Vegetables and Fruits

SOUS VIDE HAS DRAMATICALLY CHANGED THE WAY WE COOK VEGETABLES.

It hasn’t replaced other techniques, but from the standpoint of flavor, preventing oxidation, and convenience, it is dramatically effective.

First and foremost, always, is flavor; A carrot cooked sous vide has a very pure flavor; it has not lost flavor to a liquid cooking environment, and the flavor is not complicated by high temperatures that cause browning. That in itself is remarkable. But put a single bay leaf in a big bag of carrots, and the flavor of bay is both more pronounced and more nuanced than it would be if the carrots were cooked conventionally; the carrots are permeated with the aromatic but have lost none of their own flavor to the cooking medium. (The effect of aromatics in the bag, in fact, is so powerful that we first wrap them in food-safe plastic wrap. You’ve got to be careful with any herbs you include with vegetables.) The carrots come out of the bag at the perfect point of doneness, so that if you want to finish them in some way with a higher-heat technique, by bringing roasted flavors to them or by glazing them, it’s very quick—an especially valuable quality in restaurant cooking.