Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

The Caribbean · Volume 14, The First Free Kitchen in the Americas

Lambi

Coastal Haiti

Lambi, conch simmered in a creole sauce: a shallow bowl of thick, deep red tomato based sauce studded with pale sliced conch and flecks of green pepper and herb.

Illustration

Time
3 hours

As tradition built it

Lambi

About 3 hours.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

  • conch meat, skinned and filleted thin
  • citrus, for cleaning
  • onion
  • garlic
  • celery
  • bell pepper
  • tomato
  • thyme
  • parsley
  • bay
  • cayenne

Method

  1. Skin and fillet the conch meat thin, then clean thoroughly in citrus, a genuine technical necessity for both odour and tenderising, not a garnish step.
  2. Build a Creole sauce of onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, tomato, thyme, parsley, bay and cayenne.
  3. Simmer the conch in the sauce gently for 2.5 to 3 hours, a genuinely long cook, documented specifically because conch toughens badly if flash-cooked hot and fast rather than given the long, gentle exposure this method provides.

What a modern chef changes

Fixed Sous Vide Temperature Replacing the Long Simmer

Rung 6

Method

  1. Cook the cleaned conch sous vide at a controlled, moderate temperature for an equivalent long duration, removing the guesswork of watching a stovetop pot for three hours and guaranteeing the same tenderness every time, rather than a texture that depends on how closely the pot was watched.
  2. Reduce the Creole sauce separately to a genuinely concentrated base while the conch cooks, then combine the two only at the point of serving, so the sauce's own reduction is not limited by how long the conch itself needs.
Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists