Good way to make poached eggs for a crowd, too. Just throw the bundles in the water after you serve the fruit course. They'll be hot and ready for the main plating..
I was under the impression that 'sous vide' cooking involved very low temps for very long periods of time. A restaurant here does a sous vide chicken dish that cooks for 72 hours. (Not sure if you have to call ahead or they just plan x number of those dishes for every night and when they're gone, they're gone.)
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Sort of... sous-vide cooking basically means that you cook something at that specific temperature. In the case of perfectly poached egg, 62 c or 63 c if you want it a bit firmer. Essentially everything cooks at that temperature, and since we are used to cooking from the outside in, getting it all to that temperature takes some time. So you put it in a vacuum bag, seal it and then let it sit at that temperature. In the case of a poached egg, it's about 60 minutes in 62 c water. (That's why this is sous-vide style, not sous-vide).
The other thing is that safe cooking temperatures aren't what people think they are. They are based on time. But over time, those temperatures can be much lower, because the half life of bacteria stretches. In other words, if normally we need ground beef to be 72 c, but you can also do 3 cm cut of beef at 55 c for 3 hours. A bit confusing.
In the case of the chicken dish, they can make extras that can just sit in that water bath and not worry about them overcooking, it can't, it's at the right temperature. And it's basically in a holding pattern, so if there is a few left, they can still serve it perfectly without any degradation the next day. No degradation at all, since it's bacteria free and can't be overcooked.
A steak restaurant can have all the steaks safely cooked to rare in a sous-vide boiler and then just sear the outside and serve it. Why sear the outside? Just for conventionality, because otherwise even the outside of the steak would appear the perfect colour of rare.