instore - December 2017 - com - 15

Equipment

Also, there's not a lot of readily available science out there. Most of the books
about sous vide, Currie points out, are
cookbooks. Instead, retailers are looking
for better information on how to make
the cooking method work for their line
of business.
"There's nothing wrong with that, but
that is no way to penetrate the market
in professional restaurants and certainly
not in supermarkets," he says. "What you
want to do is take large cuts of meat and
enhance their flavor and tenderness and
their yield. And then serve it in traditional styles. That's where the money is."
Another factor is simply cook time. Sous
vide's gentle cooking cycle may result in
moist, tender and flavorful meat, but it
also takes much longer than traditional
forms of cooking.

SOUS VIDE INVOLVES COOKING FOOD IN A VACUUM-SEALED PLASTIC POUCH IN A WATER BATH FOR
LONGER THAN NORMAL COOKING TIMES.
PHOTO: QUALITY FOOD, SYSTEMS AND TRAINING

"The only thing that scares off the meat
manufacturers is the throughput is slow,"
Currie says. "It's not like you run out a
roast in four hours. That same roast will
be 16 to 24 hours depending on what the
cut is."
But there are ways around this. A big
enough tank and proper planning will
work just fine for every cut of meat in
your facility. Since one temperature is
good enough for any cut of meat - only
the cooking time differs - a large tank
can hold them all at the same time.
Currie's dream setup for a retailer or producer would be a spiral conveyor that
runs through a sous vide tank.

Slowly catching on
In fact, Currie says, some manufacturers
are already starting to take advantage of
setups similar to that.
"I've been talking to some who are building huge sous vide tanks instead of spiral
ovens," he says. 'To get the manufacturers
into this is really telling. If some of these
places are getting into it, it should be
clear that a small supermarket chain can
do their own sous vide quite efficiently."
One of the benefits of sous vide is lower
energy needs. The method allows cooking at lower temperatures because the

SOUS VIDE IS SUITABLE FOR ANY CUT OF MEAT, FROM RIBS, MEATBALLS, STEAK, ENTIRE OUTSIDE ROUNDS,
WHOLE SMOKED BRISKETS AND ANY KIND OF CHICKEN.
PHOTO: QUALITY FOOD, SYSTEMS AND TRAINING

extraction of coldness is faster with
bubbling water.
"If you're looking to do this in a big way,
you just have to build a big tank and find
a way to automate getting the meat in
and out of the tank," Currie says. "The
energy to do this is very low compared
to dry heat cooking. Once the water is at
temperature, it wants to stay there and
it's an extremely low temperature."
Once the system is set up, it's good for
any meat, whether it's ribs, meatballs,

entire outside rounds, whole smoked
briskets, roast beef, chicken, steak or
anything else.
It costs money, of course, but Currie
points out that yield and quality go a long
way toward recouping any expenses.
When you're talking about 20 percent
higher yield, that will pay for an awful
lot of construction in your plant or in
your supermarket," he says. "You can
take that extra money and put it right
back into the business."

commissary INSIDER

DECEMBER 2017 * 15

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