on one side only. (The link is to a demo that Achatz did on Ming Tsai's show... the sear happens halfway or so through the episode, around 11 minutes in). That seems more delicious to me than doing the same thing to a totally raw steak. Like HammeredChef, I've done the same thing to scallops and tuna for quite some time. Seems like it has limited applications, but doing a very low-temp SV cook prior to the unilateral sear opens up many more possibilities.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Also, I love watching that video. It's so obvious that Ming doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. The more I've learned about cooking, the less I enjoy his show (though the ones where he travels to Japan or cooks with family are more interesting).

JasonWirth_68226

Haha. I agree with your Ming comment. Although he probably knows what he's doing more than I know what I'm doing. I enjoy when he has other guests though, the guests always provide new insight and ideas. It's ironic that you enjoy when he goes to Japan, to me that's when he loses all credibility.

JasonWirth_68226

The idea, if I understand correctly, is really to get a play on textures and flavors by having a fully cooked and raw (rare) preparation at the same time. Maybe consider taking some food out earlier in the process (or using raw when appropriate) then adding it back in. For carbonara a mix of chewy less cooked bacon with more crispy, almost burnt, bacon.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Oh, I don't enjoy HIM in Japan... but he interviews people who know what they're doing, and that's interesting. And he does a sufficiently adequate job of asking questions that you can learn _something_ from watching it all go down.