Preparing for a Dinner Party
I am sure that everyone has experienced the stresses and strains associated with hosting a dinner party. First of all you are too busy preparing the meal to truly enjoy the company of your guests and then by the time the food is ready your appetite has gone. All this now can be eliminated with the simple use of a vacuum packing machine a little preparation time the day before. The problem with pre-preparing meals is that they never taste as good if they are reheated but by vacuum packing the food any degradation or evaporation is eliminated.

This is how I now prepare the food for dinner parties. To give a good example how this is achieved I will list a specific meal I prepared.

The menu consisted of a wild boar ragout accompanied with fresh asparagus, new potatoes and peas.

The day before the dinner party. First I washed and cleaned enough new potatoes to go around, then part boiled them for 10 minutes. I then cooled the potatoes in cold running water, drained them and placed them all in a large vacuum bag with a large knob of butter and sea salt. I vacuumed the bag at full pressure and placed the potatoes in the fridge over night.

Then I prepared and cooked the wild boar ragout and allowed it to cool down naturally in a sealed casserole pot with lid. This prevented any excess evaporation of liquid. I then passed the wild boar, pot and all into the fridge overnight. The next morning I individually portioned the boar ragout and vacuum packed each portion in its own vacuum packing bag.

Next I placed six asparagus spears into a vacuum bag, dropped in a knob of chilled butter and sprinkled with sea salt. The bag was then vacuum sealed and placed in the fridge. This I performed for each individual person attending the dinner party.

Now here comes the easy bit. That evening my guest arrived. Twenty minutes before we sat down to eat I placed the vacuum packed wild boar ragout in to a pot of boiling water, with fifteen minutes to go, I placed the vacuum packed asparagus and potatoes in another large pot of boiling water, then five minutes before take-off I micro-waved the peas. I could now relax, talk to my guests and enjoy the meal.

A whole dinner party cooked in twenty minutes!! No sweating over the oven or stove worrying about if the food will be undercooked or overcooked. The beauty of vacuum packing cooked food is that it encapsulated all the goodness without any degradation to food quality. By boiling the pre prepared vacuum packed food in water, this will evenly cook the food with no loss due to evaporation. The asparagus will not fall apart at the spear-ends which usually happens when boiling in water, also the flavor will not be diluted. There is no better way in my mind of cooking asparagus. The potatoes will also taste great as they will be infused with the butter and salt and not diluted by water.

The application for vacuum packing pre-prepared meals is massive, the next time you cook yourself a spaghetti bolognaise try preparing double the quantity and vacuum packing and freezing half. The next time you want your favorite food, just boil in the bag a ready top quality meal in fifteen minutes.

The theory and application of pre-preparing food is not new, a lot of top quality pubs and restaurants do it all the time. Ever wondered how they can cope with such a large menu? And serve it to your table in 20 minutes?