Happy Sous Vide Day! The Cooking Method Has Much to Celebrate
Key Highlights
- Sous vide’s popularity is rising, with notable successes such as Starbucks’ Egg Bites and Kevin’s Natural Foods entrées.
- Foodservice remains the primary user of sous vide, delivering consistency, labor savings and scalability for applications ranging from banquets to airlines and healthcare.
- The technology gently cooks many products in plastic packaging in low water temperatures for very long periods—from hours to days.
Happy International Sous Vide Day! You may not be able to find a Hallmark card for the occasion (Jan. 26), but this creation of Cuisine Solutions, one of the cooking method’s practitioners, affords a look at the growing, low-temperature process.
Cuisine Solutions (cuisinesolutions.com) created the holiday in 2018 to honor the birthday of the method’s pioneer, scientist and engineer Bruno Goussault, who perfected the process and developed scientific rationale, safety practices and other refinements that would establish it as an accepted method of safely but gently cooking foods. Dr. Goussault joined Cuisine Solutions in 2000 as chief scientist.
Sous vide foods are packed in a plastic pouch and placed in a hot water bath for long cooking times – anywhere from one to seven hours to three days in some cases, according to Wikipedia. The temperature is much lower than usual, typically around 130-140°F for red meat, 150-160°F for poultry and higher for vegetables. The intent is to cook the item evenly, ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside and to retain moisture and flavors.
A classic example would be a slice of prime rib: brown on the outside but (safely) pink on the inside. “It allows you to cook a product safely that is medium rare, which is impossible with other cooking techniques,” says Brock Furlong, president/CEO of Stampede Culinary Partners (stampedeculinarypartners.com), a Chicago-area provider.
Traditional foodservice, hospitality, airlines, healthcare, colleges and convenience stores are among its customers. Which means there is usually a high level of customization from the providers of sous vide. “Everything we do is a custom culinary solution to address a unique opportunity on behalf of the customer,” says Furlong.
Its application was overwhelmingly in foodservice, but retail products have caught up, according to Miguel Franco, chief commercial officer at Cuisine Solutions, Sterling, Va. He provides some examples. Cuisine Solutions created the first Egg Bites for Starbucks in 2017, and this January supplied the coffeehouse chain with Truffle, Mushroom & Brie Egg Bites.
Also this month, the company launched Sear & Serve, its first direct-to-consumer self-branded product line. Many of Cuisine Solutions’ products are branded under retailers such as Kirkland, Trader Joe’s and national restaurant chains such as Smoothie King, Starbucks, Jersey Mikes, Shake Shack, Dunkin and others.
Most of the entrees from Kevin’s Natural Foods, now a part of Mars Inc., are made via sous vide. Korean BBQ-Style Chicken, stir-fry Sichuan Chicken With Green Beans, Mongolian Beef and more are gently pre-cooked with consumers just reheating them.
"Sous vide adoption has grown steadily over decades, moving from fine dining kitchens into large-scale foodservice and retail as its benefits became widely understood,” says Franco.
"Sous vide is chosen because it delivers exceptional consistency, precision and quality -- results that are extremely difficult to achieve with traditional cooking methods, especially at scale. By cooking food at exact temperatures in a controlled environment, sous vide locks in flavor, texture, and nutrients while ensuring food safety and repeatability.
“It is particularly well suited for proteins such as beef, poultry, pork, seafood and eggs, as well as long-cook items like short ribs and braised dishes,” Franco continues. “It also excels for ready-to-eat and heat-and-serve applications where consistency, shelf life and operational efficiency are critical. For chefs and operators, sous vide enables restaurant-level quality - from dinner for two to service for 2,000."
While many sous vide applications involve animal proteins, “sous vide can be used for everything from veggies and alternative proteins to soups to fully prepared meals and even gourmet pet food,” says Furlong.
While many products are almost immediately served and consumed, Stampede Culinary Partners last year developed a proprietary low-temperature pasteurization method that can give refrigerated products shelf lives of 90-180 days.
About the Author
Dave Fusaro
Editor in Chief
Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.