By Patrick Avenell

One of the hottest trends on show at EuroCucina in Milan earlier this year was sous vide, French for ‘in vacuum’, a popular cooking style in restaurants. As the English translation suggests, sous vide is the art of cooking vacuum sealed foodstuffs in water at low, precisely controlled temperatures.

While the best chefs in the Michelen Hat restaurants would use a super-high-end integrated appliance such as the one pictured below, Australian homes can now get a taste of this very different style of gastronomy thanks to Breville’s first benchtop sous vide appliance.

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Called the Breville Sous Vide Supreme (BSV600), this 11-litre machine has displays for temperature and timing, so cooking can be closely monitored, and comes with a removable grill and rack system to enhance even cooking.

Before one even begins the cooking process, however, users must vacuum seal their food of choice in a plastic sleeve. To help retailers sell the Sous Vide Supreme, Breville is bundling it with its Fresh Keeper vacuum sealer (BVP700, RRP $129), so there is no impediment to customers immediately using the machine once they get home.

Breville cooking category manager Sharon Lenzner said the following foods were all well-suited to sous vide cooking: beef, veal, lamb, pork, game, poultry, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruit and custards.

“Sous vide can achieve the kind of edge-to-edge perfection, on a salmon fillet for example, which cannot be replicated with pan frying or oven baking,” Lenzner said.

“The technique is perfect for marinating and adding aromatics to intensify flavours, and breaks down tough connective tissue to gelatin, resulting in succulent, tender and moist meats.

“It can be used for both premium and the increasingly popular secondary cuts of meat.”

The Breville Sous Vide Supreme will be released in October 2012 with a recipe book and the vacuum sealer included for RRP $799.

The new Breville Sous Vide Supreme.

A look inside an integrated KitchenAid sous vide appliance at EuroCucina 2012. 

Breville has stressed to the author of this article that it is pronounced ‘soo veed’, and not ‘soos veet’.