High Tech meets High-end Cuisine

There’s a new movement heating up the culinary scene: high tech cooking, also called molecular gastronomy. For many decades California Cuisine has thrived, with its focus on fresh, local, organic ingredients. Now chefs are focusing on a need for attention to preparation as well, and they are using scientific techniques, tools and exactitude. High-tech is now enabling greater results in high-end cooking.

High-tech chefs use equipment typically found in labs, such as thermal immersion circulators, rotary evaporators, dehydrators and vacuum sealers.

A rotary evaporator, also known as a “rotavap,” is an apparatus used in chemical laboratories for the efficient and gentle removal of solvents from samples by evaporation. One of the more popular brands of rotary evaporators is Buchi, and a peek behind the doors of a growing number of high-end kitchens will reveal a Buchi rotary evaporator. Chefs are using them to preserve flavors in liquids that would usually boil off in the cooking process.

As the focus of high-end cooking moves to sophisticated preparation techniques, chefs are turning to technology to control temperature as well. Equipment used by lab scientists to keep temperatures at a constant state, such as thermal immersion circulators manufactured by Buchi, are now found in more and more high-end commercial kitchens.

A thermal immersion circulator is a device that circulates warm fluid, and keeps the temperature of the fluid constant as opposed to heating the liquid quickly. The thermal immersion circulator is being used more and more by chefs hoping to create a more precise preparation of main courses such as chicken and fish. Chefs package food in a water-tight bag and immerse it in liquid. This process is completed at a lower temperature than cooking the product in an oven or on a stove top. The result is a tender, flavorful main course.

One leader in the field of molecular gastronomy is Dave Arnold, the French Culinary Institute’s director of culinary technology. Regarding the use of thermal immersion circulators, Arnold has said, “"For chefs, especially with fish, a matter of one or two degrees can have a huge effect.”

In the same interview, Arnold continued, “There are many food technologists and food scientists who have had technologies, ideas, procedures and ingredients under their belt for many years, but there has not been a pipeline between them and chefs. What we can do is parse out for chefs what will be good for them, go and find it in the industrial world, and help them apply it. If we can find some new gum or gel that will produce a particular effect in a sauce we'll do it. Anything that controls temperature or humidity or slices, chops, blends or pulps in a new and different way is interesting to us. There are some people who like to say that they don't want technology in the kitchen, that it takes away from the romantic notion of a chef tasting sauces and making adjustments here and there, that they're less in touch with the food, but frankly I don't think that's the case. A great chef can cook an amazing meal with a stick and a fire, all these pieces of technology are just another tool in their toolkit."