Arrive Magazine - March/April, 2007

CHATTER

It works like this: You put what you want to cook (and any seasonings you want to flavor it with) in a plastic bag and vacuum seal it with a pressure machine. You then cook the food at a low temperature, usually by immersing the bag in lukewarm water. By cooking it slowly, the food gently comes up to the proper temperature—yet never goes over it. You can serve it right away or the bag can be chilled, then reheated right before it’s needed.

So you’ll understand my confusion about that duck. After all, consider a great steak: Outside it’s crispy and charred, almost sweet with caramelization. When you slice it, you notice that right next to that char, the steak is cooked through; it’s nearly gray and a little tough. As you move closer and closer to the middle of the meat, it gets less cooked—more pink, more tender—until you get to that sweet spot in the center: medium rare.

That sweet spot is what Barber and others call the bull’s-eye. With sous vide cooking, the entire steak is a bull’s-eye. From the outside edge to the very core, the meat is at the ideal doneness.

And that explains my momentary disorientation. Barber hadn’t yet seared that duck. It was pink, all the way through. A perfect bull’s-eye.

WHY IT TASTES GOOD

Sous vide is certainly convenient for chefs. In the chaos of a restaurant kitchen, they never need worry if they’re burning the pork roast. Indeed, in 2005 some of Washington, D.C.’s, top chefs—Michel Richard of Citronelle, Roberto Donna of Galileo, Todd Gray of Equinox and Kaz Okochi of Kaz Sushi Bistro, according to a Washington Post article—prepared nine courses for 400 Katrina survivors in less than an hour because the food came in vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

But convenience doesn’t necessarily mean ease.

“There’s a painstaking effort to cook like that,” says Shea Gallante, the chef of Cru in Manhattan. “It’s not easier by any means. It’s actually more tedious.”

But the return for the hard work is getting a perfect texture and flavor every time. And consistency is what keeps diners coming back.

Consider the char on that steak. As food-science writer Harold McGee, the author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, explains it: The high heat that created it tightens—almost presses down on—muscle fibers and pushes out water. (That’s why when food is overcooked it’s tough and dry.)