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| Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas Keller
Creator: Harold Mcgee
Publisher: Artisan
Category: Book
List Price: $75.00
Buy New: $46.00
You Save: $29.00 (39%)
New (38) Used (6) from $46.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 590
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 295
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.9
Dimensions (in): 11.4 x 11.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1579653510
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.587
EAN: 9781579653514
ASIN: 1579653510
Publication Date: October 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
The ground-breaking under-pressure method, usually called sous vide, involves submerging food for minutes or even days in sealed, airless bags at precisely the temperature required to produce perfect doneness. Flavors and textures unattainable by other cooking methods can also be achieved. The technique has been in the pipeline for awhile--one forerunner is the boil-in bag mom used to put veggies on the table--but has only recently attracted top chefs. One is Thomas Keller, famed chef-proprietor of The French Laundry and Per Se. His mightily sized, gorgeously produced Under Pressure explores every inch of sous vide, including the ramifications of using this precision-cooking technique (once time and temperature are established, best results follow automatically) on the craft of cooking, which has always meant a potentially rewarding engagement with the possibility of failure. The book makes no bones about being addressed to professionals. Typical recipes, like Marinated Toy Box Tomatoes with Compressed Cucumber-Red Onion Relish, Toasted Brioche, and Diane St. Claire Butter, involve multiple preparations and dernier cri ingredients, and thus resist home duplication. There’s also the matter of the pricey equipment required--chamber vacuum packers and temperature-maintaining immersion circulators--not to mention the precautions required to ensure that foods, usually cooked at low temps, are safe to eat. What the book does offer the home cook is, however, thrilling. It introduces something new under the sun--an exciting, transformative technique of great potential. Anyone interested in food and cooking--not to mention lovers of extraordinarily well produced books--will want to explore Under Pressure. --Arthur Boehm
Product Description
A revolution in cooking
Sous vide is the culinary innovation that has everyone in the food world talking. In this revolutionary new cookbook, Thomas Keller, America's most respected chef, explains why this foolproof technique, which involves cooking at precise temperatures below simmering, yields results that other culinary methods cannot. For the first time, one can achieve short ribs that are meltingly tender even when cooked medium rare. Fish, which has a small window of doneness, is easier to finesse, and shellfish stays succulent no matter how long it's been on the stove. Fruit and vegetables benefit, too, retaining color and flavor while undergoing remarkable transformations in texture.
The secret to sous vide is in discovering the precise amount of heat required to achieve the most sublime results. Through years of trial and error, Keller and his chefs de cuisine have blazed the trail to perfection—and they show the way in this collection of never-before-published recipes from his landmark restaurants—The French Laundry in Napa Valley and per se in New York. With an introduction by the eminent food-science writer Harold McGee, and artful photography by Deborah Jones, who photographed Keller's best-selling The French Laundry Cookbook, this book will be a must for every culinary professional and anyone who wants to up the ante and experience food at the highest level.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Not for Rachael Ray November 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I will add my voice to support both the pro and con choruses I read here-it is the best book on the subject yet published, and also quite intimidating in many aspects. It's not clear whether the Keller community had a marketing focus at all-this book is too cumbersome and artsy for the professional bookshelf, and too complex with its metric measures, specialty incredients and non-standardized recipe quantities for many ambitious home cooks. Having said all that, I love it.
Yes, these are totally professional recipes suited to the highest exactitude, but they can be adapted to the home kitchen with excellent results in many cases. One criticism I have is that the recipes mostly do not address a lot of ordinary ingredients, like halibut,salmon, or pork chops, but do include recipes for tripe, eel and veal liver. You will need to find the closest relative to your item and experiment for the best time and temperature. The John Dory specifications work well for halibut, for example, but it will require more experimenting on my part to find the optimal time/temp.
If you can't afford the immersion circulator ($1000), you probably should save your money and stick to standard cooking methods. It is likely that there is still plenty left to master there, and you are less likely to poison anyone. The commercial vacuum sealer is desirable, but prohibitively expensive for most and creates another space problem. I have obtained good results with the home vacuum freezer bag setup. If you want to include a liquid, extend the length of the bag a few inches and let it hang off the counter while sealing under vacuum. I even took a cryovac bag of lamb chops straight from the store and cooked it sous vide without even opening it. It was a bit tricky to clean off the fat after cooking, and it must be seasoned and conventionally seared after cooking sous vide, but the result was still superior to the traditional searing/oven finish. The feature I like most is that you can thaw previously frozen items in their freezer bags and cook them directly sous vide without opening the package.
So, I recommend this book with the stated reservations. I can also tell you that the only other book on the subject is $200, not nearly as useful, and I would be happy to sell you mine.
An instant classic, but not for everyone November 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This cookbook is a mirror into the reader's own attitude toward cooking.
If you are a professional with all the expensive equipment, a demanding clientele and a pioneering spirit, this book will quickly become an essential reference. If you are a casual home cook curious about sous vide wizardry and perhaps interested in toying with the techniques, you will find this book intimidating and useless. For foodies who have been intrigued by "molecular gastronomy" restaurant offerings, this book may answer a few "How did they do that?" questions. Given the level of creative energy between this book's covers, it is an outstanding value for the listed Amazon price. Understand, however, that as Keller states on p. 38, this book is
"written for the professional kitchen, from one chef to another. No modifications have been made
to accommodate cooks preparing [these recipes] at home, even though some of them certainly can
be done at home with the right equipment"
Recipe mise-en-place is organized by component in a division-of-labor professional kitchen style (not chronologically). All recipes use metric weights, so a digital scale is essential. These stylistic choices are sensible for Keller's audience, but may be offputting to a home cook more familiar with traditional American home cookbook presentations.
Sous vide is, in important ways, both easier and safer than other cooking methods. Some of the advantages include ultra-precise control (and corresponding prevention of cooking errors and waste), extended hold times, intensified flavor, more efficient usage of labor, space and ingredients, and the ability to accomplish certain end results that are impossible with any other approach. Romantics who complain that sous vide reduces the artistry of cooking are ignoring the subjective, analog, soulful decisions that the chef must make concerning ingredients and method before and after bag cooking. In an introductory essay, Keller considers the sense of loss at the diminution of artisanal craft as technology supplants it. This was great writing, truly an artist at his best.
One minor complaint I have with the book is its layout. Too many pictures of serious chefs at work are uncaptioned. Who am I looking at? What am I supposed to learn from this picture? Photos of finished recipes are often a page or two away from the recipe or even from their own caption. There are also artsy "backstage" pictures mixed in, producing a momentary confusion as to what one is contemplating. This is perhaps illustrative of the tone of the book. It's assumed that the reader is going to have the culinary chops to recognize these people (or ones like them) and fit right in next to them cooking obscure ingredients comfortably in a professional setting. Perhaps the effect sought is a coffee table book for professional chefs. I was also a bit disappointed with the layout's trendy approach of having more empty space (big white margins) bordering smaller, lighter type. Bring your reading glasses and good light when you sit down with this text.
Following introductions on philosophy, science and history by Bruno Goussault, Harold McGee, Keller, Jonathan Benno, Corey Lee and Sebastien Rouxel, there in an extended section on Fundamentals, including what sous vide can achieve, basic principles and techniques, safety, use in the professional kitchen, and use in the home kitchen. I found the section on food safety to be particularly valuable and accessible to the home cook.
Over sixty recipes are roughly equally divided into five major categories: Vegetables and Fruits, Fish and Shellfish, Poultry and Meat, Variety Meats, and Cheese and Desserts. Perplexingly, the table of contents lists only these categories and does not itemize the individual recipes. Each recipe generally takes two to three pages, plus a full-page photograph, and involves two or three dozen ingredients, divided into dish components (remember these are complex, composed dishes offered in Keller's restaurants, The French Laundry and per se). An example? "Grilled Octopus Tentacles, Chorizo, Fingerling Potatoes, Green Almonds and Salsa Verde," has 30 ingredients, two pages of instructions including a procedure for peeling green almonds, recipe p. 78-79, photo p. 76, two citations for sources, and one procedural reference to the Basics section. Similarly, "Dégustation de Porcelet, Rutabage Mostarda, Wilted Mustard Greens, and Potato 'Mille-Feuille'" is a tasting of five cuts from a baby pig; this recipe stretches four pages and lists 45 ingredients. The "Basics" section follows the recipes and includes everything from how to make clarified butter to recipes for eight different kinds of stock. Few home cooks are likely to make the composed dishes in their entirety, but experienced or adventuresome readers will certainly come away with ideas for home entertaining or approaches that might prepare only one simplified element from a Keller composed plate. Perhaps you would offer home guests five cuts from a baby pig; weeknight visitors to my home would more likely get pork chops sous-vided à la Keller, with one sauce.
Other than the chapter on safety, perhaps the most useful parts for home sous vide users will be the two closing reference sections. First, there is a marvelous table that lists ingredients alphabetically, specifies how to sous vide the ingredient, and cites a recipe within the text that features the ingredient. Next comes an extended list of sources for equipment and ingredients. This is followed by a more traditional index, then acknowledgements and restaurant staff group photos, for a text of almost 300 pages.
The only comparable text to address the topic of sous vide is Joan Roca's "Sous Vide Cuisine." Roca's text is stylistically quite different and more than a third shorter than Keller's book. The English translation of Roca's book also runs about two hundred dollars, which is quadruple the price of Keller's book. If you can choose only one, Keller's is stronger and a better value.
It's not all things to all people, but "Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide" is invaluable in what it offers and an instant classic in its field.
 so what November 4, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
There are probably over 500,000 cookbooks out there for the home cook and not many for the professional cook, so please don't penalize this book because it is not for the martha sytle cook. This is one of the best professional cookbooks out and probably the best book out on Sous Vide cooking. So what home cooks, keep boiling eggs and deep frying asparagus.
This is a 5 star book
Not for the home chef. October 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is fantastic. Not at all for the home chef, but so what! For professionals, there are so many levels on which to you will enjoy this book. If you are an enthusiastic amateur, this is a great window into the standards and techniques of many of the world's best restaurant. THIS IS A MUST BUY!
Great ideas, not able to execute in the home kitchen (yet) October 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thomas Keller is the author of 3 of my favorite cookbooks. This, the last one, is the least accessable to the home chef. Home sous vide is unavailable today, but I am sure there will be a unit available for home use soon. Right now the book is more of a beautiful coffee table book. It's like a book on fine furniture: I'm not going to build any, but I can appreciate the design and construction.
The idea of cooking sous vide is a terrific one. Some of Keller's recipes are still good using more basic equipment (such as a Ziplock vacuum sealer and a crock pot set to warm).
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