Sous Vide Cooking: An Introduction

Sous vide is French for “under vacuum” and describes the cooking of raw ingredients in heat-stable, vacuumized pouches at precise temperatures. Sous vide has several benefits: it allows almost-perfect reproducibility; it gives greater control over doneness than traditional cooking methods; food doesn’t have to be cooked well-done to be safe; tough cuts of meat can be made tender with sous vide and still be a medium or a medium-rare doneness; it helps inhibit off-flavors from oxidation and it prevents evaporative losses of flavor volatiles and moisture during cooking.