Finding the Balance

It is important to keep in mind that sous vide does not replace other cooking methods. It is an additional technique, with a range of advantages. For instance, at The French Laundry, we do a lamb’s neck dish in which the neck is first oven-roasted low and slow until the meat is meltingly tender. Then we remove the meat from the neck, season it, shape it into a roulade, and chill it until we are ready to portion and cook it. We could cook the neck sous vide rather than roast it, but the finished dish acquires a certain quality that we like when the meat is slow-roasted for eight hours. The meat browns and takes on a special texture, and the juices that caramelize in the pan can be deglazed with reduced stock and added to the meat. We want all of those flavors in the finished dish.