A Very Sous Vide Thanksgiving with Modernist Cuisine

This Thanksgiving we are exploring the diverse bounty that cooking sous vide can produce. Call it a bit of a challenge for Modernist diehards, or a joyful homage to a technique we are truly thankful for, but make no mistake: it’s a very sous vide Thanksgiving at Modernist Cuisine.

MCAH_SV_Slow Cooker Sous Vide Cutaway

Modernist chefs have embraced sous vide cooking because of the unparalleled control it provides over the textures of cooked food. Sous vide is actually perfect for a preparation-heavy, feast like Thanksgiving—by removing the chef as the role of human thermostat, you can yield perfectly-cooked food without any of the babysitting required by traditional roasting. Preparing dishes sous vide will also help to alleviate the competition for space (and correct temperature) in your oven on Thanksgiving Day. Make dishes like our potato puree ahead of time, and then store and reheat them in your water bath. They won’t overcook, and they’ll never dry out!

Planning a Thanksgiving dinner with the help of sous vide will require a water bath and a little organization, but those who plan ahead will be rewarded by the most delicious, stress-free family feast ever. To help you succeed, we’ve selected some professional tips, organized our recipes according to order of preparation, and included a few extra recipes that highlight our sous vide favorites. For juicy, evenly cooked meat, tender vegetables, and smooth potatoes, make all of these recipes, or just choose your favorites.

Turkey leg final

Improvising a Water Bath

If you have one or more sous vide baths, you’re ready to start cooking! But if you don’t yet have a sous vide setup (or if you want an extra), there are a few ways you can improvise. All you need is a digital thermometer.

  • One of the simplest ways to improvise sous vide cooking is with a pot on the stove. Clip bags of food along with your digital thermometer to a wire cooling rack, and hang it on the rim of the pot, arranging bags carefully so that the pot isn’t overcrowded. Dial in a burner setting that maintains the desired water temperature. Keep the pot covered to retain heat, uncovering only to check on the temperature.

MCAH_SV_Improvised_Ziploc Rack_VQ6B8851

  • Placing a pan filled with water into your oven will also work, but we recommend using an oven probe to be sure the temperature of your water remains stable.

Stack in Oven

  • When in need, you can convert a clean kitchen sink into a water bath. Fill the basin with water that has been heated to the desired cooking temperature, adding 1–2 °C / 2–4 °F. Add bagged food to the water, refreshing it with hot water as needed. Use silverware to hold down floating bags.

Salmon in Sink

  • If your kitchen sink (or bathtub) is occupied, a cooler can make an excellent water bath.

Step 4

  • Don’t fret if you don’t have a circulating bath. Although these baths are preferred by professional kitchens, keeping your portions in each bag small and well separated will help convective currents flow around them easily.
  • Our last suggestion doubles as a party trick: believe it or not, a hot tub will work as a (giant) water bath (but only if you’re lightly cooking salmon). If only we had a photo.

 

Prep

Now that your water bath(s) are all ready to go, it’s time to start cooking sous vide.

blog post table

1. Start your preparation by making the potato puree. This can be made two days ahead of time and then reheated just before you’re ready to serve your meal. This is not your standard mashed potatoes recipe—instead, you’ll produce velvety-smooth potatoes without a hint of gumminess or grit! Dairy-free? We also have you covered.

MCAH Potato Puree

2. Don’t save dessert for last when it comes to sous vide. Make our Vanilla-Cinnamon Cream Pie two days ahead of time and refrigerate it. The brown butter crust and apple foam add a seasonal twist to this Modernist favorite.

MCAH Sous Vide Vanilla Pastry Cream

Brown Butter Crust

Apple Foam

3. Next, it’s time for vegetables. Chop seasonal vegetables as desired and then vacuum seal them separately. All of your vegetables can cook at the same temperature (see table), and bagging them separately will allow you to pull individual bags from your water bath when they reach the desired tenderness. Make sure you don’t overcrowd your tank; leave enough room for the water to circulate. Prior to serving your food, reheat it and dress it with our Modernist Vinaigrette.

If you prefer the traditional aesthetic of roasted veggies, feel free to make those ahead of time; then seal them in a bag with a little butter or olive oil. An hour or so before you’re ready to eat, pop the bag in your sous vide bath and your veggies will stay at a perfect serving temperature.

MCAH Modernist Viniagrette

4. Classical approaches to roasting a bird whole can compromise your results: perfectly cooked breasts hide the undercooked dark meat of the thighs or else swap flavorful dark meat for dry, overcooked white meat. A Modernist approach is to cook each part of the bird separately. We devoted an entire chapter in Modernist Cuisine at Home to the art of roasting chicken and poultry. For Thanksgiving, we suggest a confit for the dark meat and sous vide turkey breast. Top your turkey with your favorite gravy recipe or dip bites into our recipe for Cranberry-Apple Sauce.

mcah-turkey-confit

mcah-sous-vide-turkey-breast

Cranberry Apple Sauce

5. Infuse your meal with some family favorites—these might be the best dishes to pair with your sous vide creations.

On Thanksgiving Day, heat your water bath to a serving temperature that’s still below the lowest cooking temperature of the foods you’ll load into it—in this case, 55 °C / 131 °F. Then add your prebagged foods at least two hours before you plan to eat. That’ll give everything enough time to get nice and warm. If your guests arrive late—not to worry—your food won’t suffer at all because of the delay.

final

We’re very thankful for sous vide Thanksgiving. Very thankful, indeed!

Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Pantry Partner for Online Store and Cooking Kits

 

Finding Modernist ingredients and tools just got easier. The Modernist Cuisine™ Online Store, powered by Modernist Pantry, provides a wide selection of unusual ingredients, packaged and priced for both home and professional use.

Since the release of Modernist Cuisine, our readers have frequently asked us for help locating ingredients and equipment. While some Modernist ingredients are sold at grocery, health, brewing, and other specialty stores, the shopping experience can be frustrating—ingredients are commonly labeled with different names, and the properties of some ingredients vary widely between brands. In response, we have partnered with Modernist Pantry, an online retailer dedicated to Modernist cooking, to streamline the shopping process. Ingredients are easy to find, and the descriptions provide contextual links to our Modernist Cuisine books.

If you are new to Modernist cooking and want to experiment with some of the most iconic Modernist techniques, we have you covered. The Modernist Cuisine™ Gel Noodle Kit and the Modernist Cuisine™ Spherification Kit include all of the tools and Modernist ingredients needed to learn the techniques of gelling. Each kit also includes a full-color recipe booklet with all the features you have come to expect from Modernist Cuisine: recipes with scaling percentages, step-by-step photos, recipe variations, troubleshooting steps, and detailed information about each ingredient. Each kit contains enough Modernist ingredients to make 20 batches.

Although we think a tank of liquid nitrogen would make a great stocking stuffer, these gelling kits are a little easier to gift wrap. Designed for ages eight and older, they are also great projects to tackle with your kids!

We encourage you to share your creations and variations with us on Facebook and Twitter. You can learn more and buy the gel noodle kit here or the spherification kit here.

– The Modernist Cuisine Team

Remembering Charlie Trotter

This morning, the world lost a culinary legend with the passing of Charlie Trotter, chef and owner of the world-famous Charlie Trotter’s restaurant Chicago. Charlie left a lasting legacy. He was a pioneer in the world of fine dining, and was one of the first American chefs to create a model for haute cuisine that wasn’t just an import of European food, but instead was intrinsically based on the cuisine of the United States. He was also one of the first American celebrity chefs. Charlie emphasized dining as an emotional and intellectual experience, and considered classic dishes as a starting point for improvisation, rather than rule. He was a passionate advocate for perfection and excellence, to the degree that he wrote several management books about how to take those values from high end food to other disciplines. A host of innovative chefs like Homaro Cantu, Graham Elliot, and Grant Achatz passed through his kitchen and went to create an exciting set of Chicago restaurants. For me, Chicago is one of the most exciting cities in the world to go to dinner, and that is part of Charlie’s legacy.

I was fortunate to be one of the chefs passing through his kitchen – albeit for a single dinner. My team and I had the rare privilege to cook alongside Charlie to celebrate his restaurant’s 25th anniversary, shortly before its closing last year. We spent several days with Charlie and his staff, and we experienced his gregarious (and sometimes outrageous) personality and incomparable hospitality first-hand. From the moment of our arrival, it was clear that Charlie knew just how to make a guest feel welcome. When our car pulled up to the entrance of Trotter’s, his entire staff – chefs, servers, hosts and all – lined the sidewalk in military formation, as if prepared for the arrival of a foreign dignitary. Once inside, Charlie was quick to put everyone at ease. He enjoyed singling out his chefs and servers, one by one, by interrupting their task at hand and inquiring, for all to hear, “If you were on a desert island and could only bring one book to read, which would it be?” Newer employees answered nervously, realizing the question was a test, and having clearly been put on the spot for Charlie’s amusement.  Experienced Trotter’s team members responded with the correct answer, “Yours, Chef!” It was his way of breaking the invisible tension that divides the diners and service team in traditional fine dining, putting the whole room at ease.

Charlie’s memory will live on in the hundreds and thousands who dined at his restaurant, read his books, or knew him from television. He made an immeasurable impact on the world of fine dining, and we will miss him deeply.

 -Nathan