Food, Home & Lifestyle

Sous Vide Cooking: Carrots, Asparagus, and Fennel

Lesson time 10:59 min

Chef Keller shows you how to cook three kinds of vegetables using sous vide cooking methods, showcasing different preparation techniques.

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Topics include: Sous Vide Cooking: Carrots, Asparagus, and Fennel

Thomas Keller

Teaches Cooking Techniques III: Seafood, Sous Vide, and Desserts

Chef Thomas Keller’s third MasterClass is devoted to preparing seafood, sous vide cooking, and making classic desserts.

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - We're going to do some vegetable cookery. I have three different vegetables here. We have an oblique cut carrot. And if you remember, an oblique cut is cut on angles. And in our bag of carrots here, we have a little bit of butter. We tossed it with sugar and a little bit of salt. We're going to go ahead and put that in our water bath. Now we have it at 85 degrees. We find that 85 degrees is the perfect temperature for all vegetables. We're not talking about time, I'm talking about temperature here. So 85 degrees Celsius is the perfect temperature for all vegetables. If it's less than 83 degrees, the fiber just won't break down. You could have it in an immersion circulator at 82, 83 degrees from here until doomsday, and it's still going to be firm. We have some fennel bulb here, which we're going to glaze. In here, we have a little bit of olive oil. We have a piece of garlic, and a small piece of thyme. Now when you're cooking with aromatics, you don't have to use as much. Because it's in an enclosed bag, the aromatics are intensified. So the thyme and the garlic will be intensified in here. If we were cooking this conventionally, we may use two or three sprigs of thyme, two or three cloves of garlic. But because we're in an enclosed environment, the intensification of those two flavors will be much more present in our finished vegetables, our finished fennel. We're going to put those in. Here I have some white asparagus. White asparagus is something we find in the springtime. We love it, but it does have a little bitterness to it. So in here, we have our white asparagus that you can see. And again, we have liquid in here. So there is no air in here, although it appears to be. Certainly, the liquid is taking up space. But there is still no air in it, so it will submerge all the way. In here, we have some milk, which pulls a little bit of the bitterness out of the asparagus, as well as adds a little bit of sweetness to it, a little bit of salt, and a little bit of sugar. We can put those right in here as well. So you can see we can cook all of our vegetables in the same temperature in the same water bath. Now how long will they cook? Each vegetable is a little different. The carrot and the asparagus are made up of a different cell structure, so the carrots are very dense, where the asparagus is very porous. The fennel is dense, but has a lot of space between each leaf. So each one will take a different amount of time. I want to direct you to our workbook, where there's a lot of information about time on different ingredients, as well as temperatures. Here we have our three vegetables, which we've cooked in our water bath. These two were about 45 minutes, and this one was out just slightly longer. I've reheated these, and this I'm starting out cold. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and glaze my carrots, caramelize my fennel. And my asparagus I'm just going to drain, and we can serve with a little ...

About the Instructor

In his third MasterClass, Chef Thomas Keller focuses on preparing fresh seafood like lobster and salmon, making classic desserts such as apple pie and lemon tart, and showing how sous vide cooking can be done at home to enhance flavor and texture. Whether you’re a beginning or advanced cook, you’ll learn the techniques and principles that will give you the understanding and skills to get the most delicious results.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Thomas Keller

Chef Thomas Keller’s third MasterClass is devoted to preparing seafood, sous vide cooking, and making classic desserts.

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