Talk:Sous vide

Comments

Theres some conflation between sous-vide and low temperature (or low temperature gradient cooking). This is somewhat confusing, because while such cooking approaches are common to sous-vide, they are not an essential component. Some European chefs, for example, cook with a higher delta-T (difference in temperature between water bath and final food temperature) in order to achieve some controlled gradient in the cook level of meat. This approach is often sometimes used in egg cookery, in order to cook white and yolk to different temperatures. In these cases, the essential features of sous-vide is a precisely temperature-controled water bath. However, as in conventional cooking, precise timing becomes a requirement again.

As others have noted, vacuum packaging is not even essential to sous-vide, even though it's where the name is derived. Many people cook in zipper-sealed plastic bags or plastic wrap, in Food-Saver bags, or in jars. Eggs are cooked in their shells directly in the bath, and egg shells are semi-permeable.

It's worth noting that low-temperature cooking is not the sole province of sous-vide; devices like combi ovens and laboratory hotplates facilitate this kind of cooking as well.

Because of all this, defining sous-vide is challenging; it's really a fairly broad and fuzzy set of techniques and approaches, named after a vacuum-sealing process which is not actually required. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.80.222.119 (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

We know that sous vide can be done in jars. Why is that not in the definition? I added it, with sourcing, but it was immediately edited out.Waltezell (talk) 00:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

"Baldwin's treatise" is mentioned at the end of the article with no previous mention of Baldwin, nor any citation.

Also, I think an Advantages/Disadvantages section might be appropriate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.213.11.24 (talk) 16:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Basically good article but feels like it was written five years ago and never updated. SV isn't new anymore even if it is unknown in most home kitchens. Lately, SV is becoming much more well known and even specialized aspects of SV are receiving publicity. 1p2o3i (talk) 17:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are using a Black Hole to cook, a vacuum is incapable of compressing something by definition. "Step One Only: Some high-end restaurants, such as those of Thomas Keller, bag fresh fruits, such as melons, place them in their vacuum chamber, and pull a high vacuum, causing the surrounding air to compress the fruit pieces into small, meaty jewels. These are then served in their vacuum-altered state having never been cooked.[5]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.178.46.120 (talk) 02:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

"Then heating should be stopped immediately; while resting the food, residual heat will continue to cook it for a while. If the heating continues, the food will be over cooked. Sous-vide cooking continues until the center of the food has reached its target temperature; if it continues after this, the food will not be overcooked, and it will not cook more after it stops being heated." This is written very poorly and is contradictory. I know that food will keep cooking after being removed from heat due to residual heat, but I do not know enough about sous-vide to say if this applies. Anyone with knowledge of which statement is correct please edit the main page to reflect the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.237.118.255 (talk) 09:06, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

This entry starts off sounding like an advertisement just for this style of cooking 199.43.190.10 (talk) 15:40, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

There is no mention in this article of the role of "vacuum". This is quite confusing, because, as the article says, the translation of "sous vide" from French to English means "under vacuum".

A better plural for "apparatus" is simply "apparatus". "Apparatuses" seems awkward.

Jugging

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugging

Historically speaking sous-vide is very similar to this. Perhaps worth a mention? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CptBuck (talk • contribs) 03:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. My (deleted) advise to use a gluhwein machine as a cheap, big, sous vide cooker, taps into this. Bielmeyer sells gluhwein machines without a tap and then calls them jugging machines. Basically the same thing. PizzaMan (talk) 13:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

history

How can this practice predate plastic bags? What did they used to use? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 23:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

That's a good question. I added to the definition (with appropriate sourcing), "canning jar or other (usually air-tight) container" as a sous-vide method, but this was immediately removed by someone who undid all of my edits.Waltezell (talk) 23:57, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Safety

As a biochemist, I cant see how heating for 4 hours at 55 degrees would kill bacteria and make it safe. when you heat something slowly like that bacteria produce heat shock proteins which allow them to survive at higher temperatures — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eggilicious (talk • contribs) 08:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Bacteria dies at 55C, it is just that it takes a long time. All research that I have seen states that there is no heat shock protein, at 55C bacteria dies, although slowly. See e.g. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_Tables.pdf page 4, 55C for 89 min gives the same safety as 65C for 85 sec. --Stefan ^talk 05:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Thermophilic bacteria don't "dies at 55C". And Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxins are definitely stable at 55C. Do you work for Sous Vide? Because your comment reads a little like someone protecting an advert. Wikipedia is not an advertising forum. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:C409:DA00:9060:B55C:A50D:5E66 (talk) 18:10, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Eggs and Promo Material

I removed the following paragraph because it is based on erroneous information (eggs do not come in an air-tight container--eggshell is not airtight. otherwise the chick inside would not be able to breathe.):

Step two only: there is no reason to package a food in an air-tight bag if it comes pre-packaged, and one food comes naturally pre-packaged: the egg. Prolonged cooking of eggs in the shell at low temperatures is included in the category of sous-vide, although neither vacuum nor cooking bag is involved. The resulting egg is not a duplicate of an egg that has been boiled, with the outside typically hotter than the inside. Instead, the egg will be a uniform temperature throughout. As it happens, the yolk of an egg actually congeals at a lower temperature than the white, so it is possible to cook an egg with a solid yolk and a runny white. Thus a sous vide egg can be quite unlike anything that might be pulled from a boiling pot of water. (Cooking the egg at a higher temperature will see to it that both are firm.)

I also removed multiple plugs for Thomas Keller restaurants, including a gushing description of their sous-vide-cooked fruit dish as "small, meaty jewels" and a superfluous mention of their sous-vide cooked lobster tails:

At Thomas Keller's The French Laundry restaurant, their lobster tails are cooked in a sous vide cooker filled with beurre monté (a butter specially prepared to withstand higher heat) as their heating medium.

2602:30B:8266:A8E9:F8D0:6B79:4AD:F463 (talk) 14:46, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

No promo, but it could be rewritten in a less hands-on style. The Banner talk 15:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you can adequately talk about sous vide without more than a mention of Keller, since his book "Under Pressure" probably did more to popularize the technique among American chefs than anything else, as well as getting the NYC Department of Health to accept it as safe. (Technically, sous vide cooking is generally done in what's usually referred to as "The Danger Zone", and IIRC, Per Se was shut down for a while because of that.) I general, the entire article needs a re-work; maybe I'll take it on as a project in the next week or so. 216.197.64.125 (talk) 22:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

No need to mention the book, as the world is bigger than the USA and New York. The technique is re-discovered almost simultaneously in France and the USA and an almost standard kitchen technique everywhere. The Banner talk 23:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Suggest explanatory video

I heard in a panel discussion from Fuzheado that Wikipedia is lacking in useful video content. I sought out some advice on Wikipedia, and created a short video to explain what sous vide cooking is; I hope it might be useful for placement in this article. (I see above that there have been recent concerns about promotional content; I should note that this is part of my work for Nomiku, a company that makes a sous-vide cooker; but I did my best to make a generally informative video, not using or calling out any type of branding. You'll see our name does not appear anywhere in the video, and though our cooker makes a brief appearance, the video is not designed to attract attention to it, rather the food and the sous vide cooking method.)

The version I have uploaded is silent, with a caption file. I also have a version with a voice-over in English that I could upload; but I figured the captioned version would be more flexible for other uses, so I'm starting off with that one. Interested in any feedback! -Pkwong89 (talk) 01:52, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Video with voice-over

Video with captions

I forgot to link the video -- corrected now, and I also uploaded the voice-over version. -Pkwong89 (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I have now added the video. Any feedback still welcome! -Pkwong89 (talk) 21:17, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Pkwong89: - Great work! Am glad to see that video and I think it was paced very well and shows a variety of foods being prepared. Love the shot of the charring of the meat at the end. -- Fuzheado | Talk 02:08, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

patently untrue.

"Additionally, the high temperatures required for vegetables may melt the materials of the average cooler." 108.53.252.108 (talk) 07:02, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out -- now deleted. -Pete (talk) 00:25, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Steak tartare

"Pasteurization is not always essential for safety if fresh uncontaminated food is cooked and eaten immediately; fresh raw foods such as sushi and steak tartare are widely eaten without ill effects." This line should be deleted. Steak tartare has caused illness and death. Link:

173.59.0.243 (talk) 20:37, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

References

The blog post bears out what the text says: "If the cut is contaminated on the outside then the mixing distributes the bacteria throughout." Steak tartare is not inherently unhealthy unless the meat is contaminated. —C.Fred (talk) 20:48, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Endocrine Disruptors

This line "The plastic used must not leach endocrine disruptors. Many plasticizers used in plastics have endocrine disrupting properties." Cite's Nom Nom Paleo, which is not an authoritative source.

The Nom Nom Paleo author cites another author, Chris Kessor (a 'Doctor' of Chinese medicine, he is not a medical doctor nor a Phd) who cites a single study at the NIH, the link to the study does not work. He does cite a new source, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/sc-sfh051111.php, that also links to the bad link of the study.

The author Sheela Sathyanarayana, MD of Seattle Children's Research Institute has the article listed as "Case Report: High Prenatal Bisphenol A Exposure and Infant Neonatal Neurobehavior" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3237352/ This is not a study if it's a case report. But in any case, none of this backs up the POV that the plastic used must not leach endocrine disruptors. In fact the second link, does cite Daniel Schmidt, an associate professor in the Department of Plastics Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, as saying "Still, he understands the level of concern that’s caused some cooks to seek out materials like silicone bags. And while many plastics do, under stress, emit estrogenic compounds, Schmidt suggests that’s not such a big deal, compared to risks—like inhaling car exhaust and exposure to UV rays—we take for granted." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.80.106.121 (talk) 18:22, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Should "sous-vide" be hyphenated?

I question the use of a hyphen in the title. "Sous vide" is almost always written without a hyphen, except when written as a compound adjective. Ordinarily I would edit out the hyphens in the article, but given that the title itself has a hyphen, I don't want to touch it. Can this be fixed by someone more experienced in Wikipedia editing? I am also concerned that the erroneous title will make it harder for people to find the article.Waltezell (talk)

I also strongly question the use of a hyphen in "sous-vide" throughout this article. "Sous vide" in almost never written with a hyphen, either in French or English. While the prefix "sous-" is properly used in some situations (http://www.affixes.org/s/sous-.html), it is not commonly used in this case. Can anyone provide any support for this rare usage? BostonBestEats (talk)

Sous vide in a jar?

The lead currently mentions "...food is vacuum-sealed in a plastic pouch or a glass jar and then placed in a water bath or steam environment...". I might be wrong, but it seems strange food in a vacuum in a jar would be heated by placing it in a water bath. Without air, there is only radiation to heat the food, except for where it's touching the glass, where conduction would play a part. My guess is this would result in uneven cooking. Also, the jar is ONLY mentioned in the lead and not in the rest of the article. I've noticed earlier comments about the jar being edited out. I feel this would be the correct thing to do. 2A02:A210:A001:A380:8D42:54BE:7076:E786 (talk) 21:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC) However, I guess you could cook fluids/mash/puree etc. in a jar sous vide... 2A02:A210:A001:A380:8D42:54BE:7076:E786 (talk) 21:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm here as the result of similar confusion. Today I started looking into the idea of cooking food in a vacuum, with the idea that you could (in my case) reduce fresh tomatos to paste much faster if you used vacuum as well as heat. Problem is this french term has the word "vacuum" in it, and it's included in the titles of at least 90% of the Youtube videos, but none of them are doing anything other than "vacuum sealing" a bag and heating the food in warm water. There's a confusion in the use of the word "vacuum", is the point. Just because you've pulled the air out of a bag of food using a vacuum pump, does not mean you are cooking that food in a "vacuum", and these supposedly high-end chefs just breeze past this distinction as if it's not even there. The Article should make some kind of differentiation between removing the air from a plastic bag, and actually having the food in a vacuum chamber while it is being cooked, because they are two very different things.68.206.248.178 (talk) 20:46, 26 August 2021 (UTC)