How to make Vacuum Cooking a Roller-Coaster Ride

CHEFTALK

How to make vacuum cooking a roller-coaster ride

 Many of us love to be thrilled in life; I don’t mean thrilled like buying something new or getting a present. I mean the thrill of raising your stress levels to the max.

The thrill

I have never figured out why people spend money on an amusement park to get that thrill. Riding a roller-coaster that takes you up and down a hill to scare the, I do not know what out of you, just to beat death in a little cart dropping that turns your stomach inside out.

The stress

On the other hand when some stress comes into our lives, something we did not pay for, the world seems to come to a standstill. Life’s stress gets us down so easily, because we do not expect it, it comes out of the blue and therefore we cannot handle it. Stress at work because we are under pressure, financial stress because we have difficulties making ends meet.

How come we can be so brave when we pay for a scary ride and are so whimsy, whinny when we need to get the job done we get paid for?

Well, smart people have studied the subject at length and found that we love, “not me, but many of us” predictable stress (coming down a steep hill in an amusement park) but we cannot handle unpredictable stress. Meaning that when you are on top of the roller coaster ride you can predict that you stomach gets turned in-side out, but when the boss shouts we panic and get stressed out.

How to de-stress

We go home stressed, forget about important things in life, our family, health, having a healthy dinner, a good night’s sleep and start afresh the next day, life goes on after all.

So, what can we do to intercept that kind of unnecessary stress, one thing you can do to release that kind of stress is having a good dinner with loved ones. Talk about different things than issues that cause stress, divert and set focus on the moment.

Food unites, a dinner with close relatives makes you feel warm and unstressed, if you do not feel like cooking after a stressful day at work make use of pre- prepared meals you made at a quieter moment.

Once you sit around the table facing a bunch of happy faces you know that investing in a quality vacuum sealer was a good and wise decision.

All you need to do is grab one of your (and your families) favorite meals that you pre-cooked, vacuumed and stored in your freezer and heat it up, maybe with a small addition of some pasta or another staple, but you are done in a whimsy.

My story may sound a bit philosophical, but we all have issues in life, feel stressed and somewhat in limbo maybe. I truly believe that a united meal brings you happiness and releases some of the stress you may encounter.

Here are a few ideas for meals to make in advance and freeze: 

Chicken Cacciatore:

All you need is cubed chicken breast, mushrooms, onion, garlic, canned (or your own tomatoes), oregano, salt and pepper.

Heat a few tbsp of olive oil in a skillet, season the chicken cubes with salt, pepper and oregano and fry until golden brown, add the chopped onions, chopped garlic and the mushrooms (sliced or quartered) and fry for a few minutes, stirring regularly. Add the tomatoes and bring the mix to boil, check for taste and you are done.

Allow cooling, place the mix in a vacuum bag, vacuum and freeze. 

When you are ready to use this homemade delicious concoction, microwave the whole bag for 2 minutes to get the defrosting started.

Place the bag in a pot with boiling water, boil your favorite pasta and top with the Cacciatore, sprinkle some grated cheese.

Pre-preparing this meal takes around 10 minutes, making it ready to serve 15 minutes.

Crispy Pork Belly:

Ingredients:

10 oz                                                   Pork belly (cut in 1 cm pieces)

1 Tbsp                                                 Oyster sauce

2 Tbsp                                                 Light soya sauce

1 Tsp                                                    Crushed black pepper

½ Tsp                                                   Salt

Dash                                                    Chinese rice wine

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Marinate the pork slices with the rest of the ingredients and leave to marinade for 2 hours or so

Drain excessive marinade from the meat

Heat oil to 180 C and deep fry marinated meat for a minute, drain on kitchen paper

Deep fry a second time just before serving, about 2 minutes until crisp

Serve with steamed rice and braised Chinese Nappa Cabbage

Simplicity is the key to good home cooked food. The first and second recipe freeze very well, are a roller-coaster to make and delicious.

Your vacuum sealer helps, if you do not have one, find one here:

 www.vacupack.com  for USA and www.vacupack.ca for Canada. 

By: Marinus Hoogendoorn

Food for Thought

CHEFTALK

Food for thought

This heading does not really sound like something a chef would have in mind. Chefs have food for your stomach in mind and they should, after all it’s their job to provide food for stomachs. 

So why come with a topic like this, well I've been advocating home cooked food as the right path to healthier living for some time now and thought that it would be interesting to have a look at the differences between cooking at home and restaurant cooking.

One out three or four people in the US are obese, may be with an exception here and there, but all these people became overweight for a reason and that reason is not because they eat healthy food.

Supermarket prices rise by 6% per year while restaurant prices remain somewhat flat. These facts provide the perception that eating out is cheaper than cooking and eating at home.

Americans are spending more and more of every paycheck on dining out; presently this is about 4.5% out of every paycheck, while the spending on groceries stays flat.

When the prices of groceries rise for you, obviously they rise for restaurants also, but restaurants buy in bulk you may argue. True, but so can you! 

Portion your bulk purchase, buddy shop, share, vacuum your portioned bulk purchases.

You can find a quality vacuum sealer here:  www.vacupack.com  for USA and www.vacupack.ca for Canada. 

Is it less expensive to cook at home

I research a bit for this article and found two articles that made clear how we, consumers, are misguided by the media. Let me share the stories.

The first part was a study conducted by a financial website Gobankingrates, I found it on MSN Money, with the heading “Eating out is Cheaper than cooking at home”, they compared a number of restaurant meals to the purchase of the same ingredients of that particular meal in a supermarket and claimed that the restaurant meals were $2.00 to $3.00 cheaper compared to the home cooked version.

Jane Dornbusch of the Boston Globe raised her eyebrows, like I did when she saw the article and investigated.

The study forgot, as I suspected, that you cannot calculate food cost apple to apple. 

One of the meals in question was a rib-eye steak with soup, asparagus and a salad for $17.99, cooking the meal at home costs according to the study $20.52

Jane made a trip to the restaurant and found that in reality $17.99 was the base price for the rib-eye steak, soup added $2.99, the asparagus added another $1.00 and at the end the bill eventually came up to $22.93  

A few days later she purchased the ingredients to duplicate the meal. The grocery bill was close to the restaurant bill but, and here is the whole misconception created, you do not use all ingredients for that one meal only! You use some of the soup and the salad for example. When she calculated exactly what she had used, the cost of the home cooked meal was $11.84.

Quite an amusing twist to the study, but also an eye-opener how we are made to believe that cooking at home is expensive, and therefore it seems better to eat out, this brings me back to the rising cost of supermarket prices. Restaurants and other food offering establishment also need to cover the rise in ingredient prices.

They cut wages by hiring less knowledgeable staff and compromise on quality of food, hard to detect compromises are made to maintain profits and your health pays the price in many cases, whereas you are in control when you cook at home.

Cooking at Home is (in most cases) healthier

The home cooked meal gives you the ability to control, calories, nutrients, quality of ingredients, salt levels, portioning and taste.

Whatever leftovers you have can innovatively be re-used for other dishes when you teach yourself a bit how and your vacuum sealer gives you the ability to keep your food in good condition. A little effort can easily save up to $100.00 per month or more.

Eating out is fine and good for all. It is good to be served and pampered once and a while. Just buying food to eat and out of so-called convenience leads in many cases to obesity, bad health and series of medical issues.

Enjoy a regular trip to your favorite restaurant, but keep in mind that your health is yours, keep it under your control.

By: Marinus Hoogendoorn   

Why making Banh Mi at Home Sounds like a Good Plan

CHEFTALK

Why making Banh Mi at home sounds like a good plan

Reading around lately I noticed a number of pretty contradicting trends in the American fast food businesses. Pizza Hut announced to forgo their plans to introduce ‘skinny’ healthy pizzas. Dominos tried to introduce healthy pizzas earlier, but apparently they also hit a wall of non –acceptance from the public, same reason why Pizza Hut abandoned the idea. 

I noted a couple of articles ago that one of the food trends of 2014 was healthy Gourmet Pizza’s, a trend seemingly growing fast in the US, the move sounded therefore surprising.

A few days later, Vietnamese sandwich outlets were introduced by Yum, owners of Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, among other famous fast food brand names, in an effort to introduce healthier items on the menu.

Why, Pizza Hut’s owners abandon healthy ‘skinny pizzas’ because they are rejected by the public and they believe that healthy Vietnamese sandwiches will be accepted is somewhat puzzling.

Healthy food is a very difficult to overcome issue for fast food companies, health food has perishable ingredients and perishable ingredients are very difficult to control for the staff. Except maybe for a salad here and there

Fast food does not hire chefs at store level, they have ‘workers’ (with due respect for the word) trained to prepare very simple food, that food has to be fool proof or the risk of contamination and more over cross-contamination reaches dangerous levels, something fast food companies cannot afford to happen.

Sales for a number of fast food chains, that entered China, went down by 20% last year due to some food safety scandals. Millions of dollars are needed to restore customer confidence and no fast food company is looking forward to that, let alone the image damage it causes.

No cooking here

A closer look at a fast food kitchen lay-out, may explain why that is so. 

Frozen foods are strictly separated from perishables and processed foods and handled by different staff members. The moment you mix the two, you have a recipe for disaster.

That is the main reason why fast food uses processed food. A pizza for example has a processed sauce, vegetables, processed meat and some processed cheese on top of the dough, when prepared, the raw pizza goes through a 473 F oven and is served, quite difficult to mess that up. 

Ingredients are replaced after a set period of time, so if everybody follows the rules, you can safely eat your pizza. The moment raw meat or fish enters the circle matters become tricky.

With burgers you see the same thing, a worker places a frozen burger patty on a hot plate or in a grilling machine, flips it over after the buzzer beeps, somebody else adds a slice of lettuce and a slice of tomato on top of a halved bun and the ‘burger man’ tops the patty, pack, serve, also difficult to mess it up.

The moment fresh (not frozen) meat has to be cooked with vegetables, all is lost and food safety control is out the window. The solution? When the pizza does not work for the public, choose a complete new concept and the public will welcome the idea, believing it has been invented by people going out of the way to make our life more exiting.

When you ask me, the best way to have a great Vietnamese sandwich (Banh Mi) is to make them yourself. Why? Well here is a good reason:

In the early 1980s, Vietnamese sandwiches were at the center of a food craze in the US, several peddlers ensued in a sort of food war, advertising prices as low $1 or $1.25. Obviously you got eventually what you paid for and the fast food masters know that benchmark.

Banh Mi is made with a light crispy baquette as a base; this kind of baquette is made with a mix of wheat and rice flour resulting in an airy crumb. They are available in Vietnamese and Chinese stores, bakeries or deli’s. The baquette is traditionally spread with (chicken) liver pate, topped with chili pepper, daikon and carrot pickles, protein is an option, roast chicken, grilled pork, chinese char siu pork and tofu are common.

I am pretty sure that you will not to find a traditional Banh Mi in the fast food. Simply because grilled, roast and barbequed meats are not processed meats and therefore very perishable. 

Focal point is the protein and when you have leftover vacuum packed grilled or roasted meat in your freezer you’re half way done.

Crunchy

Here is a recipe :   

1 small Vietnamese baquette

1 serving of grilled, roasted, or barbequed pork, chicken or beef

1 tbsp homemade mayonnaise

4 thin de-seeded cucumber strips

1 tbsp cilantro leaves

4 thin chili pepper slices (Jalapeno works fine)

1 tsp light soya sauce

Daikon and carrot pickle

Slice the baquette lengthwise in half and remove some of the inside (keep that for bread crumbs)

Spread the mayonnaise on the inside and layer all ingredients in the baquette. Top with the soya sauce and voila. Enjoy.

You can replace the mayonnaise with pate, if you like  

What a way to make perfect use of your vacuum packed meat you stored in the freezer.

If you have no homemade vacuum packed meat in your freezer start making some, you can find your vacuum sealer here:

  www.vacupack.com  for USA and www.vacupack.ca for Canada.

A delightful sandwich that will save you money as well, the fast food plans to charge you $7.50. 

By: Marinus Hoogendoorn