Sous Vide cooking Great stuff

Santilli

Santilli

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Jan 27, 2002
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Hi
I've been trying to cook high protein food, with little fat. Only thing is, it's easy to overcook.

Look into this hot water cooking, under vacum seal stuff. I'm playing with it, and so far, it provides very tender meat, and, major margin for error.
 
It sounds like something from an infomercial. :erm:
I would not trust low heat on many meats; there are too often contaminated with pathogens.
 
Mercutio said:
I really don't want to take 40 hours to make a hamburger.
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:-D One really must plan meals far ahead with that method.

I might not even know what state I will be traveling to 40 hours later.
 
It's really not that bad. I sear the meat before finishing it with sous vide. For example pork loin seared in the oven broiled. Pull it out, season it, put it in a plastic bag, and cook for a couple hours at 165.

Same with steak. Came out so tender I couldn't believe it.

The meat cooks through, but doesn't have the extreme variation you get when you try and cook something rare, and end up with the tips well done.

I've been using the beer cooler method.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/...er-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html

For Chicken breasts:
1

Preheat water oven to 140°F. Season chicken generously with salt and pepper. Place in sous-vide bags and seal. Cook in water oven for at least 1 hour 35 minutes and up to 10 hours.

After a couple hours, at 165, they were pretty near perfect.

I do want the temperatures to be at least what they would be if I was cooking the food in the oven. I usually heat the water on the stove to boil, pour it in, then add some hot water from the tap until I'm in the 160-180 range, and let it sit for 2 hours for chicken breasts.

You can even cook stuff over night without major fear of overcooking.

So far, so good.
 
Plastic near food, particularly hot food, should be avoided as it disintegrates and sends carcinogen particles into the food. I'm sure it tastes great, but I would want to eat that too often for too long. I know I'm difficult, but I just have a problem with food that threaten my lifespan.
 
I'd be more concerned about leachables than particles, although you may mean that. Presumably the bags are designed for the purpose and would meet the requirements. Perhaps sensitive individuals should avoid that technique. Frequency of use would be a key factor for most people.
 
Former Microsoft bigshot Nathan Myervhold (no I'm not looking up the spelling) did a huge publicity tour for his vanity cookbook project, Modernist Cuisine, last year. If you want a $500 cookbook to tell you how to boil stuff in a bag and then sear it with a blowtorch, it's pretty interesting and easily steal-able from the usual sorts of places.

For something a little bit more down to earth and genuinely interesting, ORA published "Cooking for Geeks" a couple years ago and I found that quite interesting, even as a person who really doesn't cook any more.
 
Gilbo said:
It's worth mentioning that the photography in that book is gorgeous.
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Of course it is. It's a cookbook. People don't buy those to learn how to cook. They buy them to look at pictures of food.

And then you get to read some doofus celebrity chef's dissertation on why you need to own $3000 worth of special pans and a local source for llama milk and organ meats in order to make half the recipes in the book and then you realize what a waste it is to buy most cookbooks.
 
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Merc: I argue with myself to go with your total skeptic outlook, or to go with my own, WAY worse outlook.;_)
 
I'd rather not eat food cook in a plastic bag. Plastic particles tend to be transfered in the food when heated and are supposed to increase chances to dvelop cancer. Taste might be great, but I'll pass.

I probably do a lot of other things that are bad for my health, but I avoid what I'm aware is unhealthy.
 
CougTek said:
I'd rather not eat food cook in a plastic bag. Plastic particles tend to be transfered in the food when heated and are supposed to increase chances to dvelop cancer.
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According to whom? The temperatures are too low to cause any problems with the plastic melting or breaking down and the plastics used don't have BPA or other chemicals people are worried about. Do you ensure your food has no contact with plastic?
 
Stereodude said:
According to whom? The temperatures are too low to cause any problems with the plastic melting or breaking down and the plastics used don't have BPA or other chemicals people are worried about. Do you ensure your food has no contact with plastic?
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I'd be more concerned about the food not being hot enough to kill bacteria. :puke-r:
 
CougTek said:
I'd rather not eat food cook in a plastic bag. Plastic particles tend to be transfered in the food when heated and are supposed to increase chances to dvelop cancer. Taste might be great, but I'll pass.

I probably do a lot of other things that are bad for my health, but I avoid what I'm aware is unhealthy.
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Same reason I avoid plastic cups and don't store leftover food in plastic containers. The general concept with this type of cooking seems interesting. Maybe a variation where you seal the food in metal foil instead of plastic might work?
 
jtr1962 said:
Same reason I avoid plastic cups and don't store leftover food in plastic containers. The general concept with this type of cooking seems interesting. Maybe a variation where you seal the food in metal foil instead of plastic might work?
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I like plastic. The risks aren't the highest in this life. The effect on mortality is probably less than driving 11,000 miles and flying 37,000 miles a year.
 
LunarMist said:
I like plastic. The risks aren't the highest in this life. The effect on mortality is probably less than driving 11,000 miles and flying 37,000 miles a year.
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You might be right if you look at it that way. Personally, I fly 0 miles and ride as a car passenger for probably under 300 miles annually. Given that, my risk from plastic containers could well dwarf that from traveling.
 
jtr1962 said:
Same reason I avoid plastic cups and don't store leftover food in plastic containers.
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Most food is packaged in plastic. Milk, cereal, bread, chips, crackers, cookies, condiments, soda/pop, water, etc. I can't see how your two small precautions are reducing your exposure to plastic on your food.

The general concept with this type of cooking seems interesting. Maybe a variation where you seal the food in metal foil instead of plastic might work?
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How would you seal the food in metal foil under vacuum and keep the water water out?
 
Stereodude said:
Most food is packaged in plastic. Milk, cereal, bread, chips, crackers, cookies, condiments, soda/pop, water, etc. I can't see how your two small precautions are reducing your exposure to plastic on your food.
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The difference is those foods are not exposed to heated plastic. Chemical reactions are about two times more energetic for every 10°C increase in temperature. Long term for sustainability reasons we should probably go back to glass for liquids and cardboard/wax paper for everything else.

How would you seal the food in metal foil under vacuum and keep the water water out?
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Induction heating? Actually, if you do the joints properly, foil can be essentially waterproof. Maybe I'll try it one day just as proof of concept.
 
jtr1962 said:
The difference is those foods are not exposed to heated plastic. Chemical reactions are about two times more energetic for every 10°C increase in temperature. Long term for sustainability reasons we should probably go back to glass for liquids and cardboard/wax paper for everything else.
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130-150F is hardly "heated" when it comes to the plastics used. Some products see higher temps than that in shipping.

Induction heating? Actually, if you do the joints properly, foil can be essentially waterproof. Maybe I'll try it one day just as proof of concept.
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Why would you need induction heating if you can get it waterproof? The cooking is in a warm to hot water bath. By the way, isn't Aluminum foil bad for food too? I think there's more solid science behind the dangers of cooking acidic food in aluminum than in the dangers of sous vide cooking in plastic.
 
Yes, I've had steak heated to medium rare temps via Sous Vide. We have cooked steak several times like this at work. We have people here with memberships to Restaurant Depot and when they run a sale on the New Zealand Grass fed Ribeye from Silver Fern Farms, we go in and buy boxes of this stuff (usually 10-12lb cuts) and Sous Vide it with salt & pepper rub and then sear it on the grill. The rest I vacuum seal and take home to freeze it for later. Fantastic quality steak with great marbling at $7.99/lb.

We use these bags to vacuum seal the meat and also use it to heat the meat. My coworker uses this Sous Vide machine.
 
How's the steak taste and compare to when they're conventionally cooked? I note from your comment you haven't gone Sous Vide'ing yourself.
 
For me it's more of a tenderness and texture difference than a major flavor difference. The steak becomes perfectly heated to the desired temperature 100% throughout the meat and then a very quick sear at high temperature delivers a nice crust while keeping the majority of juice in. Whereas conventionally cooking the meat on flame or pan you get more of a gradient of temperature through the meat depending on how you might cook it.

I don't own a Sous Vide machine but the one I linked has been on my short list to buy some day. I've not done it myself but I've seen it done a handful of times here where it's pretty simple to do. We've also done Salmon with the Sous Vide and it came out great. I still cook my steaks in a steal pan on the range with salt & pepper then finish with a little butter.
 
I worked on a project about 15+ years ago but it was not meat. :rofl:
 
So I went ahead and bought a vacuum sealer and Sous Vide from Monoprice. They showed up last week. I'm waiting on my plastic container that I'm going to use for my hot water bath to get here from Amazon. I played with the vacuum sealer a bit tonight to make sure it works. I was a little surprised to see the manual basically says not to make more than one seal every 5 minutes. I bought some rolls of the vacuum "bag" material from Amazon. Making a bag from the roll takes two seals, so I guess you can't move too quickly. I'm sure at the beginning it will take me about 5 minutes to get everything ready and into the pouch after the first seal, but down the road a 5 minute wait time will probably become annoying.

And, of course the roll of bag material I bought is too large to to fit in the dispenser compartment in the top. Not a real big deal there. I can cut them with a scissor until the roll fits.
 
I cooked my first Sous Vide item today, a piece of salmon. I roughly followed this article. I went for 120F and cooked it for about 50 minutes while I was mowing. I used some seafood seasoning that was in the cupboard along with some salt and pepper on it. I was not nearly as generous with the salt as they show in the picture. They seem to have encrusted it. In contrast, I sprinkled some salt on it from a shaker.

The end result result was pretty good. Better than how my ex-wife overcooked it. I'll have to buy some more frozen salmon pieces from Costco.
 
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