 Hey all welcome back to the fire and water cooking channel. I'm Darren and today I'm going to start a series of videos that I think will help everybody if you're not familiar with sous vide or if you're still learning sous vide I think it's gonna help you out a lot. I Have a Facebook group and a Facebook page and the Facebook group I get a lot of people that are new to the concept of sous vide So I wanted to start this series to kind of help them out and anybody that's interested in You know learning how to use sous vide either by itself on its own or combined it with barbecue and grilling and You know other other cooking, you know, just so that you can get the basics down It's not very hard once you learn the basics. So Okay, now we're gonna answer some of the questions First question that comes to mind is what is sous vide? You know, that's one of the basic questions that everybody asks right off the bat What does it mean? Where did it come from? What is it? Why is it different than anything else? So what is sous vide is the question that I'm gonna answer right now and sous vide is just a French term that means under vacuum and The reason it is under vacuum You know, they use that term under vacuum is because usually when you're cooking you're cooking in a bag plastic bag And there's no air in it. It doesn't have to be particularly in a vacuum sealed bag Although that does make it a lot easier But you can you can use a ziploc bag and you can get all the air out of it in different ways and just Sucking the air out with a vacuum sealer, but The concept is you're cooking in a bag that has no air in it in a water bath The water completely surrounds the food You don't want any air in the bag because you want the water to be touching the food all over the place The reason is because water is actually a better transfer of heat Than air is it Actually, it will cook a lot better and what that lets you do is get a better product in the end So sous vide what it is really is cooking in a water bath at a precise temperature In a plastic bag with no air Second question is where did sous vide come from where did it all of a sudden come from a sous vide? It's actually been around since around the 70s. It started, you know, some of them myths and legends and Stories behind its Inception where some French chefs, you know back in France where you know competing chefs were trying to figure out a better way to cook some Really hard to cook fish something that was really fragile and could overcook really easy there of trying to find a better way to Prepare it so that they could bring it to their guests Easier, you know, so it wouldn't lose as much during the cooking process, you know overcooking it or what have you so one of them have the idea of actually Taking a pot of water and heating it up to a precise temperature Measuring it with an instant read thermometer and putting it in a bag to cook it at that particular Specific temp temperature. So that's the legend it started in the 70s and it kind of grew from there And then you know, of course, you know, France is where a lot of the top chefs train and learn and they Concept kind of grew people started whispering about it Fast-forward to around 2008 Thomas Keller who is a famous American chef that owns a few Really high-end restaurants one of them is a French laundry. It's one of the best restaurants in the USA Wrote a book called under pressure. That's about sous vide and ever since then it's kind of gotten more and more popular He had a company called poly science that kind of used to make medical medical equipment stuff Circulate not real circulators, but water heaters that would Are used for sterilizing medical equipment and stuff and they actually put that to use in using it for the sous vide because all it really was is a Heater that you know Heated the water to a precise temperature and kept it there for a long period of time. So they developed pretty much developed the You know sous vide circulator, which is kind of what we have today What makes sous vide different than any other cooking method Well, one of the things that I really liked about sous vide is I've always been into big into barbecue and cooking. I've been in the cooking for 30 years I used to work in restaurants back when I was younger for first 10 years of my you know Actually working life so I was always interested in cooking and different types of cooking and different methods and styles and What makes sous vide different is the whole Concept of cooking in a water bath at a precise temperature, you know, you can cook in your oven You can set your oven to 225 or your grill or whatever, but it doesn't mean that it's actually Exactly 225 degrees in that oven or in your grill. The air is always moving air is not a good transfer of heat So, you know, you really might be 225 by where the thermostat is, but it might be 250 Over here on this side. So it's not really always a precise temperature But with water, you know, the water is actually you can measure it because it is you know, there's more It's more dense. So you can actually get that water to a precise temperature and with the circulator Keeping this water moving through the heater It actually makes it so this water in the bath is the exact temperature within a half a degree That's reading on here on the thermometer So which makes it a lot different than any other cooking method frying can probably be similar, but Usually when you're frying you can't really fry at a lower temperature So it's you need is actually a lower and slower method of cooking. It's similar to I Compare it to barbecue cooking because barbecue is low and slow when you cook a brisket or you cook ribs or you cook pork But for pulled pork you're cooking it for a long time at a lower temperature So you're giving the meat time to render out fat for the collagen and different Tendons and all that that are inside the meat to actually Cook and render down and turn into gelatin so they're not tough anymore So doing that on the grill you can do it on the grill But unfortunately when you do it on a grill it actually turn you can have to make it more well done you can't cook it and let's say medium rare or medium and Get that result on a grill Because of the you just can't control the heat as well and the air doesn't You know transfer heat to the meat as well as water does so what city lets you do is actually Cook really low and really slow Let's say 132 degrees if you want a medium rare steak You cook it for two hours in the water bath And it actually makes it the steak from top to bottom Medium rare Then you can take it out of the water bath and put a quick sear on it on the outside and get it Crispy without cooking anymore on the interior and then it's a perfectly done steak from top to bottom So that's what makes it different. I mean it just the way the overall things that you can do with it You can make a brisket Medium done this if you cook it for a longer time and when I say longer time It's more like 48 hours than you know eight or 12 hours You cook it for 48 hours, but you cook it at a lot lower temperature In a water bath and you can actually make it where it's nice and tendered like a filet mignon So that's what sous vide can do One of the most Questions that get asked and people get kind of freaked out about is is sous vide safe? And they they get freaked out about in a couple different ways one of them is The one I see a lot is is cooking in a plastic bag safe Well, it's not like you're cooking in a garbage bag or you're cooking in a plastic bag you get at the store When you're cooking sous vide in a bag You're either using a food saver bag or a ziplock freezer bag Both of which are food safe bags. There's no BPA. There's no Bunky chemicals in them that are going to cause cancer or anything like that There have been scare articles out there for years with people quoting things from 20 or 30 years ago about the you know, how unsafe it is for you know, water and plastic bottles and all that 99.9 if not a hundred percent of all Plastic now that touches food pretty much is food safe. You don't have to worry about You know any chemicals leaching into your food that are going to give you cancer or anything like that So that's the number one question that people ask is cooking in plastic safe. So the second one is You know Do I need to cook the meat to a hundred and forty five degrees for so I don't get sick? Another thing that that's another thing that gets asked a lot You know, is it going to be safe if I cook my meat for 48 hours at 132 degrees, you know Because it's in the danger zone and it might get this and that One of the things sous vide does and I'll I'll been a reference in books and some links down below in the description They will kind of explain that is It lets you pasteurize the meat One of the things when you're cooking at a lower temperature The time that you're cooking actually comes into play more than the temperature itself So if you're keeping a particular food or meat at 132 degrees, but you're keeping it out there for a longer period of time You're actually going to pasteurize the meat because there's no more opportunity for the Pathogens to enter the meat because you're got it in a you know sealed bag under water So you're not going to have a issue where the pathogens have an access to the meat It's just what's already may be in there in the meat itself But if that combined time and the temperature Will pasteurize the meat to make it safe. So there's been a lots of studies done with that So there there'll be links below in the description. It kind of goes over, you know Douglas Baldwin That's one of the ones that people quote all the time. He put together all these pasteurization tables that show you for different foods What the you know pasteurization times and temps combined are so different? Temperature will have a different time. So as long as you're cooking something within the time temperature range of pasteurization Cooking sous vide is perfectly safe So that's one of the reasons why it's getting more and more popular So those are some of the myths that are out there is that it's not safe can't cook in plastic You can't you know, it's in the danger zone blah blah blah But as long as you follow basic guidelines that are simple to follow you don't have any worries about One of the things that I like about sous vide is that once you get the basic concepts down of sous vide How it works and how it can affect the meat and the food that you're cooking. It's very easy to Figure it out and do it And once you get the basics down you can kind of start playing around and figure out how you like All right guys, I just want to finish here, I just want to tell you that there's some Real incredible resources out there that you can find and I'll put those down in the description below one of them is a website called amazing food made easy and it's actually Put together by a member that's in our group fire and water cooking and also has his own groups had his own group We're on for a while now called exploring sous vide on Facebook. You should check those both out Jason Logsdon. He's put together a lot of books about sous vide and modernist cooking in general And there's a lot of information that he has a link to some other Resources down below Doug Baldwin's book You know has all the pasteurization tables And some other books as well. So check out all the information. I have in the description below if you want to learn some more That's it for this video guys. I'm going to go into more and some other videos on equipment Different recipes time and temp guides where to find all this information And all that so just make sure you follow this series Make sure you follow us on Facebook. We have a Facebook group in the Facebook page fire and water cooking There's a lot of interaction in our group and it's growing day by day Make sure you like this video subscribe hit the bell notification so that you can get notified as soon as another video comes up And I hope you like this video and I'll see you on the next one. Thanks guys