My Path to Sous Vide

IRONIC BUT TRUE: FROZEN CONVENIENCE FOOD BROUGHT ME TO SOUS VIDE and its exciting uses in haute cuisine. I’d been using a machine to vacuum-pack foie gras as far back as 1986, when I was chef and co-owner of Rakel in lower Manhattan. Foie gras is an expensive item that tends to oxidize. When we removed oxygen from its environment, it stayed fresher longer, and we could also portion it in advance. Occasionally we’d cook carrots and a few other vegetables in a vacuum-packed bag in a pot of simmering water on the stove because it was easier to cook and to pick them up for service that way, but even though it was being used by some of Europe’s great chefs, we didn’t really think much about sous vide. When I left Rakel in 1990, I left the vacuum-packing machine behind as well. I didn’t have an inkling that it represented the beginnings of a revolution in cooking.