What changes have you seen in the 20 years you’ve been cooking with sous vide?
The adoption of sous vide has been massive. The fact that a consumer can pick up a sous vide machine today at Target pretty much says it all. The more that fast-casual style restaurants and other multi-unit concepts are successful, the more you need batch cooking and the unmatched consistency that sous vide was created for. It also lowers the bar for kitchen teams to finish and serve, making it faster and simpler to achieve a high-quality result every time. With today’s labor challenges it makes more sense than ever.
What’s next for sous vide?
The frontier for innovation today is starches and veggies. What sous vide can do for proteins has already been proven – edge-to-edge perfectly cooked to precise temperatures, locking in flavor and letting great product shine. We have a great store of knowledge about how to do that, but outside of the center of the plate there is a lot to be discovered.
What makes sous vide a great match for Aussie proteins?
I like to remind people that sous vide can’t rescue a bad piece of meat, and that good product going in will give you excellent results. There’s just nowhere to hide in sous vide – it’s all in the bag, and it’s not going anywhere! So the naturally clean flavor of Aussie lamb and the grassfed beef flavor gets intensified – that minerality and natural, earthy taste gets to shine. Cooks have a tendency to overcook grassfed meats on high-heat platforms too; sous vide eliminates that risk, and you can just add a quick sear before service for those delicious Maillard reactions.
For more from Chef Sean, including a few of his favorite Aussie lamb recipes, click here.