How I Met Your Mother

Looking at the ‘Stats’ section of this blog I can see that by far the most viewed post is ‘How Loud is the Sun?’ Amazingly, any overly curious individual who types this into Google (or even Bing – God, do I even want that audience?) gets my blog as the first hit.

Being momentarily bereft of ideas for a new post I thought I’d bow to the collective will of humanity as expressed through Google (a sentence that may hopefully be used to describe some sort of internet-based fascist regime that could emerge in the near future). Typing ‘How’ into Google and letting it (via ‘Google Instant’) finish the thought for you gives, alarmingly, a suggestion of ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ Thankfully I’ve managed to insulate myself from the dregs of popular culture to the extent that, although I know this is a comedy TV show, that’s all I know. Never watched an episode. Don’t know who’s in it. No idea what the premise is.

I’d planned to move on to some of the other popular suggestions that Google offers when presented with the beginning of a question, such as “Do… Not Call Register,” “Can… You Run It,” “How… To Make Pancakes,” “How… Do You Print Screen?” etc. but as you can see they’re all quite fantastically boring. Worse still, those examples are the more interesting ones. Letting Google finish your thoughts for you reveals an obsession with crap TV, song lyrics, computers, basic science and elementary Christianity. This may mean one of three things: 1) humanity is obsessed with this sort of tedious rubbish; 2) the subsection of humanity Googling things often enough to effect Google Instant is obsessed with this sort of tedious rubbish; or 3) Google is showing the beginnings of sentience, but rather than an artificial intelligence such as Terminator’s Skynet, intent on wiping out humanity, it is an idiot intent on buying the 8^th season (Eight?) of ‘Two and a Half Men’ and finding the lyrics to ‘Do It Like A Dude.’

The only interesting thing revealed by all this is Google’s continuing fascination with the Sun – perhaps it is evil, and questions like “How Big Is The Sun?” and “How Hot Is The Sun?” are preludes to “How To Extinguish The Sun” or “How To Plunge The Earth Into The Sun.” With luck, my blog will help it formulate its evil plans, and I will be rewarded in some sort of virtual paradise.

It's French for 'Under Vacuum'

Last night I entered the world of sous-vide.

Heston Blumenthal was guarding the door. I had to lick his bald head at each point of the compass and, with a saucy wink, he let me in.

Outside, in the wilderness, I’d been cooking chicken breasts on a pan, aiming to get the centre of the meat to the perfect level of ‘doneness’ - 60°C – the temperature at which the proteins in the meat set. In the howling wind, I’d crouch over a piece of car bonnet positioned over whatever rudimentary heat source I’d managed to scrounge, usually a dead dog soaked in petrol, and plonk the chicken down on the metal surface smoking away at around 200°C, wait, turn, wait. If I was lucky, I might get it off the heat when the centre was at 60°C, but the surrounding flesh certainly wasn’t.

Ushered inside the world of sous-vide by Heston Blumenthal himself, things were very different. Flaming dogs in windswept ruins were a thing of the past. Now I had gas, stainless steel, and some sort of Louis XIV-meets-Tron décor that made my eyes water.    

Under Ferran Adriá’s gentle direction I placed the chicken breasts in separate snap-lock sandwich bags with a little salt and pepper, filled a pot with hot water, turned on my Zyliss badly-designed-cooking-timer-that-I-bought-because-it-happens-to-have-a-temperature-probe-on-a-cord and waited for the water to get to 60°C. Once there I carefully submerged the bags and let the water pressure push the air out. I then snapped the seals shut, put the lid on and spent the next hour keeping the flame underneath the pot as low as possible, holding the water temperature between 59°C and 62°C, while Ferran read me Spanish poetry and Heston came in from minding the door and gave me a foot massage.

The result? No more hunks of blandness tasting mostly of burnt dog and petrol! Instead, the most moist and flavoursome chicken breast I’ve ever eaten. I’m a convert. Maybe even an acolyte.

Caveats:

-         You can use sous-vide on most foods, but it’s particularly good for cooking eggs, fish and steak.

-         You can’t ‘overcook’ but you do have to be mindful of good hygiene. A long (8 hours and above) cook in a vacuum can lead to the growth of anaerobic bacteria, particularly botulinum, which will kill you stone dead.

-         Hippies, you can do vegetables, but you have to use higher temperatures to break down the stronger cell walls. The plastic bags won’t fill your tofu up with chemicals because they’re food grade anyway.

-         If you’re doing a steak or similar you can give it a quick sear before it hits the table to caramelize the outside.

-         I was originally alerted to doing this at home by this article which uses an esky. I would not recommend this method. You can watch the temperature drop before your eyes.

-          No, I don’t watch ‘Masterchef’ or ‘My Kitchen Rules.’ I was hooked on cooking shows back when Floyd was still tooling, shickered, around Italy, thank you very much.

Postscript 25/5/11: tried my first sous-vide steak tonight. 45 minutes held between 55 and 57°C then a quick sear on the grill for some colour. I could cut it with the edge of my fork.

Postscript 19/6/11: Lamb at 58°C for 30 minutes was good, but not great. Bloodier than I expected. This beast requires further experimentation.

Postscript 29/6/11: Salmon at 50°C for 20 minutes required a little preparation. When cooking with sous-vide salmon will leak albumen, a milky fluid. I submerged the cuts for half an hour in a 20% saline solution to try and prevent this before cooking, but there was still some liquid in the bag after cooking. I found the finished product delicious - very flavoursome and with a texture closer to sashimi than cooked salmon. Carryl wished the meat was hotter, and found it a 'bit fishy.' I will try some flavourings next time to try and please her.