Italian chef Gianfranco Vissani has hit out at sous-vide cooking at low temperature saying he is totally against this type of cooking. “It is neither modern nor adds anything in terms of flavour and consistency of ingredients.”
Vissani is the head chef of Casa Vissani and a famous television personality in Italy. He is the chef of two Michelin Star restaurant Ristorante Vissani since 2007 and has authored many books on gastronomy and cuisine.
In an article he penned on Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Friday 26th May, Vissani wrote that it has become common to speak about low-temperature cooking but this is a trend he is against for various reasons.
Vissani said the advocates of low temperature cooking try to sell this technique as new. “But anyone can guess what such cooking is about. Chefs have been using this technique as a necessity, and not for culinary art, to preserve ingredients which otherwise would need to be cooked fresh.
The technique to cook at low temperature is very common not only in restaurants but also on many of the current television programmes. It involves using a sous-vide machine to vacumn pack ingredients which are then used to slowly cook them in a water-bath at a controlled temperature.
In the past, Vissani says, the food was cooked to the point where it was necessary to preserve the food. Now it is left to cook very long, making the food flavourless and with no consistency.
He argues that this is not the cuisine that has made Italy famous in the world. “These are not the dishes that Italians or foreigners love. I hope that this barbaric gastronomy ends as soon as possible.”
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