nathanm

It would probably would be done after 5 hours - I will have to check. Typically I let it go at least 8 hours because I tend to cook it overnight. I am trying the pork at both 8 hours and 12 hours - will let you know the difference. The time for heat to penetrate goes like the square of the thickness - so a piece of food twice as thick takes 4 times as long to reach the same internal temperature. In addition, you want it to set at temperature for a while for collagen to denature into gelatine etc. Duck legs/thighs are thinner than a big piece of pork butt, so that is a big factor. To cool it down, I plunge the bags into ice water. This cools it very rapidly. Then I refridgerate them, still int he bags. The bags stay sealed until I am ready to use the meat. This adds vacuum packing to the traditional way of sealing in fat. To reheat you can put them back into a water bath, or use a microwave, or not at all if you want to use cold. I usually sear it so that the outside gets crispy...

One thing I want to try with Activa is "laminating" two different kinds of fish, or meat together. For example, thinly sliced salmon, and a white fish. You could make a fish "plywood" that had alternating colors - that would be pretty. There are a number of recipes that do this already, but they don't always stick well so you have to use toothpicks and the presentation isn't as nice. You should also be able to make pate that isn't pureed first - i.e. a molded pate like product made from pieces of meat or fish. Again, people do this already but you tend to have to serve it cold so it will gel - this one could be served hot and would still stick together.

The problem is sous vide is not that the mallard reaction won't occur - it will if the temperature is high enough. The problem is that you generally cook sous vide at low temperature. In practice this is not a problem because you can sear the outside - in a pan, with a salamander or broiler, or (for some things) with a blow torch. Adding a coating of something sugary - a lacquer of some sort will enhance browning through carmelization. You can do that, but it generally is not necessary. So, I don't think that it would be practical to use Activa TG as you suggest - it is easier just to brown it other ways.

I'll try agar agar also. There have been several posts about MICRI on eGullet, some claiming that it is just tapioca, others saying something different. I have not seen a grand conclusion, nor have a seen a supplier. A source in Spain was mentioned in previous posts... The interesting thing about gelatin is that it is a refined form of the same thing that occurs in a normal stock. It is a protein. Meanwhile, MICRI and the various other additivies (arrowroot, flour, cornstarch, carregean bean etc.) are all starches, and and are thus quite different. Activa TG (transglutimase) is an enzyme that cross links proteins (mentioned in another thread about shrimp pasta) is another possibility.

Sous vide is a great way to make meat confit. You marinate the duck, or other meat as you would normally. However to cook it, you do it differently - you seal the meat and fat in vacuum bags (like foodsaver, or professional models), and cook it in a water bath, or steam oven. The advantage is that you control the temperature very well, and you need very little of the fat because the vacuum bag keeps it sealed around the meat. It is also easier to clean because the fat stays sealed in the vacuum bag. There is a whole thread on sous vide techniques elswhere on egullet. I have not personally made duck confit this way, but I have had it made by others and it is excellent. Last night I made pork confit and lamb shank confit. The texture of the meat comes out similar to duck confit. I cook it in a laborarory water bath (basically like a slow cooker, but with better temperautre control) for 12 hours at 180 degrees F.

Does anybody have a source of Ajinomoto Activa TG - the enzyme in question? They have a US subsidiary based in Chicago - I'll contact them next week... Their various international web sites show directions for using it to stick meat together - basicaly you sprinkle the powder on (or mix it with water and apply) to meat, poultry or fish, then mold it together overnight in the refrigerator and the product sticks together. Here are examples: Meat - "method 1" Meat "method 2" Meat - "method 3" Fish - "method 1" Fish - method 2 They claim that it will work in the range of 45C to 60C, here is a chart They don't show how to make shrimp pasta....some experimentation is in order there. The meat and fish applications look very interesting in and of themselves.

Veal stock, demi-glace and other concentrated meat stocks are used to add both flavor and texture to sauces. Normally the texture and flavor are a package deal - they come together. A large part of the texture comes from gelatin. The long slow process of simmering veal bones causes collagen to denature and turn into gelatine. That's why a good stock gels when it is cold. It is also why you typically want bones for stock - the bones, joints, tendons and connective tissue have a lot of collagen. Although the highest gelatine content stocks are those made from veal, you can get similar results from chicken (particularly if you use chicken feet), and from fish bones too. That much is clear, and is part of the standard way we make many kinds of savory sauces. Well, how about going directly there and adding gelatine (sheets or powder) to the sauce? Gelatine is used quite a bit in dessert and pasty, but in almost all cases you cool the mixture down to cause it to gel and become solid, or if not totally solid, at least add some body (as with most of the El Bulli style foams or espumas). The typical use is to heat it up the liquid, add gelatine, then let it cool and set before serviing. Agar agar and other gelling agents are used similarly, with somewhat different properties. I am suggesting somethnig different - use pure gelatine as an addition to savory sauces meant to be served hot. In that case we would add enough gelatine to change the texture even while hot/warm. This would not add as much body as adding arrowroot powder, starch, a flour based roux. Instead it would emulate the addition of a reduced stock. The advantage is that you can get the thick veal stock-like texture without the veal taste - separating the taste and texture aspects of a demi-glace or glace de viand. This would be an advantage for some kinds of sauces - particularly those that are vegetable or fish based. However, it could also work for many kinds of meat sauces. I am in the process of experimenting with this. Has anybody else tried this or had experience with it?

Sous vide has been used in Europe for over 20 years without major food safety problems. So, it is hardly a "new technology". It is new to most high end chefs, especially in the US, but it is not new overall. Literally TONS of food is made and eaten this way every day in Europe. Like anything else, you need to follow procedures properly, but it is not as bad as it may seem. Note that there are two different ways to do sous vide. You can cook and then store the food for an extended time period before reheating. This is done when you want to have a central kitchen serve multiple facilities, or for situations like airline catering. In this case the food is cooked in the vacuum bag, then chilled, and held cold until being reheated immediately prior to serving. This is basically similar to the process of canning - but with somewhat lower temperatures. Generally speaking, sous vide food meant to be held and reheated is cooked above 60C / 140F which is above the typical food safety danger zone. It is then refrigerated, which helps supress anaerobic bacteria. The other way to do sous vide is cook and then immediately plate and serve. In this case the reason to do it is to get the benefit of the unique aspects of sous vide on the food - just as you fry or roast to get certain effects, you can sous vide. In this "immediate" or "direct" sous vide style, you may cook food to a core temperature that is below 60C / 140F - for eample, I do most fish to 45C/113F, and do beef to 54C/130F (rare to medium rare). But those are the same temperatures that I would cook rare to medium rare in conventional cooking, and the amount of time that the food spends in the food safety danger zone is not necessarly that much longer than in conventional cooking. I have not heard of any plastic leaching problem. But you should be aware that virtually all meat in the US spends some time in a cryovac bag, which is basically a large thick sous vide bag. So, I don't think that this is any more unsafe than a lot of other things we routinely do in cooking...

I saw this thread, and was very skeptical, but intrigued enough that I bought a Jaccard today, and did the experiment with two Spencer steaks (i.e. boneless rib eye). One was USDA Prime, the other USDA Choice. In each case I used the Jaccard on half of the steak (right side), and left half of it alone. I cooked them to medium rare under a broiler. I expected the Jaccard to produce a bad, artificial texture, like cube steak or various pounded steaks. In fact, this is why I had never bought one prior to this thread. But in actual fact this is NOT the case - the Jaccard pierces the raw meat, but the holes seal up and it is very difficult to tell that it has been done. The Choice steak un-Jaccard side was easy to tell from anything else. It was much tougher - not tough when compared to other cuts, but much tougher than anything else. The Jaccard side of the Choice steak was similar in texture to the un-Jaccarded side of the Prime - very tender. As one of the posts above says, it is probably similar to tenderloin / fillet mignon in tenderness. Of course that is very subjective, and typically the cut is different. But it was plenty tender. The Jaccarded side of the Prime was somewhat more tender than the un-Jaccarded side. It would still be worth using the Jaccard, IMO. No substantial juice loss occurred while cooking. Flavor wise, it was easy to tell the Prime from the Choice - the higher fat content tells you there is a difference. However, in terms of texture and tenderness it wolud be not that hard to be fooled, and if you didn't have the A/B test to compare to Prime I think you'd find that the Choice was pretty good. Note that the Prime was $19.99 a pound, versus $12.99 for Choice at this particular retail supermarket. So this is a pretty worthwhile transformation economically speaking... In a roast version of a Rib Eye / Spencer (AKA "prime" rib), the Jaccard might make some difference, but the blades are not long enough to go all the way thorugh, so I wonder. Usually if you cook roast beef for a long time at low temperature and slice thin, it is plenty tender - much more so than a the rib eye steak version of the same meat which is usually cooked quickly. Anyway, I have always been very skeptical of meat tenderizing devices because I thought they were just a way to use an inappropriate cut of meat. But I was WRONG, and the other people posting here were correct - the Jaccard really does tenderize a steak very effectively. I would even use it on Prime meat (rib eye and New York Strip), and certainly on Choice.

One key issue with sous vide is that alcohol will not evaporate. In normal braising with wine, the alcohol in the wine quickly boils away. The boiling point of alcohol is 78.5C or 173.3F. So if you braise at a simmer (between 190F and 212F), the alcohol will certainly boil off, especially over a long cooking time. However, with SV the temperature is usually below the boiling point of alcohol, and even if was above the boiling point the sealed bag this does not let the alcohol go anywhere. Braising in alcohol like this can affect the texture of the meat - it also affects the taste of the final braising liquid / sauce. So most people who do SV will be careful to boil off the alcohol in the liquid prior to sealing the bag. The second factor is time. Broadly speaking there are two time scales for cooking. For most tender meats the goal is only to reach a certain internal temperature, and once you reach that temperature the food very rapidly changes (proteins set and various other reactions occur). Tough meats - including most things that one would braise are cooked for a long time at at least 60C/140F so that the collagen in the meat denatures into gelatin. This process takes time the collagen does not dissolve instantly. I suspect that your legs suffered from both effects. 5 hours is a really long time t braise something like rabbit legs. Most conventional recipes have a braising time of 1 to 2 hours for rabbit legs - 5 hours is a really long time. So, I would try it again, boiling the wine long enough to remove the alcohol, and try it for a much shorter period of time.

Well, that makes sense about the FoodSaver...

This is really my night for posting... replying again to Ruth - I am not sure why you say you must freeze the marinade for Sous Vide. I don't, and I use marinades or liquids in the bag all the time. When you put a liquid in a bag and vacuum pack, it will boil as the vacuum comes down. That is true for marinade. It will be at room temperature, but it will still boil if your vacuum packer is any good. Even oil will boil. In addition to boiling, any air dissolved in the liquid will come out when the vacuum is applied. So, anything whipped will look like it is boiling. Whipped cream will deflate. But boiling or deflating is OK as long as the bag is not overly full. If it is too full, it can boil over and make a mess. Once the bag is sealed, it all works. I do it all the time.

Replying to Pedro's post... A vacuum is reduced pressure - the chamber in a vacuum packing machine is in a vacuum, and so all Sous Vide starts in a vacuum. But the flexible bags, once out of the machine, are at normal atmospheric pressure. Sous Vide bags are "vaccum packed" but they are not actually in a vacuum. More precisely they have been packed without air. The most important thing about getting the air out is there is that there is no oxygen in the bag (or very little). In some other posts people asked about cooking in a hard sided container in a vacuum. That truly is vacuum cooking, but it is very different, and in general not as useful. I don't know anybody cooking professionally that does this, but there are some laboratory techinques that use heating in a vacuum.

Replying to Ruth's question about salmon - I usually do salmon fillets for 20 min in 104F water. It probably does not take that long to reach 104F inside, but by the same token it can't overcook because I use a lab water bath for this. Many people are cooking salmon "confit" in oil at that temp - sometimes flavored oil such as vanilla. To do this sous vide, I just put a little oil in the bag with the salmon - just a teaspoon is enough to completely coat the fish once the vacuum sucks the bag down around it. I have not tried duck fat with salmon, but that sounds great. Some people are freaked by the raw looking salmon, but I love it - particularly with rich salmon belly pieces. You can sear the outside if absolutely necessary Nathan

FG and I have discussed making a tutorial on eGullet but so far various things have gotten in the way. Here is a very simplified story in the mean time. I use bags that are designed to be boiled, and I use a commerical vacuum packer machine (ARY Vacmaster). I have the SVP-15, but the SVP-10 has less maintanance. These are expensive, commercial machines that are $1200 or more, but they work great. There are many other brands at various price ranges. The cheapest are FoodSaver and Rival. Here are the specific bags The FoodSaver web site says that their bags can be boiled, which is the key thing. I use pint, quart and gallon bags. Pint and quart for single servings, gallon sized for large things. By the way, the bags are very nice for use in storage - for example when I freeze chicken stock I put it in a bag, seal it under vacuum, and freeze it. This is not sous vide, but it is very convenient. The other thing you need for Sous Vide is a way to cook the bags. Typically people use one of two things - a computer controlled convection steam oven such as the Rational CombiTherm. These are fantastic (and not just for SV), but expensive and large and not at all for home use unless you have a completely pro kitchen at home. The alternative is to use laboratory water baths. Personally, I have and use both Rational ovens and lab water baths depending on what I am cooking. The easiest for home use would be the laboratory water baths - you can get them on Ebay for $100 to $500, and they are reasonably small (size of a slow cooker, or a bit bigger). Some people on the list have suggested trying to use slow cookers, or crock pots, but they generally do not go low enough in temperature, and are not accurate enough. You can't really cook this stuff on top of the stove manually - you need to control the temperature to within 1 degree, and you just can't do that normally. The main point of Sous Vide cooking is to cook very gently without oxygen. There are several reasons different motivations for this: - Can cook at lower temperatures than normal without the same food safety concerns, because the lack of oxygen supresses growth of bacteria. - Can cook for long periods of time. In part this is because the cooking method (water bath or steam oven) is very accurate. In part it is because you can use low temperatures and food saftey as above. - The food is sealed in the bag, so it does not get diluted through contact with a poaching liquid. - Can keep the food longer - becaues the vacuum packed bag is almost like a can used for canning. This was the original reason for Sous Vide - cooking in a central kitchen, for distirbution as catering or to remote locations where it would just be reheated. This is sometimes called cook and hold. - The food is convenient to store and reheat in a sealed bag. - Oxygen discolors some food (artichokes, fennel bulbs). Personally, I do not do the cook and hold approach - I cook and serve immediately. SV gives you more control, and more delicate cooking, than you could do otherwise. Most cooking is about using a high temperature medium to cook food for a fairly short period of time. For example, you might roast a chicken in an oven where the air is 350F, and roast until the core temperature of the flesh is at 160F (at least that is the standard poultry temp). You have to time things carefully so that you stop cooking in time - otherwise you overcook. I do chicken breasts Sous Vide in a water bath at 141F for 30 min to an hour, until the core temperature is 141F. This is typical of SV - you cook with the external temperature at the same temperature as you want the core. That way you can leave it in as long as you want (within reason) and not worry about overcooking. Some SV authorities use sligthly higher external temp than core (by say 5 -10 degrees). This is faster, but then they have to worry about overcooking. Normally, you would worry about cooking anythnig at less than 140F because that is the general food safety limit. You would not even roast a chicken at 140F beacuse the internal parts of the chicken would take a long time to come up to temperature, and would stay in the "danger zone" below 120F for a long time. SV removes oxygen so it is much more tolerant of low temps. Also, you generally have a smaller piece of food in a single serving bag, so that helps the time issue. Note that US food safety guidelines are generally very conservative. Note also that health inspectors in the US have little or no experience with SV and tend to mistrust it becaues it seems to be cooking within the danger zone. 20 years experience in Europe says that it is OK (with proper precautions), but you may have issues with US based health inspectors. Some people on the list have reported problems along these lines. On the other hand, most of the really top chefs in the country are using SV. At any rate do this all at your own risk. Risks are greater if you are are doing SV to store and serve later with reheating (i.e. cook and hold) rather than immediate service. Timing is done by experience, or the accurate way is to get a very good laboratory style digital thermometer to check the core temperature. This can even be done through a vacuum bag. Fish is done SV to 113F for most fish, but as low as 104F for salmon. Meat served rare to medium rare is done between 120F and 130F. Chicken, duck and many other things to 140F. Most vegetables are done at just below boiling - 190F to 200F. Most SV cooking is like conventional cooking in that you bring the food to the desired core temperature, then serve. however, there are some products that need to sit a long time at the proper temperature to effect a physical or chemical change in the food. For example, you can SV cook beef short ribs at 150F for 36 hours. The texture is much better than normal braising, but because the temperature is much lower than normal braising it takes longer to cook. SV is a good candidate for most foods that you would ordinarily poach, steam or braise. Because the temp is low and the food is in a bag, it will not brown. So you either need to serve it that way (as you would a poached item), or you quickly glaze it, or brown it in hot saute pan or under a broiler. Hope that helps - review the other posts in this thread for more ideas...

I've been traveling a bit, so haven't caught up with the various posts. Here are some of my perspectives. The food in sous vide bags is actually at atmospheric pressure, as was pointed out, but air is excluded. Note that any hollow parts will be under considerable pressure from the atmosphere. I have done whole quail, or even chickens sous vide and the ribs tend to be crushed because there is 14.7 lbs per square inch pressing on the outside. Generally, they spring back afterward. In fact, furniture makers and boat builders use similar (but MUCH larger) vacuum bags to press veneer onto a curved surface - by sucking out the air, there is a 14.7 lbs per square inch pressure exerted by the atmosphere. I have wanted to make a culinary application of this - some sort of laminated food presentation - but I have not come up with one yet. Marinade and other items put in the bag are forced around the food, and in some cases sucked into the food when the air is sucked out prior to sealing the bag. If you really want to do vacuum marination however, there are hard chambered vacuum marinators which do a better job. It is possible in principle to cook in a bell jar, or other container, but that is not what sous vide is about. In particular, it is hard to get the heat to the food because there is no air to conduct or convect heat. Instead you would have to either use radiant heat, or have a hot plate in the vacuum chamber. Yes, Boyle's law applies, but with a decent vacuum pump you can still maintain a vacuum. In fact, a vacuum oven is a standard piece of lab equipment. One problem with cooking in a true vacuum (which again, is NOT sous vide) is that fluids boil at a lower temperature. It is easy to get water to boil at room temperature - even olive oil will boil. Freeze dried food is put into in a very strong vacuum, so that the frozen water evaporates directly from ice - effectively boiling even below the freezing point - which is called sublimating. So, vacuum ovens tend to be used to dessicate or dry things out totally, which is usually not a desirable thing for cooking. If your goal is to dry somethnig you can use a vacuum dessicator - which is just a vacuum chamber or bell jar - you don't need the heat if you have a good vacuum. Heston Blumenthal uses vacuum dessicators to keep his chips (fried potatoes) crisp, and basically any time you would use a food dryer or very low oven you can do with no extra heat if you use a vacuum. Returning to sous vide, juices can, and do, leak out of food cooked sous vide. One interesting effect is to slow cook salmon sous vide at low temperature. If you put it at 104 F, it does not change color - it looks like raw or smoked salmon, but it flakes like cooked fish. It is excellent - a lot of people are serving this these days - often calling it "confit" because they cook it in oil, but it does very well sous vide (with or without the oil). Anyway, in the sous vide bag with the salmon you will get a bunch of pink fluid. This contains various proteins, which have not set at that temperaute. If you heat it up, it will suddenly set solid. I have made a very delicate flavored custard that way. Similar things happen with other food items, but if the temperature is higher the proteins coagulate in the bag. The Spanish book previously mentioned is excellent - it makes me wish my Spanish was better. There are several books in French as well. I have been doing lots of experiments with sous vide and can dicuss them at some point if we get around to making the tutorial.

Thanks everyone for your recommendations. I leave on the trip later today...

I have been traveling, hence the silence. I wound up booking a hotel in Annecy for Veyrat - most of the places are full. But I am mainly going there to eat anyway. On the way up, alas I don't have time for "worth a journey" - just want a decent place for lunch between Avignon and Annecy. Can't eat too much, or the Symphony menu at Veyrat won't fit. I'll spend a day doing a loop out from Annecy and back for a second night - possiblity to Lyon. Veyrat is closed that night so can't eat there again. So, interesting places for lunch and dinner anywhere within a day trip from Annecy...

I will be driving up the Rhone valley from Provence to Savoy in mid June, and I am looking for some recommendations. I will probably stay at Hotel Jule Cesar - not sure if the restaurant there is great. Interesting bistros or brasseries along the Rhone valley might be useful. I have a dinner booked at Marc Veyrat. I be in the Annecy area another day so a much less casual (and less filling) place for lunch the next day and dinner would be good. By the way - any hotel recommendations in that area? I can only get a room at Veyrat for one of two nights... I'll probably pass through Chamonix on my way to Switzerland. Nathan

There are many techniques that you can use that are almost sous vide. As FG says, vacuum is there for several different reasons, and depending on the result and the circumstance you may not need a vacuum. On the other hand, the home vacuum packing systems (Foodsaver) are not that expensive, and the smaller commercial commercial ones are more money but may not be terrible... We'll talk about all this in the tutorial...

Doing sous vide on a stovetop is hard to do well. In the case of something like fish that you typically only cook for 20 - 30 min it can work, but it is crazy to try to use a conventional stove for multi-hour sous vide because the temperature is not accurate and you risk the pot drying out and having a disaster. Induction helps, but what you really need is something that maintains accurate temperature automatically. There are two main approaches that people do. Since the food stays in the vacuum bag, what you need is a constant way to apply heat to the bag - the method does not matter that much. In restaurants, a lot of people use combi-ovens in low temperature steam mode. Ovens like Rational (which I think is the best one) and others can maintain accurate convection steaming at a wide range of temperatures - so you can set it at 141 degrees F, or some such for as long as you like. Theoretically you could use a dry oven the same way. However, steam mode has much higher heat transfer than dry air, and the combi ovens have much better temperature control. The other approach is to use a hot water bath. The best piece of equipment to use there is a piece of laboratory equpment called a circulating water bath. These will maintain a water bath at a constant temperature with very high accuracy. They are expensive to buy new, but fortunately, you can get them on Ebay pretty cheaply - like $200 to $300. I use both water baths, and Rational combi-ovens. A slow cooker could be a third alternative, but only if you have a separate digital thermometer to check it becaues they typically do not have very accurate dials. When Steve and I write up the sous vide tutorial I will include more information on where to get the water baths etc.

Thanks! What is "carmelized yogurt" and how long does that take?

Can you give some examples of times and temperatures?

OK, I'm not shy. Here are some specific questions: Can you give some examples of temperatures, and cooking times for a few different foods? Fish, chicken, beef, pork, lamb, vegetables... Just give a few examples that illustrate the technique. In some cases the cooking time is governed by the time to reach core temperature - this is typically the case for fish, or meats cooked to rare/medium rare. In that case the times depend in part on the size of the cut, but some guidelines would be useful. In conventional cooking you usually cook at a higher temperature than you want the core to reach, so timing is important - it is possible to overcook. In sous vide the typical approach is to cook at the same temperature as the final core temperature, so timing is less critical - it is hard to over cook. In other cases, like most foods you normally braise (beef short ribs, lamb shanks, osso bucco, veal stock), the cooking time is governed by the time for the food to reach a chemical or physical change - such as the proteins breaking down to become tender. In sous vide you typically cook at lower temperature, but for much longer - like 12 hours or more. Agan, some examples would be useful. Here is another question - what are the things that you think are cooked best with sous vide? Where is the techinque achieve best, for what things do you achieve the most remarkable results? Finally, here is a dumb question - do you use wide mouthed funnels to fill the bags? Or, something else? It is hard to keep the top of the bag clean, but you have to so as not to interfere with the heat sealing. I haven't found any appropriate funnel, so I fold the top back, then fill, and fold ip up. Even that does not work perfectly if you're trying to be quick.

Thanks for the information. I have the Grand Livre volumes, and I can read kitchen level French, but I don't tend to go there first for information. Thanks for the tip - I will read up on it. I have had the pigeon at Ducasse in NY, and is very good indeed! I didn't realize it was sous vide. I have Rational combi-ovens and I have been using low temperature steam mode to cook the sous-vide experiments I have done to date. Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck in the UK is a big advocate of using scientific lab equipment - specifically a temperature controlled water bath for doing low temperature cooking. This includes both sous vide, and other methods like low temperature poaching, or low temperature confit. I bought one of these at a surplus auction and I am going to try it also. The potential benefit over the combi oven is that the temperature control is even better. Yesterday's experiment was salmon "mi cuit" - cooked in oil as a kind of confit, in a sous vide bag at low temp. Blumenthal recommends 45 C = 113 F. Keller, and John Cambell (another British chef) recommend lower - not over 104F. So, I tried it both ways. THey are both good, but the higher temperature one looks a bit more like cooked salmon, while the lower temp one looks almost dead raw (but has mouth feel of being cooked).