0:00

I wanted to talk about a couple of methods of cooking that are less known. There are methods that if you're like a big time home cook and you're always behind the stovetop or the oven, that you might know these, but maybe you haven't worked on them before. Maybe they aren't something that you've done yourself. So when you are cooking with souv'd, which has become much more known than it was in the past. When I first got into it, these souvd immersion circulators were twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars. Now you can get them for one hundred bucks. And the technology is probably more advanced in a lot of ways. But for those of you have heard about it but haven't used it, or maybe got one as a gift and han't haven't really used it, don't know what to use it for. Souvied simply means under pressure. NIQUE involves vacuum cealing food in a plastic bag and then you cook it in a water bath, but at a precise temperature. So basically you're poaching, but it's in a bag very very highly controlled temperature. In this case, you're looking within a I don't know a tenth of a degree or something very precise. It's known for producing incredibly tender and evenly cooked results, especially with proteins like meats, fish, chicken can be fantastic, but there's techniques otherwise, don't you don't do it right, or you do it for too long, or the wrong temperature. Chicken could come out rubbery or mushe It's kind of weird, but essentially it's this way. When we cook with heat, dry heat, we're pushing that heat into the food. And that's why when you cook a steak and you say medium, rather they say okay, that's going to be a warm pink center or a warm red center, and you go, oh ok. And that means that the whole steak is not medium rare. The center is because the heat has to push from the outside to the inside, right, So five hundred degrees whatever you have the ofn on or if you're grilling, whatever it is, is pushing that heat into the center because the center has is the last thing to cook. And that's really the temperature that you're getting in the center, not around. It's stradations of you know, strata of different temperatures. That way well with souv It stays at a low temperature for longer periods of time, and that way kills the bacteria, but isn't overcooking. Now it comes out like a brand new baby. It's not pretty once you take it out of that package because it's been vacuum sealed it and it doesn't have any browning. And then you take it out of that and then you seer it off to finish it off. You get the mayard reaction there and all that brown goodness. Brown food is good food, and then it's sweet perfection and it's a magical thing. But it does take some learning. There's a bit of a learning curve learning the temperatures and the times properly. But a lot of restaurants use this because you can hold a steak that means you can keep it in there all day at rare or medium rare, and if somebody says, you know, I'd like one medium, you just grill it a little longer, or if they want it medium rare, you just sear it off very quickly. And so when your steak comes quickly at a restaurant off it's times it's because they're prepping them souv and they won't overcook because the temperature is low. It will never go above the temperature that you have it in. So if you have it in a one hundred and thirty five degree bath, it's never going to go above medium rare. It can't physically, so it's kind of crazy. It's a really neat process. Alrighty, So we're talking for the Technique of the Week about a couple of techniques that maybe you're not aware of or don't use as much. One, and I hope I pronounce this properly, is in puppy, in poppilote. That's what I'm going with. I think it's franche like quasthle, like if you're having a quaffle. But it basically means, you know, like envelope, and so you're putting it in a pouch. It's a pouch and you can do it with foil, you can do it with parchment paper. And basically it's part dry heat in a way because you're putting it into the oven, and then it's part wet cooking because it's gonna steam itself as well. I do chicken like this, a chicken breast. One of the easy ways to do this for me Gosh is a single man. I did this all the time. I I'd come home, I'd throw a chicken breast in parchment. I'd throw in gosh. I think Kraft has them a bunch of different you know, they have these dressings like garlic, herb or something. I'd dump some of that in there. I'd fold it up into a pouch or into an envelope of sorts, throw it in three hundred and fifty degrees for like thirty five minutes or something, and pull it out and it'd be perfectly tender, and it'd be sitting cooking in that and it's about as easy as you can get. You can throw it on you know, rice peelf, You can throw it on anything and you're good to go. Put a side of of veggies there, and that's one of my favorite ways to cook. But I always just call it packet cooking or envelope cooking. So the real term is in belote. Somebody's gonna scream at me for that. P A P I L L O T E. Sorry, you talk prettier than I do, Bain Marie, or you call a double boiler is one of those things. It's a technique where food is cooked in a water bath, ensuring even heat distribution, but it's done in a container. This's how you melt chocolate as well. This is when you don't want to do heavy damage. It's also a way to keep something warm. When you have those chafing dishes, they use that similar the warm water below, which keeps actual flames from touching and putting hot spots. It even keeps things even. And lastly, red cooking, which is a strange name for Chinese doing because you think communism red. That's not what it is. It's a slow brazing technique where where the food's braised in a red colored sauce and creates this very tender and lovely, low and slow type cooking to it. So these are just some things I want to share with you that we're a little different, that maybe you're not doing right now, but can up your game a little bit or something to your to your palate. There for cooking