how to cook vegetables

[tsetse]

today I read about an interesting method to cook vegetables without losing vitamins: sous-vide, which is basically a nice french word for cooking in vacuum, in a plastic bag. The idea is that if you have a household vacuum device, you can prepare the raw vegetables for cooking and put them with a few spices into a bag, vacuumize and then into the fridge. Without oxixen, the veg. stays fresh for a really long time. You can cook it in the bag (at about 95-97 C), it takes only a little bit longer than "normal" cooking and the vitamins and such are preserved. Obviously you can not do this with a delicate structure (broccoli!), but with carrots or potatoes and such it works well.

Now the interesting thing about Sous-Vide is, that it can be used for meat dishes as well. Because of the vacuum pressure, you can marinate raw meat in a few minutes. Heating up meat in hot water works well for "slow cooking", meaning that you keep it at the desired core temperature (e.g. 70 C) for a few hours (stewing/braising together with herbs and such) or for a shorter period of time. for a nice texture, you can sizzle the steak (or whatever) in a little bit of hot oil afterwards - but only for a short time.

I like the idea about preserving vitamins and taste, but what I like even more is being able to, yes indeed, save some time here.
Have you made any experiences with the sous-vide-method? There must be even more "kitchen hacks" out there...

T

[Adrienne]

Thats ok and welcome. I am going to move your post over to the heath and fitness board since that would be where people are most likly to talk about this.

Adrienne

[tsetse]

ok, thank you!

[colint]

The problem with this method is that plastic contains toxins which are known to leach into the food when heat is applied. This is why the large amount of ready meals in plastic trays that are then microwaved or heated in the tray at home are such a concern.


Colin