More and more restaurants are signing up to the technique of vacuum cooking. And they have a lot of reasons: vacuum cooking improves the taste of your dishes and production processes, key aspects for an industrial kitchen. If you want to get the best results when vacuum cooking, a professional vacuum packer is essential, as high quality packaging is the first step to achieve this.
In addition to this, it is important to know some keys that allow you to enjoy this technique with the best results. At Mychef we want to highlight three important aspects that will make you an expert in vacuum cooking. Discover them!
Browning the vacuum cooked foods
When we cook under vacuum we can see that the food has a somewhat artificial appearance. This is because the cooking is carried out with low temperatures and this eliminates some typical reactions of traditional cooking. Maillard’s reaction, which causes the outer gold in the meat, does not appear in vacuum cooking.
If you want to serve vacuum-cooked foods to your guests that look more appetizing, it is necessary to lightly brown them. Doing so with caution will ensure that the meats have a golden color or that a crispy outer layer is formed in the case of fish and vegetables.
Controlling the temperature-time relationship
The second key to proper vacuum cooking is good temperature-time control. Vacuum cooking offers a more intense taste and smell of food, as it is cooking by concentration. It also prevents natural juices from evaporating and reduces shrinkage in the product.
However, it is necessary that you have a very thorough control of the time/temperature relationship to ensure that the food has a good consistency. If you don’t, you run the risk that the taste will be spoiled by an inadequate texture that may not be what you want.
Optimum cooling and regeneration
A third key to enjoying vacuum cooking is to cool and regenerate food in the right way. Vacuum cooking favours the optimization of production processes, as the food can be precooked with a total guarantee of conservation. Once this is done, all you have to do is cool them and store them in optimum conditions. Before the consumption, all you have to do is regenerate them properly.
This whole process is especially useful in dishes that combine elements with different cooking times or in catering companies that need to streamline their service.
When it comes to cooling, you must bear in mind that this process must be fast in order to maintain the flavour and juiciness of the food better. In this sense, a Mychill blast chiller can be a good investment.
In terms of regeneration, this process requires certain guidelines to avoid overcooking. In another article of our blog we already dedicated an entry to the regeneration of foods cooked under vacuum. However, we highlight the most important guidelines to keep in mind:
- Chilled food takes the same amount of time to achieve the ideal core temperature when regenerating as when cooked raw.
- We can’t exceed in the subsequent cooking.
- It is necessary to let a regenerated dish rest before serving it.
What do you think of these ideas? If you think they’re interesting, share them with other chefs. And if there’s any other aspect of vacuum cooking that you think is fundamental, we’d love to hear about it here. We are waiting for you!
