Pressure Cooking is the opposite of Sous Vide: Defend or Refute

[gfweb]

The PC blasts meat with superheated steam and cooks it into submission. Good for stew meat and stock. One temp fits all. Unfit for fish or fowl.

 

SV gently heats a protein to the temperature where its best qualities come out. Can be tuned to any meat. Zen cooking.

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

Edited January 9, 2016 by gfweb (log)

[robie]

Wouldn't broiling be more opposite in that is uses dry heat instead of moist and can generate caramelization, scorching, and burning due to much higher temperatures.

[haresfur]

Sous vide and pressure cooking are merely different methods for precisely controlling cooking temperature. They share this commonality with another important cooking technique called "boiling". SV isn't any more "gentle" than other techniques, it however, is fancier because you can control the set temperature. 

[jayt90]

I am able to pressure cook delicacies such as fish, pasta, chard or kale, even lobster, if I watch the time carefully, and cool down immediately under a stream of water.  The dry steam heat will penetrate quickly and evenly to the center, unlike sous vide, which penetrates slowly, and leaves me with fish that is somewhat raw, or vegetable stems too stiff.  Broiling can  be uneven, and may leave the center half cooked; the juices for a quick sauce are lost in the vapor. 

 

To be frank, I find sous vide is a trendy fad. Beef spare ribs for 72 hours sv is more plan-ahead than I can handle, but great for bragging.  I am just as happy with beef spare ribs PC'd for 50 minutes finished under the broiler. Guests or non believers are amazed, and thankful that the kitchen did not blow up or burn down!

[liuzhou]

7 hours ago, gfweb said:

Unfit for fish or fowl.

 

 

Not at all. You have to careful with fish, yes. Fowl works just fine.

 

They aren't opposites. Just different. And I want my dinner now!

[rotuts]

Cooking is simply applying thermal or IR energy to what you plan to eat.

 

PC is faster, SV slower.

 

BTW;  the best 'stew' ever is done via SV in a stepwise fashion.  initial steps denature various proteins that contract at higher temps, and the

 

meat then completes its cooking to your liking.  you make various other elements of the 'stew' based on their ideal cooking temps and then combine,

 

and perhaps rest for a bit to Co-Mingle.

 

it might take you days to do this properly.  if done in bulk as a do ahead project, fine

 

otherwise, you are going to be pretty hungry waiting for you dinner.

 

Heston Blumenthal made a stew, in bulk, component by component, and froze the various bags in bulk.

 

then took the results  on a British submarine, HMS Turbulent

 

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hestons-mission-impossible/videos/all/s1-ep4-brain-food

 

I can't be sure he went to the trouble of doing the SV Meat in a stepwise fashion.

 

I myself have not taken the time to try this, being somewhat SlothFull these days.

 

but I bet that stepwise stew would be 4 star.

 

PC Stew ( wine, mushrooms, etc ) the next day is quite tasty

 

so it is what it is, and speaks for itself.

 

BTW  Im fairly sure, potatoes 'pressure-steamed' are far better than SV potatoes.  but Ive never SV'd veg.

 

the higher temps in PC does something to the sugars in both waxy and Russet style potato .

 

BTW II :  the continuum of thermal cooking would be evident to all of us if we had a Rational Combi-Oven or two.

 

or for some of us, a CSB.

 

 

indeed  Step-SV-Stew vs Combi Stew  would be an outstanding project for PedroG !

 

he knows as much about component SV and has a Lucious ElectroLux Combi Oven

 

Edited January 9, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[Shelby]

My mom and I were just discussing last night how similar SV and PC are.  Both are used to make meat the best it can be  

[dcarch]

The big difference is the following:

 

SV - can overcome thermal conductivity of food and maintain set temperature edge to edge, anywhere from 32F to 212F.

PC - lets say 250F is the max temperature, that will be the temperature to travel thru the food, depending timing, conductivity of food, start out temperature of food and thickness of food, not all parts of food can be cooked at the same temperature

 

dcarch

[blue_dolphin]

I'd put them both on the spectrum of moist-heat cooking methods, along with steaming, simmering, boiling, etc. I guess they are well separated from each other amongst that group but I wouldn't call them opposites. 

I think something like high heat grilling or convection broiling would be the opposite of sous vide.  

Maybe freeze-drying is the opposite of pressure cooking ! 

 

[rotuts]

"""   Maybe freeze-drying is the opposite of pressure cooking !  """

 

 

[btbyrd]

5 hours ago, jayt90 said:

To be frank, I find sous vide is a trendy fad. Beef spare ribs for 72 hours sv is more plan-ahead than I can handle, but great for bragging.  I am just as happy with beef spare ribs PC'd for 50 minutes finished under the broiler. Guests or non believers are amazed, and thankful that the kitchen did not blow up or burn down!

 

That's why if you're going to cook anything for 72 hours, you make a giant batch and freeze most of it. There's not a lot of plan-ahead with extended sous vide cooks since you can make it whenever, chill it, and store it in the fridge for a week until you need it (or in the freezer until the end of time). If you get the workflow down, SV actually requires much less planning than most other methods. 

[lesliec]

1 hour ago, btbyrd said:

 

... There's not a lot of plan-ahead with extended sous vide cooks since you can make it whenever ... SV actually requires much less planning than most other methods. 

 

Exactly.  It's not like you need to sit watching it for 72 hours.

 

I admit my recent experience with pressure cooking has been somewhat tainted by having bought a cheap(ish) PC that I always had major trouble getting to seal, but for me SV is a whole lot easier. 

[AlaMoi]

what dcarch said. 

"heat" is not just "heat" - and cooking is not just applying thermal energy until some part reaches the temp you want.  heating proteins to too high a temperature is  generally not a good approach in terms of tender and juicy.

 

cooking at high heats will result in the outer parts of the object being raised to higher temperatures than the "middle" - it's actually is just science / physics

 

if you don't like beef cooked to 200'F, and you're roasting at 375'F, the outside is very likely going to reach 200'F before the inside gets to 130'F - there's baskets an baskets of 'other considerations' such as size, surface area to mass ratio, object starting temp, fat caps, skin on/skin off, etc etc etc that basically make 'one line the perfect way to cook' theories completely off the scale of reality.

[FeChef]

In my opinion, its comparing apples to oranges. The best tender short ribs ive made was in my pressure cooker. Hands down better then any version ive made SV. That said, I wouldnt attempt a large piece of meat like a pork shoulder. But a cut like short ribs can be fork tender and still moist and take only an hour to 90 minutes. And the liquid you end up with is a base for a very good sauce.

[DocDougherty]

Not so much opposite as different. For dishes that you don't want to heat above a specific temperature (medium rare beef, fish) sous vide is great because it removes much of the precise timing required to achieve the same result with high temperature cooking methods (frying, grilling, ...). But the high temperature of a pressure cooker can accelerate the process off dissolving connective tissue or softening beans/potatoes quickly. You still have to wait for the heat to diffuse to the core of the food, though it does go faster in a PC and further accelerates the process. So I sous vide chicken breasts, turkey thighs, salmon, steak, etc., and pressure cook lamb shanks, chickpeas, and potatoes. Some things will cross over and others won't. Pick and choose for optimal results in your kitchen, with your food, to get your preferred result. A good combi oven will do a decent approximation of sous vide for a big piece of meat or a whole bird that you can't sink in a water bath without 20 lb of glass beads, and neither of those would be good candidates for pressure cooking (well maybe you could broast a big bird).

[MelissaH]

I would sooner say that the slow cooker is the opposite of the pressure cooker. The slow cooker is for when you think ahead. The pressure cooker is for when you don't.

 

For me, SV is parallel to the slow cooker, but not like either.

[weedy]

Sous vide techniques allow you to achieve results unobtainable by other methods...now, if a few luddites or 'traditionalists' want to cross their arms and cry ' but I don't want the texture of a braise with the taste and intensity of medium rare...', then that's fine... enjoy the 19th century

 

but a pressure cooker is about speed; not about new territory or unique results

 

 

[rotuts]

""  unique results ""

 

Ill claim potatoes 'pressure-steamed'   i.e. in a basket above the water are different.  esp. waxy new potatoes.  russets perhaps a little  harder to say.

 

Ill have to do some more cut-up beets  pressure steamed to see if they qualify.

[EnriqueB]

Refute. Just at both extremes of time/temperature profiles for moist cooking. Depending on the produce, result I am looking for, and available time I have, I will move from a lower temperature (SV) to 100ºC (boiling) to up to 120ºC (PC) in a continuous fashion.

[Ashen]

On 09/01/2016 at 11:59 AM, rotuts said:

"""   Maybe freeze-drying is the opposite of pressure cooking !  """

 

 

 

  when  I read opposite of sous vide, first thing I thought of was  flash freezing.