The International Sous Vide Association (ISVA) held its inaugural Sous Vide Summit this past July at the Hilton Wilmington/Christiana in Delaware. It was a very successful event full of education, entertainment and, as you can imagine, plenty of food! Many of the top experts in the sous vide world were at this event providing insightful information and yummy sous vide dishes. February of this year I was named the Executive Chef of this organization by co-founders Mike LaCharite & Jason Logsdon, so as you can imagine my hands were pretty full that entire weekend.

One our generous sponsors, Allen Brothers Steaks, provided us with over 300 pounds of meat, which included waygu brisket, flank steak and burgers and chicken. Shucks Maine Lobster supplied us with an enormous amount of lobster, all to be cooked via the sous vide method. We also enjoyed some outstanding food and culinary education from CREA & Cuisine solutions during the summit. Other speakers/chefs included Meathead Goldwyn, Paul Arguin and Chris Taylor, authors of The New Pie, Jason Logsdon of Amazing Food Made Easy, Chef Eric Villegas from VacMaster, Elizabeth Bennett Kearney & Leo Reed of Vesta Precision, David Pietranczyk of Polyscience, Cole Wagoner from Anova, Lisa Marie Todd from An Appetizing Life, myself, and many others.

The Friday night reception kicked off with chefs AJ Schaller & Gerard Bertholon from CREA/Cuisine Solutions delivering the keynote to the attendees. Vacmaster also performed a cool cheese-making demo. The reception meal was wonderful as well. I prepared a Chilean Chacarrero sandwich featuring some amazing wagyu flank steak from the Allen Brothers. Elizabeth from Vesta Precision prepared this heavenly bacon peach bourbon glazed wagyu brisket served on cambazola cheese. Chef Eric Villegas showcased his delicious line of spices, Seared, with grilled wagyu burgers. Chefs David Pietranczyk from Polyscience & A.J. Schaller from CREA teamed up to prepare sous vide gochujang chicken wings, which were a big hit. Meathead Goldwyn had it going outside with 3 chimney grills and wagyu NY strip steaks. My good friend Jason Logsdon had us covered at the bar with his amazing alcohol infusions, with the highlights being his apple pie bourbon old fashioned and blackberry basil mojito. Overall, it was a fun & tasty evening and everyone enjoyed the food.

The Saturday keynote was delivered by Scott Heimendinger, founder of “Seattle Food Geek” and technical director of Modernist Cuisine. The sessions then kicked off with presentations by Christina Peters, Cole Wagoner, David Pietranczyk, and Claire Lower. I must admit I missed some of these presentations because I was in the kitchen preparing food, but the guests seemed very happy with the culinary education they were being provided with. Then the CREA team blew us all away with the next level of sous vide cooking, the cryoconcentration technique. They presented tomato trimming cryoconcentration with sous vide ricotta and compressed cucumber. It was very delicious, educational, and I look forward to learning more about this technique in the future.

I was among the many speakers at the event, and I also performed a demo titled Cooking Wild: Sous vide for game meats. I prepared goose breast and kangaroo loin. I’m a nervous public speaker so I wasn’t looking forward to this part of the conference. But I know the subject well and I gave it my best shot and the crowd showed me their approval which relaxed me a bit. I had a few hiccups, but it was a lot of fun. Afterwards the entire room cleared out to try the game meats. Both turned out really good, but the kangaroo was the big hit with many first timers. I also had a chance to engage with the folks who came out to support this fun event. I even got to do a book signing for Mastering the Art of Sous Vide Cooking. At the dinner reception, CREA/Cuisine Solutions once again impressed everyone with their innovative sous vide cuisine. I mean folks really raved about the food.

The final day of the summit featured “Chef Boot Camp” which was a extended professionally focused session for chefs to further their sous vide skills. Chefs A.J Schaller and David Pietranczyk walked us through the dos and dont’s when it comes to sous vide safety and the proper ways to utilize the technology. I really learned quite a few new things during this session from two experts in the field. The afternoon saw presentations by Eric Eisenbud of Eating with Chef Eric, Kevin Holmes Liddell, Lisa Marie Todd, Lennis Perez, Paul Eggerman, and Jason Logsdon. Closing remarks by Mike LaCharite & Jason Logsdon bought this fabulous weekend to an end.

This was such an amazing event and I am humbled to have been part of its success. ISVA is also a proud supporter of the CROP Foundation. Here is more great news … we just announced that the Sous Vide Summit 2020 will be held at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, CA! Please subscribe to this blog and I’ll keep you updated on any new developments. Once again I want to give huge thanks to all of our sponsors CREA, Cuisine Solutions, Allen Brothers Steaks, Vacmaster, Amazing Foods Made Easy, Breville/Polyscience, Top Mark Events, Vesta Precision, Stargazer Cast Iron, FoodSaver, and everyone else who pitched in helping us create such a great event. Thank you to all of the guests in attendance, which gave proof that the level of interest in sous vide cooking is rapidly growing in popularity. See you next year! Scroll down for more pics.

Purchase advanced tickets for Sous Vide Summit 2020 HERE.

Purchase my cookbook “Mastering the Art of Sous Vide Cooking”

 

 

 

 

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