Consumer perception of a non-traditional market on sous-vide dishes

Current lifestyle, which seeks to optimize time, has led the industry to offer elaborated meals with minimal consumer involvement. The industry has been forced to offer new alternatives to produce novel products. One technique already known in the realm of haute cuisine and restaurants is sous vide cooking. Although there are ready-to-heat products prepared with sous vide cooking in some markets, they have not been disseminated worldwide. In this paper the perception of Uruguayan consumers of a product with sous vide cooking was explored. Six Focus Groups (n = 40) were used to explore the generic knowledge of the participants on the different convenience foods and the objective product (sous vide cooking), complemented by the projective technique of completing text in a figure. A relative ignorance of the cooking technique by the consumer - and therefore of its advantages - was determined, with a negative opinion towards keeping/containing food in a bag and a distrust in terms of/distrust regarding the possible use of additives. The sous vide product was associated with a superior or premium quality. In this study, useful information was obtained regarding the introduction of a sous vide cooking product into the market.