Corey Lee

I was uncomfortable with sous vide at first, though I didn’t quite realize why. It was an interesting addition to our cooking repertoire, but I didn’t have the knowledge to evaluate it completely. Sous vide is different from roasting, braising, sautéing, poaching, and other types of cooking: it doesn’t require you to use your senses the way traditional cooking techniques do. When you seal something in a bag and put it in water, you’re not smelling it as it cooks, or tasting it, or listening to the sizzle as it roasts or sautés. Cooking is one of the few things in life that requires the use of all your senses. It should please all your senses as well. A technique that took most of those things away was strange for me, and this is one of the main criticisms I hear about sous vide. But as I worked with it, I began to realize I wasn’t really giving up the use of my senses as a cook.