07 October 2009

Low & Slow

Low and slow seems all the culinary rage these days. BBQ has gained a lot of traction in non-traditional places in the US and elsewhere. I even saw a magazine piece about Jamie Oliver planning barbecue restaurants in the UK. This is the American definition of barbecue (meat cooked slowly with smoke involved) rather than the UK definition of barbecue (which, as far as I can tell, means anything involving a hamburger or a grill). And now I've seen sous vide popping up everywhere. [I'd love to have Nexis just to do useless things such as a hit count by month of "sous vide" over the past year or so.] Drs. Eades are even bringing to market a home appliance, which looks interesting. There's a definite geeky appeal to the precision of sous vide cookery. I've considered getting a clifton setup if for no other reason than to precisely cook eggs (which would not actually be sous vide). I would endlessly do 64C, 65C, 66C, 63C, 67C eggs until my wife made me stop. It would be worth a good dozen or so blog posts. At this point, though, if I ponied up for a new piece of slow-cooking kit, I'd still have to go with a smoker.

2 comments:

JJ said...

And, indeed, your wife would make you stop.

JustJoeP said...

It's not JUST the UK who uses "BBQ" as a synonym for "Grilled". Add to that China, Taiwan, SW France, Italy, Romania, Eastern Austria, Australia... all places where my colleagues have referred to grilling as "BBQ" regardless of heat input quantity, duration of exposure, rotisserie or stationary, basted or non-basted, skewered or pulled or shredded or plain old stabbed & cut.