Chef praises suppliers, 'sous vide' method

Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Mar 26, 2008 | by TERESA J. FARNEY Staff Food columnist

And now, a few grateful words about the unsung heroes of cooking - - food suppliers -- brought to you by superchef Thomas Keller.

"The next people to become celebrities in the culinary world will be the suppliers," said Keller, a self-taught California chef who was in Denver recently to help open a 500-seat demonstration arena at Johnson & Wales University. "Without suppliers of excellent foods, we cannot be good at our job."

He waxed poetic about his lamb supplier. He had kind words for his wild mushroom supplier and for a supplier whose four cows produced 15 pounds of butter for his acclaimed French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, Calif.

"It was the best butter I had tasted," he said. "I told her I'd buy all she could produce. When I opened Per Se in New York, I asked her if she could make enough butter for that restaurant.

"She bought more cows to get the job done. Hats off to the suppliers. Without them, we wouldn't be here."

For him, money is no object when it comes to ingredients.

"I don't get into price negotiations with my suppliers," he said. "I pay them what they ask. Otherwise, if I undercut them, they may cheapen their product. It might not be the same excellent ingredient I want to use at my restaurants. And it keeps the small suppliers in business."

Aside from praising suppliers, Keller also gave a demonstration similar to one he had done at the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen last June.

It was all about "sous vide" (pronounced soo-VEED) -- a foolproof way to cook food in vacuum-sealed bags.

"This is just another method of cooking that is on the forefront of commercial kitchens today," he said. "It's about time and temperature, and about precision. You can nail the precise cooking time with this method 100 percent of the time."

For the Johnson & Wales demonstration, he had vacuum-sealed a 2- pound boneless lamb saddle. Before cooking, he let it come to room temperature, then poached it in its bag in a special circulating immersion heater.

"It should be cooked to mediumrare in 50 minutes," he said. And because the water temperature holds steady, the meat can stay in the water for several hours without turning into shoe leather.

When he took the meat out of the bag and patted it dry, it didn't look very appetizing, and he acknowledged it.

"It looks kind of anemic -- it does," he said. "But you need to season it with salt and pepper and fire it in oil to sear the outside of the meat."

Keller is so enthused about sous vide that he has a cookbook on the topic coming out in October.

Don't get too excited about doing this type of cooking in your own home, however.

The smaller vacuum sealer runs in the neighborhood of $1,800, and the water-immersion system required for the cooking costs about $1,400.

"I'm sure there are some appliance manufacturers who are working on the sous vide machine for the home right now," he said.

Until then, don't try this at home. Keller says home vacuum- sealing machines such as FoodSavers won't get the job done.

"They don't get all the air out of the bag," he said. "It's oxygen in the bag that could spoil the food."

Look for other big-name chefs to drop in as guest instructors at the new Johnson & Wales demonstration kitchen.

Some of the appearances will be open to the public, and we'll alert you so you can tap into their culinary wisdom.

Reach Farney at 636-0271 orteresa.farney@gazette.com. She appears

Tuesdays on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9

at 4 p.m.