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 Sous-vide cooking 
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MadPick wrote:
I'm starting to think that snozz doesn't use "view unread posts." :bigsmile:


If you search Sous Vide here, you get 6 pages of results...


Mon Oct 30, 2017 8:57 pm
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Pablo wrote:
Will anyone debate the heated food/plastic contact aspect with me? It turns me off, cold.

You vacuum bag it in BPA free bags. There is no unpleasant flavor transport. It is a method used in the very hoity toity restaurants.

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Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:26 pm
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NWGunner wrote:
MadPick wrote:
I'm starting to think that snozz doesn't use "view unread posts." :bigsmile:


If you search Sous Vide here, you get 6 pages of results...

You are both correct.


Tue Oct 31, 2017 7:21 am
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I enjoy it. I found this little video helpful in adding garlic to your meat.

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Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:08 am
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I invented boil in a bag back in the 60s. :)

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Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:40 am
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Well, if we're going to talk about sous-vide, I'll join in, because I actually do it.

I had a SansAire unit, until it died and then I got myself a Joule from our local friends ChefSteps (they're at Pike Place) because it's the most powerful heater on the market, and one of the smallest units. It does require the use of an app on a phone or tablet, but if you don't have a phone that does it then the Amazon Fire tablets that are cheap will run it (but annoyingly slowly, honestly. I just use my phone). Of the apps available, I like theirs the best because they include videos to show you how done the meat will be so that you can pick a temperature with less surprise.

The idea of sous-vide is that you bring your food to a target temperature all the way through. This doesn't sear your food, and it's a wet cooking method since there's no evaporation. The food is in contact with plastic, but this is planned for - no flavour leeches and no chemicals we know aren't good for us leech either.

Let's thing about cooking in an oven for a moment - The oven is at 350, and you put a chicken in there. You want the chicken to hit 160 all the way through and be there for a few minutes in order to pasteurize the meat. But the oven is at 350, and it takes time for heat to go through the meat. That means that firstly, you can't bring something up to a temperature and hold it there, secondly, nearer the outside will be a higher temperature. What use is this sous-vide idea? Well, it turns out that we know the temperatures for various levels of doneness for meat - there are charts, so if we want to take a rib roast and make it medium literally from edge to edge, we can submerge it in a water bath at 140 and just leave it there.

Next, we come across 2 other things - we do actually want a section that's cooked to a higher temperature, and we also like to make more tender meat. Taking each in turn ... the very outside of the meat wants to be at a higher temperature - the good flavours on the outside are from caramelization of sugars and the Maillard reactions which don't place place in damp environments. They're also sensitive to pH but that's not important right now. Seared food also signals that there's no bacteria and other nasties on the outside that could make you sick, because it's been heated to a high temperature. The inside doesn't need this because it's not been exposed to the air and the nasties. So, after we sous-vide cook, we still need to sear somehow. There's a few good methods. Cooking to the internal temperature all the way through first means that when you sear at the end you aren't also trying to cook all the way through, so you can sear REALLY hot and not have to worry about cooking through - just making it look right. a Really hot fry works. A really hot oven works, too (and no need to let it rest afterwards, either because there's no temperature gradient through the meat forcing the juices out). You know that chimney starter for the charcoal grill? Fill that, light it, let the coals get as hot as they're going to get, and then set a grill over it - sear your steaks for 45 seconds to a minute each side on that. Just remember to dry off your meat before you sear it to avoid steaming it and overcooking.

The second section is how tender we want something. Let's think about brisket for a moment. The reason brisket is tough is because it's full of collagen. When we smoke it, we do so for a LONG time at a low temperature. It turns out that collage breaks down above about 140 and turns in to gelatin. It does so faster at higher temperatures. At 140 it's really slow. At 200 it's just quite slow. What does this mean for sous-vide? There's no problem holding a piece of brisket at 140 for 3 days. That'll convert all that collagen into gelatin, and it'll give you a piece of medium brisket that's as tender as steak. But this means for already tender meats you end up turning them to mush if you hold them at temperature for too long. For a steak it's still a roughly 2 hour window, though. Now, you can also produce some safe-to-eat textures that are particularly unappealing, and for some reasona a lot of the sous-vide groupies seem fascinated by them. I'll eat raw fish. I'll eat cooked fish. But then there's that "not quite cooked" texture and I hate that. That's what some people call "perfect". Watch out for those, if you do try it.

So, what do I use sous-vide for? There's a couple of main use cases for me - things I don't want to screw up, and dinner when I don't know what time my wife gets home. For the latter, if I'm not sure when my wife gets home then I can throw a piece of meat into a bag and sous-vide it, and have a 2-ish hour window of the meat being cooked through before it starts to go too tender (and mushy). When my wife gets home I start the sear and chop up a salad and dinner is on the table in 10 minutes. (Bonus hint - salad dressing is 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and a little flavouring. I like to use 1 light oil, 1 olive oil, 1 fancy vinegar, and a pinch of whatever spices I used on the rest of it. Put them in a jar with a lid and shake. If mustard works as a flavour, also add a little of that to the dressing - it'll keep the dressing from splitting for much longer). For things I don't want to screw up - well, for Halloween I made brisket. At the weekend I cooked a chunk of brisket sous-vide at 155 for 36 hours. At that point it had the right texture. On Halloween I rubbed it with a plain dalmation rub, fired up the smoker at 2:30pm set for about 300, put the brisket on at 3pm, and smoked it up to serving temperature (which is faster for already cooked meats since there's no collagen->gelatin type transformations that need to happen, which absorb energy), and brought it in and tented it loosely under foil for half an hour before serving. That got eaten quick by my guests.

You'll note I've talked about meat all the time here. Vegetables use pectin to hold their cells together, rather than collagen like animals. It doesn't start to break down at any reasonable pace until a little over 180 F. At this point you're really not far off boiling or steaming them, so there's relatively little gain unless you're showing off. That said, if you do decide to show off, you can make some amazingly carroty carrots.

If you've read this far, I'll add in a hint - if I'm frying a meat to sear it I'll use some saved rendered fat from that kind of meat to fry in - all meats taste best fried in their own fat. But potatoes taste best fried in duck or goose fat.

I like science. I like cooking, and refer to it as the science of deliciousness. If you have any questions, sous-vide cooking or not, ask away and I'll answer. I have many references to help answer questions, and I'm happy to admit when I don't know something.


Mon Nov 06, 2017 8:52 am
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Awesome post!


Mon Nov 06, 2017 8:56 am
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Quick side note - with that brisket that I made, there was a quart of beef stock in the bag at the end, with a bunch of gelatin in it - really good stock. I made French onion soup with it yesterday. That was not a mistake.


Mon Nov 06, 2017 9:00 am
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Mon Nov 06, 2017 5:48 pm
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Can you expand on this: "I'm frying a meat to sear" "a Really hot fry works."

Do you put seasoning on the outside of a steak before you sous-vide it? After you cook it, before you sear it? I feel like drying off the outside is a little weird, when it's covered in spices and delicious flavors/liquid.


Mon Nov 06, 2017 7:54 pm
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snozzberries wrote:
Can you expand on this: "I'm frying a meat to sear" "a Really hot fry works."

Do you put seasoning on the outside of a steak before you sous-vide it? After you cook it, before you sear it? I feel like drying off the outside is a little weird, when it's covered in spices and delicious flavors/liquid.

Yea season before because the vacuum draws it in.

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Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:03 pm
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How To Get Started With Sous Vide Cooking. The Website I recommended on page 1.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/firs ... cipes.html


Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:12 pm
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NWGunner wrote:
How To Get Started With Sous Vide Cooking. The Website I recommended on page 1.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/firs ... cipes.html

This is the online bible of sous

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Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:22 pm
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snozzberries wrote:
Can you expand on this: "I'm frying a meat to sear" "a Really hot fry works."

Do you put seasoning on the outside of a steak before you sous-vide it? After you cook it, before you sear it? I feel like drying off the outside is a little weird, when it's covered in spices and delicious flavors/liquid.


In my experience... some of each.

Searing takes meat cooked to well done and gives it that brown, crispy, flavourful bits. Here's a couple of pictures - in [img=https://doingsciencetostuff.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/img_1973.jpg]picture 1[/img] on the right you have medium all the way through. On the left you have what comes out of the bag with sous-vide. Neither are great for presentation. The one on the right may have been cooked a little more for some kind of demonstration, but ... neither look like [img=https://fthmb.tqn.com/kl9852RWGcLNcu3UKyvCl1dQHAE=/2500x1660/filters:fill(auto,1)/searing-steaks-2500-589791d55f9b5874ee4a01ff.jpg]picture 2[/img]. That deep-brown crust on it - that's flavour. That's what tells our primitive brains that the outside has been made safe, and there's all sorts of protein and sugars that make an amazingly complex array of flavours in there that scientists genuinely don't know all of what goes on in that reaction. It's called the Maillard reaction. There's a conference about it .. every year. Because we really only understand the beginnings of it. What we do know is what affects it - moist environments, and acidic environments both stop it from happening. What we want is for as much energy as possible to go in to the browning of the outside, and the way to do that is to get rid of as much water from the outside as is easily practical - a few dabs with a paper towel is good enough. The reason is because it takes a lot of energy for water to turn in to steam, and that energy can be better spent getting the meat well above boiling point to sear. It takes about 5 times more energy to turn a gram of water to steam that it is to get it from nearly frozen to nearly boiling.

So, if i'm going to fry up, say some chicken thighs I'll go to my fridge and grab the jar of chicken fat, put a spoonful in the pan and heat that until it's nearly smoking. While that's heating up I'll dry off the chicken, hit it with a little spice, and then lay it in the pan for a couple of minutes each side. Job done.

My jars of various animal fats come from trimmings before cooking, or if you know people that don't like the skin of chicken (like my wife), just pull the skin off, throw it in a pan on simmer and after 20 minutes, flipping occasionally you'll get chicken cracklins and a lot of fat. That's the fat I fry chicken in.

Frying is not the only way to sear - I can also put the meat into a 500 degree oven, or put it on the hot side of the grill outside, or even use the chimney starts for the coals for the grill, just as a small but very hot grill itself. If I do that last one, skip the pepper on the meat - it'll burn before the meat browns, and give a bitter flavour while protecting the meat. Just add it after searing.


As for seasoning, I tend to go with just Santa Maria seasoning for the bag, and then add anything else that you'd think to add as a rub before the sear. I'm not saying that's the perfect way to do it, just that's how I do it. Salt will have its sciency effects during the sous-vide stage, and garlic and onion flavours will get absorbed. Other spices tend to be fat-soluble flavours, so best saved until there's some fat present to move the flavours around. That said, all the moisture you usually lose during a bake o smoke will end up in the bag as a stock, so if you want flavours in the stock it's still worth considering.


Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:59 pm
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WW you have just made yourself a very welcome member of the community! Heads up, you are invited to the annual New Years shoot/Pot Luck.

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