Into the 21st century with vacuum cooking

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 17

Into the 21st century with vacuum cooking

From

PAUL WEBSTER

in Paris

Passengers on the new luxurious Paris-Strasbourg express which goes into service in November will take the train as much for its experimental haute cuisine menu as for a speedy ride to eastern France. The food will be prepared by the new star of French cooking, Joel Robuchon, whose restaurant, Le Jamin in Paris, is considered by his followers to be the best in the world. But Robuchon will not be in the train’s kitchen. The passengers will be putting their faith in a revolutionary technique la cuisson sous vide, which will allow the top chef to prepare his meals a week in advance before they are reheated on the train. Vacuum cooking is a process in which food is cooked in big plastic

bags and then plunged into boiling water for re-heating minutes before the meal is served. By using the technique, Robuchon will be paying homage to another chef, Georges Pralus, whose invention of cooking in a vacuum is likely to change restaurant management throughout the world within the next five years. Pralus, a jolly, plump man with a generous black moustache, developed his technique in a experimental kitchen in the tiny village of Briennon near Roanne in south-east France. The atelier with its futuristic cooking machinery has become the mecca of France’s top chefs such as Bocuse, Guerard, and Troisgros who have endorsed gourmet opinion that vacuum cooking is the “second French revolution.” Before those pilgrimages, Pralus

was known in the region as a modestly successful traiteur , preparing charcuterie, but is now convinced that he will soon be as famous as other French researchers and inventors such as Pasteur and Eiffel. Much of the sudden interest in Pralus’s invention is financial which is why France’s most important stock-market daily, “Les Echos,” made a pilgrimage to the inventor’s kitchen recently and pronounced la cuisson sous vide as “Economic, dietic, and gastronomic twenty-first century cooking.” Pralus needed the help of a big American firm, Grace-Cryovac, to develop the machinery necessary to process meals that have to be prepared in laboratory-style sur-

roundings to avoid contamination. The result is a range of hi-tech hardware about as glamorous as filing cabinets or tumble-dryers. The process itself is unromantically clinical. Raw food is placed in large, specially developed plastic bags which are emptied of air and then placed in a special steam oven. The cooking is done at low temperature and then rapidly placed in another machine which cools the produce to temperatures of between 0 and 3 degrees. The packets of prepared food can be stocked at least a week without spoiling. Not surprisingly, Pralus des-

cribed the cooking process as being a leap forward as great as computers, but despite the comparison his enthusiasm doubles when he talks of the “divine quality” of the results. According to the compliments inscribed in his “golden book” by the country’s top chefs, the results are little less than amazing as the food tastes better than anything cooked by traditional methods even when the menu is reheated by a brief plunge into boiling water. The process preserves all the natural juices and even improves the quality of ordinary meat. As an example of its effect, Pralus

pointed out that pork lost only 5 per cent of its weight by cooking under vacuum as against 25 per cent when cooked in the ordinary way. What excites the stock market are the eventual economic advantages. Troisgros recently prepared 700 meals the day before they were served to a selection of speciallyinvited gourmets who were unanimous in saying that the food was the best they had ever tasted. As the French have never really taken to frozen foods they may be equally cautious of la cuisson sous vide but Pralus believes that within five years no big restaurant or supermarket chain will be able to resist its invasion. He even sees the establishment of a centralised laboratory-kitchen

organised by computer in which a handful of top chefs will prepare hundreds of meals for restaurants who will order through their own terminals. Because of the process’s conservation qualities, cooks will be able to prepare schedules in which complicated menus — ruled out by present pressures for daily cooked meals — will be made available. In another futuristic projection. Pralus foresees the establishment of specialist kitchens in the country to take advantage of the freshest food. According to Pralus, restaurant owners have said they will be able to dispense with much of their staff so that they can hire only one top chef. There is general agreement that present government limits on

the amount of time vacuum cooked food can be preserved before sale are artificial. At present it is a week but Pralus believes that at least six weeks would be more realistic. Rigorous tests have shown that even after 40 days, meals prepared under his methods have not altered at all. The cheerful inventor, however, issues a warning that vacuumcooking will not automatically make great cooks as the skills of the top chefs will still be crucial in selection and preparation. "Vacuum cooking can improve tough meat.” he says. “Give me pot-aux-feu and I’ll make you roast beef. But it also accentuates bad qualities. Give me an old turnip and it’ll taste even worse after vacuum-cooking.”