Sous Vide or not Sous Vide

Roasting. Baking. Frying. Boiling. Grilling. Burying underground. There are only so many ways to prepare food, and you’d think we would have figured them all out long ago.

Then along came sous vide.

French for “under vacuum,” sous vide is a method of cooking food by sealing it in a plastic bag, submerging it in heated water, and keeping the water at a very consistent temperature. Sounds sexy, right? But it turns out that this Type-A cooking style makes for especially delectable veggies and meats with little effort. It’s like a slow cooker that doesn’t turn everything into a uniform-tasting mash.

Your friend, the one who visited Croatia last year and insists you go before it’s discovered, has probably been throwing the term “sous vide” around lately like it’s old hat. And if you feel left out, don’t be. Sous vide is new on the scene. An article from the New York Times in 2005 called it:

Cryovacking, which is more often called sous vide (French for “under vacuum”), is poised to change the way restaurant chefs cook – and …. will probably trickle down to the home kitchen someday.

It did trickle down. And then it trickled so far down that we started selling sous vide cookers at — let’s be real — absurdly low prices.

(Yes, “cryovacking” was the competing name for the technique. It’s such an aggressively American term, with the gratuitous “k” and all-around unsightliness, that we wonder if it would have trickled down as successfully as its elegant French counterpart.)

So it turns out that the culinary world has not been completely mapped. There is still room for adventure. Who knows what cooking methods remain as yet undiscovered. Dousing in gasoline and lighting aflame? Passing through the alimentary canal of an obscure rodent-like mammal? Flash-freezing ice cream into small, delectable spheres?

Your Croatia-visiting friend will figure it out and let you know. In the meantime, go ahead and dip your toe in the consistently-heated sous vide waters.