Five-Star Food for 400: It All Starts in the Bag

Gerard Bertholon, vice president of Cuisine Solutions, takes it a step further. "Sous vide will replace the line cook," he predicts.

"Hotels are already having a very hard time finding skilled line cooks. With sous vide, you don't need to hire someone to make 300 chickens and worry if they'll all come out the same. The machine does it and the first one comes out exactly like the 300th."

Food safety issues arose early in sous vide's development because of the low cooking temperature.

Botulism concerns made sous vide fade from popularity when it was first introduced in France about 30 years ago. Since then, there have been improvements in the equipment and method.

In this country, the Food and Drug Administration's 2005 Food Code sets out strict procedures, including chilling the bagged products to 34 degrees and storing them for no more than 30 days, to eliminate the possibility of listeria or botulism poisoning.

From a cooking standpoint, CityZen's Ziebold cautions that sous vide has some drawbacks. For one, it can't produce a crispy texture.

"When I cook a guinea hen leg sous vide, I have to crisp the skin for 30 seconds in a hot skillet before I serve it. Sous vide is not the answer for how to cook everything. It's just another technique, like grilling," he says.

And then there's the matter of aroma. The one thing Ziebold says he really misses using sous vide is the irresistible aroma of food as it cooks.

"When you roast a chicken in the oven, the whole kitchen fills with that heavenly aroma. When you open a sous vide bag with chicken, you don't smell anything."