Sous vide and refrigeration: this is why they are a golden duo

Sous vide is a cooking technique that can help every (home) chef to always achieve the perfect end result. By means of sous vide you can ensure that the core of that beautiful piece of meat can reach the right core temperature, without the outside being able to cook too much. The result of sous vide: always a perfectly cooked, tender piece of meat.

Did you know that by cooling the meat after cooking in the sous, you can often get an even better result? It may sound illogical to cool your dish immediately after cooking sous vide. In this blog, we will explain why cooling your sous vide preparation is a good idea and we will also explain the best way to cool the dish.

Cooling your sous vide dish

Why would you cook meat sous vide first, cool the product down and then reheat it? You may know that it is very common in professional kitchens to prepare all dishes as much as possible in advance. There is even a term for it: mise-en-place. There are also several good reasons why it can be useful for you as a home chef to cool your sous vide cooked products down.

Some types of meat need to cook longer in the sous vide than is strictly necessary to reach the right core temperature. Oxtail, bavette, sukade. Each and every one is beautiful, but “difficult” meat. Cooking too quickly does not exactly benefit the taste and that is where sous vide comes in and can offer the solution. Because with the right time in the sous vide, even this difficult meat can eventually become buttery tender.

For example, you can read how long the meat should cook sous vide in our other blog about making the perfect steak, but certain pieces of meat, such as lamb shoulder or pulled pork, only achieve the best result after a few days in the sous vide bath. Only then does the meat have the structure and tenderness that you want to achieve with sous vide.

Although sous vide is very easy, because as a chef you don't have to do much, it is of course not really practical or economical to turn on the sous vide for a long time for just one or two portions.

If you cool the meat immediately after cooking – and then freeze it if necessary – you only need to reheat it sous vide before use. If you cook multiple portions at once, you will save a lot of time and energy the next time.

There is another important reason to cool your dish immediately. Thin meat, about two centimetres thick, that has not been cooked sous vide, normally reaches the required core temperature after a few minutes of frying in the pan. If you were to put the meat straight from the sous vide into the pan, meat whose core is already at temperature, the outside will become much too cooked when frying the meat, but the inside can also quickly go bad. Of course, it would be a waste of your efforts to get your steak perfect on the inside.

By cooling the thinner meat before frying it, you can give the outside of the meat a nice crust in the pan, while the inside can also slowly reach serving temperature during frying.

The benefits of cooling in sous vide

There are several advantages to cooling your sous vide dishes for you as a home chef, we will briefly summarize them:

• Saves time : You save time by making multiple portions in advance. You can store these portions in the refrigerator or freeze them if you want.
• Cheaper: You ultimately use less energy, because the already prepared portions only need to be heated sous vide and not fully cooked. The dishes therefore need to be in the sous vide for a shorter time, you therefore use less energy and this way of working saves you money.
• Better result: With thin meat, you have better control over the core temperature of the meat by cooling it down, and therefore you have control over the end result. After cooling down, you can briefly heat the meat in the pan for the Maillard reaction or use the kitchen burner for a nice crispy crust on your meat. This also brings the core of the meat back to serving temperature.

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How should you cool down?

Proper cooling is very important. By cooling the product in the right way, you prevent harmful bacteria from developing. You can therefore store the product longer, but even more importantly; by cooling it properly, you prevent nasty food poisoning.

The most important thing is that the cooling down must be done quickly. Bring the core temperature down to 5 degrees Celsius or even lower in less than two hours.

In the professional kitchen, a special blast cooler is used to bring the temperature of a preparation back down as quickly as possible. As a home chef, such a device will generally not be part of the kitchen equipment. We will therefore have to cool your dish down quickly in another way. Because your sous vide dish is of course already vacuum packed, you can use cold water to cool it down.

• Cooling thin meat: cooling thinner pieces of meat can be done perfectly in cold tap water. Place the vacuum bag from the sous vide directly in a sink filled with cold water until the product has cooled sufficiently.

• Cooling down thicker meat: for thicker pieces of meat, you will need a good number of ice cubes in addition to the cold water to keep the temperature of the water low. The large piece of sous-vide cooked meat is still warm and will heat up the water very quickly. The ice water helps to bring down the (core) temperature of the product as quickly as possible.

Cooling in the refrigerator: don't do it

Cooling a dish or preparation back in the refrigerator is certainly not recommended. By placing the warm dish in the refrigerator, the refrigerator warms up and that certainly does not benefit the shelf life of the other products in the refrigerator. So always cool the dish in the above way and as quickly as possible back to 5 degrees Celsius.

The added value

Although it may go against your nature, in many cases cooling your dish down definitely has added value. By cooling down quickly, you can eat the dishes later or freeze them, which saves you preparation time in the kitchen, but also sous vide time. The energy savings that this provides is of course a nice bonus.

By cooling back you can also prevent thinner meat from overcooking too quickly when baking. Overcooked meat is of course a waste of your efforts and is not why you chose a sous vide preparation.

So, cooling down is not something that you should only find in the professional kitchen. By cooling down in the right way, you as a home chef can also benefit even more from all the advantages that sous vide cooking has to offer.