{"id":6407,"date":"2013-03-06T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=6407"},"modified":"2013-03-05T13:10:12","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T21:10:12","slug":"sour-grapes-fine-dining-from-a-plastic-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/03\/06\/sour-grapes-fine-dining-from-a-plastic-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"Sour Grapes<\/em>: Sous-vide<\/em> fine dining from plastic bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the humble home cook, the options for making food edible are mostly limited to the basics: sauteing, steaming, baking, broiling, and perhaps the occasional flambe. But these days, more and more people are getting fancy in the kitchen. And fancy foodies love a complicated cooking method.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Chuck the food in a plastic bag, huck it in here, and let \u2019er cook (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sous-vide,<\/i> French for \u201cunder vacuum,\u201d is a method of cooking meats and vegetables which seems to be gaining popularity with restaurateurs and home cooks alike, despite the fact that the machine required to do the job will run you about $500.<\/p>\n

Food cooked in the sous-vide<\/i> style is vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag then cooked at a low but steady temperature for up to 72 hours. Kind of like a crock pot, but with more pretentiousness and plastic.<\/p>\n

The whole point of the sous-vide <\/i>method is to cook foods evenly. Instead of the browned on the outside, pink on the inside result one might get from grilling a steak, sous-vide<\/i> ensures the meat is exactly the right temperature all the way through.<\/p>\n

In a recent episode of America\u2019s Best Home Cook<\/i>, a show where \u201cregular Joes\u201d compete to impress Chef Bobby Flay with their culinary skills, one of the teams thought using a sous-vide<\/i> machine was sure to secure them a victory. Sadly, Bobby was not impressed. That\u2019s because cooking anything sous-vide<\/i> for less than a few hours results in runny egg whites, bloody meats, and generally inedible meals.<\/p>\n

Because of the low temperature, undercooking is a risk, but there are more worrisome hazards associated with the sous-vide<\/i> method, like the rare chance of a little thing called botulism. Not to mention the fact that this glorified pressure-cooker requires you to cook food in a plastic bag. Haven\u2019t we been told hot plastic is a bad thing? Doesn\u2019t it leech carcinogenic chemicals into our food? Well, hey, if the French say a plastic bag is a key to fine dining, who are we to argue?<\/p>\n

According to popular DIY site Lifehacker, you can achieve sous-vide<\/i> results without the expensive machine, but is it really worth the trouble?<\/p>\n

If Flay isn\u2019t won over by this overly complicated cooking method, chances are grandma won\u2019t even notice the difference to her Easter ham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the humble home cook, the options for making food edible are mostly limited to the basics: sauteing, steaming, baking, broiling, and perhaps the occasional flambe. But these days, more and more people are getting fancy in the kitchen. And fancy foodies love a complicated cooking method. Sous-vide, French for \u201cunder vacuum,\u201d is a method […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-march-6-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6407"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6481,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6407\/revisions\/6481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}