Sous Vide Cooking

I just bought a Sous Vide machine and decided to post some details, since I never knew what this was until I happened upon it.



“Sous vide” is French for “under vacuum.” This is big in restaurants, where they use commercial versions of the technology to cook foods to the perfect temperature, and to prepare in advance for the dinner rush.

A Sous Vide machine is nothing more than an immersion heater with a circulating fan to ensure an even water temperature throughout the container. All of these are wi-fi enabled to control through your Smart Phone. Some include manual controls so you do not have to use your phone, while some have no external controls or indicators at all, and require use of an app both to operate and to monitor.

You can buy specialty containers...


...or use any sauce pan or stock pot. Temperatures rarely get as high as 200°, so plastic containers may be used.

Food is put into a vacuum seal bag (or a Ziploc with as much air evacuated as possible) and cooked in warm-to-hot water. The water is heated to the temperature specified in the recipe, the bag is placed in the water, and cooks as long as the recipe requires. A key issue is to ensure that too much water does not evaporate. Some folks put ping-pong balls on top of the water to reduce evaporation. I purchased a plastic stock-pot lid with a cut-out for the heater.

There are many benefits to this method of cooking:

-Food cooks unattended

-You can put the container anywhere, just like a Crock Pot. It does not take up a burner on your stove.

-Food never overcooks…the temperature of the water is the “done temperature.”
--Your rare or medium steak is cooked to perfection throughout and can be held at that degree of doneness. Even the skinny ends do not get overcooked.

-Flavors can develop over these longer cooking times

-You can cook chicken to a melt-in-your mouth 140°, because holding foods at this temp for an extended period of time kills bacteria.


Interesting, huh? But the author of this article hedges his bets and cooks his chicken at 145°.
The different temps yield different textures.

-You can hold the food ready-to-serve for hours without overcooking it…with some exception.
--Shrimp is one of those food that can only be held about 30 minutes after it is cooked, or it will degrade into mush. But sous vide also yields perfectly cooked shrimp.
--Some veggies also have a relatively “short” hold time

There are disadvantages as well:

-Food takes a longer time to cook this way
--Steaks take an hour to cook, but can generally be held up to 4 hours

-You have to sear meats to add flavor; otherwise, they almost taste like they were boiled or microwaved
--Many feel that the brief sear does not add the depth of flavor that regular cooking methods do.
--The brief sear does not impart as thick a crust as traditional cooking methods.
--You can sear in a pan or on a charcoal grill, or drop some bucks to purchase restaurant-style butane torches made for this purpose.

-One disadvantage I noticed for my first full Sous Vide meal (in process) is that the chicken cooks at 140° but can not be held while I did the sides because I have to turn up the heat for corn on the cob, which cooks for 30 minutes at 180°. (I’m also making some carrots for a future meal, and those cook for a full hour at 180°.) If I really got into this and/or used it to cook for a family or for a crowd, I would be tempted to purchase a second machine. As it is, I’ll hold the chicken dish at temperature in a saucepan on the stove, monitoring the temp with a thermometer. I can hold it for a few hours if required without cooking it further, and the corn will only take 30 minutes.

I’ll post details after I’ve had my first sous vide meal (chicken breast, corn-on-the-cob, asparagus.)

 

Interesting. It probably acts as a Crock Pot with surround heating elements. That link says to get an immersion heater if you need accuracy with a couple of degrees, but when food cooks for 30 minutes or longer, I can't see accuracy being all that crucial. It might get cold spots around the food before it warms back up.

I'm curious as to how well I'm going to like this. Honestly, I can't recall what led me down this path in the first place. I've been looking at these things for a couple of years, waiting for the quality to stabiliuze. Maybe just a different way to cook for me to experience. I really want to try a steak, although right now I have a cooked 145' chicken breast waiting for the water to get hot enough to start my corn-on-the-cob...glad I bought the 1,000 watt model. Next time I'll put the pot on the stove and give it a gas-assist.

I bought some sherry vinegar (tough to find out here in the sticks) so I can make a sous vide shrimp recipe I saw that looked good. Sous vide is supposed to be The Best Way to cook shrimp as well as scallops. So a seafood dinner is next, after the steak. Or maybe with it.

I know that I'll at least get use out of it to reheat the pre-made ravioli I freeze...that may expand into a convenient way of reheating other frozen meals as well.

I'm cooking chicken, carrots, corn-on-the-cob (in the husk) and asparagus tonight so I can experience a variety of stuff.

It better taste good.

 

Man, this is GOOD!!

Here are the packets ready to go in the water as their turn arrives:



Clockwise from the bottom:
-Boneless skinless chicken breast with seasonings and lemon slices (145° for 1 1/2 hours, then held for 1 1/2 hours.)
-Corn on the cob, husk on, with pads of Ethiopian Clarified Butter (183° for 30 minutes.)
-Baby carrots with butter, sugar, parsley and salt. To be finished in a cast iron pan to make a glaze (183° for 1 hour.)
-Asparagus with black pepper, butter, lemon juice and lemon zest (180° for 10 minutes.)

I made the carrots for a future meal. They can stay in the bag, cooked, for up to 7 days before finishing in a pan.

Everything really is cooked to perfection.

The chicken was held for over 1 1/2 hours after it was ready (could have held for another hour), and it is as moist and as tender as though it had just been perfectly poached...except the flavors and juices are sealed in the vacuum bag, undiluted. I seared it for 2 minutes on each side in ghee and bacon fat. The recommendation is to use skin-on, bone-in breasts. If that's better than what I just made with skinless/boneless, I can't wait to try it.

The corn is hard to describe. It is extremely firm, yet fully cooked. The recipe said to add more butter when served (I didn't), but it was OK as is. The flavors of that Ethiopian butter came through the husk, although it could have used more before eating. But I ate the entire ear.

The asparagus was the only disappointment, but that's because I got rushed and under-cooked it. That's a learning curve thing. This was the only recipe that had a narrow cooking window, dependent upon how thick/thin the stalks are. And I'm not sure I prefer this method to steaming it (my normal method of cooking it) and then adding the butter and seasonings, rather than cooking the asparagus in melted butter.

Once I get the timing of different dishes at different temps down (or only cook dishes that are at the same temp), this is a very easy way to cook. Each seasoned dish goes in a vacuum bag and sits in the fridge until each gets added to the water in its turn. There are no pots or pans to clean up.

My main issues on this maiden voyage were due to me making an entire meal with every dish being sous vide:

-The logistics of having the chicken finished at one temp before the corn got started at another temp (I held the chicken in another pot of water on the stove with a thermometer.)
-Getting the water temp up to 183° (for the corn) from 145° (after the chicken was done.) I should have waited until it got hot before putting the corn & carrots in it. I put the pot on the stove and gave it an assist. Then it held temp fine.

I'll play with the thing tomorrow to see if it can get up to 183° on its own. I had put the carrots and the corn in the water before increasing the heat, and it is the largest stock pot I own. That all probably hindered performance...even with the 1,000 watt model I bought instead of the 750 watt.

I'll absolutely be using this again. Steak, shrimp and scallops are next on my list. And I'll be making chicken and corn again as well. Making an entire meal would really work better with 2 of these in separate pots.

 

It was somewhat complicated because I did an entire meal (at different temps) in it. Just doing a main course or side dishes would not have been such a goat rodeo. I think doing part of a meal is the norm.

I just searched on "entire meal sous vide."
There are several recommendations:

#1: Do what I did and hold the first dish in a separate pot and monitor the temp. It's not really that hard, and foods can be held for hours with no impact on quality, but cooking an entire meal is a long affair.
#2: Precook all foods, chill each in an ice bath when done to stop the cooking, put in the fridge, then reheat at the temp required by the lowest temp food.
#3: Cook it all in one pouch using some special method I've yet to locate. Apparently this is the Holy Sous Vide Grail for folks to find some way of doing a one pouch meal in a manner that results in something edible with the fewest compromises. Lots of comments out there regarding efforts. The search continues.

Shrimp, scallops, steak and even chicken are all done within a narrow temp range. It's the high temp of veggies (180°+) that screws things up.

Makes me wonder why this issue has not been leveraged to sell folks on a second machine. We'll see how this unfolds.

 

I got up this morning and played around with this.

The heater takes the water up to 150' pretty quickly. I then turned it up to 180' and it did the same thing as last night: got up to the low 170s then stalled, retreated, inched higher, retreated.

I let the water cool down to 150', covered the pot with aluminum foil, and tried again. It only took 10 minutes to get up to 180' with no stalling.

I think this is because the 12 qt stockpot has such a large surface area that at those temps, the heat is given up faster than the heater can keep up. I guess this is one of the reasons the specialty containers all have lids (with evaporation being the other reason.)

I had already ordered a universal 10 1/2" immersion heater lid, should arrive tomorrow.

 

I cooked my first sous vide steak tonight. It was prime-rib tender.

1 1/2" thick ribeye cooked to 131°. Covered both sides with sliced shallots, then added a big sprig of rosemary to each side before I vacuum sealed it.

Cooks in an hour, can be held for an additional 3 hours (4 hours total) and it won't cook beyond 131°. I let it go for 2 hours total. I pulled it out and stuck an insta-read thermometer into the thickest part, and it was 131° on the dot. Then I finished it off on a screaming hot charcoal grill for 30 seconds per side, turning in between, doing each side twice (1 minute total each) even as the grill flamed up.

This was so very tender. I wonder if letting it sit in the water even longer would make it even more tender. The flavor is different than if I had grilled the thing the entire time. The shallots and rosemary helped add flavor to this steak that was essentially cooked in a hot water bath. The char I got from finishing on the grill was not as thick or developed as 100% grilling (or pan-frying) yields. But the upside is the steak is always cooked to perfection all the way through, regardless of how thin or narrow it may be in spots. It's also way more tender than you can get with regular cooking methods, with no loss of juices. And you cannot over-cook (although holding for over 4 hours will start to break down the fibers.)

I let this cook for 1 1/2 hours unattended (during which time I was able to prep a week's worth of salad ingredients), and when it was done I then started the charcoal and the sides, knowing I still had a 2 1/2 hour holding time where the steak would still be done perfectly and would not cook further.

Much of what I've read says this method is best for thick steaks, because searing a thinner steak after it's reached "done" temps will overcook it. I might still play with this, intentionally under-cooking a NY Strip to offset the searing process.

Next are gonna be shrimp and scallops.

 

Tonight was sous vide Spanish Shrimp, cooked for 15 minutes at 135°.


This really is an interesting way to cook. Just like the chicken and the steak, the shrimp were cooked to texture-perfection. Cooking shrimp this way doesn't require the added step of charring on a grill or pan, because shrimp is often served steamed or boiled.

The one thing I've noticed so far is that serving food in the 130°-140° range is cooler than I'm used to with traditional cooking methods, where a high heat is applied to the surface of the food to conduct to the center. That makes the outside of the food hotter than the internal "done" temperature, especially chicken done to the traditional 165°. With chicken and steak the cooler temp is less noticeable because of the final "sear" that gets applied in a hot pan or grill. The shrimp is served right out of the sous vide bag.

Of course, this leads me down a different rabbit hole. Serious Eats makes the case for serving food at room temperature, because according to studies, salty, bitter, sweet, and sour stimuli were easiest to detect in foods within a relatively balmy range from 68 to 86°F—colloquially known as room temperature. They make an exception for fatty meats because the fat needs to be liquefied for us to enjoy eating it. Serious Eats is a big advocate of sous vide cooking (I get most of my recipes and advice there.) I wonder if that advocacy and this article about rethinking serving temps are connected.

 

I've cooked a lot of stuff with this since my last post:
-Chicken
-Shrimp
-Steaks
-Scallops

I did shrimp with this last night and am doing another chicken breast tonight. I've not done any fish yet.

I've learned that to do an entire meal (veggies at 180' and meats at lower temps), you cook the high temp stuff first and (since it can be held without overcooking) you just keep it in the water as you cook the meats at the lower temps. I have not done any entire meal sous vide since my maiden voyage. I've also learned that you start with hot tap water so you don't waste time and energy using the machine the heat up a container of cold water (duh.) I had been using a stock pot and preheating the water on the stove, but [obviously] starting with hot tap water is way faster (duh, again.)

This is not really an every day way of cooking for me (I need to research other recipes), but it is handy when you're making a meal and you don't have to time the main course and the sides to finish at the same time, because sous vide stuff can be held for hours after it is ready and it will not overcook (except for shrimp.) That really helps if you're doing a big meal (as I did on New Year's Eve.) And everything really does come out perfect....every--single--time. There is no messing up with this.

 

Tonight I made sous vide pork chops for the first time. Like everything else I've cooked this way, they were cooked to perfection and were very tender...sitting in a 140' water bath for over an hour will do that for you. They had marinated for 4 hours in a brine of water, kosher salt, peppercorns, smashed garlic cloves and bay leaves. I should have just had them like that rather than make the recipe's sauce of stone ground mustard and honey. It was OK but tasted a little weird with the flavor imparted by the brine. I've done a pork chop sauce before with butter, honey and pecans that would likely go better on it.

I have a rack of ribs in the freezer that I'm thinking of doing. Recipes call for them to cook in the hot water for 24-48 hours. I've read of people doing pork butts that take several days to cook. They put the butt in a vacuum seal bag, put it in a cooler, fill the cooler up with water of the right temp, and wrap towels around the cooler so the water does not cool off too fast. They monitor the temp with a kitchen thermometer and top off with hot water as required. Some have rigged a sous vide cooker in there to maintain temp, but it would really stress a 750w-1,000w heater to maintain that volume of heated water for so long. I'm hoping that 2 solid days to do ribs won't ruin the thing.

I can't decide whether to wait for good weather so I can finish them off in the smoker, or to do them now and finish them in the oven...it's gonna be in the 50s next week. I know they would be fall-off-the-bone tender. There's really no way to dry food out cooking with this method.

 

Okay. Now sous vide is getting sous serious.

When I first got into this I did a bunch of research on the web as to cooking methods, and I took a lot of notes. I found that Serious Eats has a lot of information on cooking a variety of foods this way, with extensive articles and recipes for each. So that's been my go-to resource.

I've since found a website named Stefan's Gourmet Blog. Stefan also does some sous vide cooking, so I signed up to get notifications when he posts an article. Stefan just posted an article on his experiments with sous vide chicken breast.

To make a long story short, Stefan recommends cooking chicken breast at 140° for a minimum of 53 minutes to ensure thorough pasteurization. His current experiment involves cooking the chicken and then holding it at temp for various periods of time and testing the quality at each interval (one of the benefits of sous vide cooking is the long hold times without overcooking.) His minimum cooking time is one hour, and he says he can see a slight quality change after the chicken is held for only 20 minutes beyond that. But when I look at other recipes he's done, he's cooked that chicken breast for only 45 minutes, not the 53 minute minimum and certainly not an hour. So there's some confusion there.

My real problem is the method I've been using from Serious Eats. It says to cook the chicken for a minimum of an hour and a half, and to hold them for up to 4 hours!!!

So now I got recommended cooking/holding times ranging from 45 minutes to 4 hours. The concern is less one of quality than it is one of food safety. You can pasteurize foods at under 165° if you hold them long enough at each specific temperature. But there is no way of testing for complete pasteurization outside of a lab (except by cooking to 165°)

Stefan is pretty good about responding to comments, so I posted one in this recent article. I'm curious what he's got to say.

The quality of chicken breasts is incredible when cooked at 145° for 90 minutes. I can't imagine what it would be cooked for only 45 minutes...if it's really safe to do so.

 

I did chicken legs tonight using this method. There were "weirder" than chicken breasts.

I cooked them at 145° for 1 hour 45 minutes. Then I threw them on the grill for a quick sear and a schmear of bbq sauce.

Dark meat turns out a lot different than white meat cooked this way. You almost think it's not cooked because it's still red and it has not gotten hot enough for the meat to fully "set up." Your immediate reaction is "It's raw!" because it's such a different texture than dark meat cooked via normal methods...but it's not. It's not tough and sinewy...it's just further away from "normal" than white meat is when cooked this way. My reaction to sous vide white meat is "It's so good, I'll never again eat chicken breast cooked any other way" Tonight's initial reaction to dark meat cooked this way is "I doubt that I'll try this again." It is flavorful, but I'm not certain I like the texture.

I do have options to try. Sous vide recipes for beef, poultry and fish have a range of temperatures and times (lower temps cook longer in order to completely pasteurize the food.) Beef variations are mostly for levels of doneness (rare/medium/well done), while chicken and fish variations yield different textures.

White chicken meat can be cooked to yield these results:

• Tender and juicy for cold chicken salad
• Very soft and juicy, served hot
• Juicy, tender, and slightly stringy, served hot
• Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy, served hot

Shrimp can be cooked to yield these results:

• Translucent and semi-raw with a soft, buttery texture.
• Nearly opaque and very tender with a hint of firmness.
• Barely opaque, moist, juicy, and tender.
• Traditional poached texture with good bounce and a snappy, juicy bite.

I've not found an equivalent list of options for dark chicken meat. I did find a chicken leg recipe that says to cook them at 158° for an hour, which gets them closer to the 165° internal temp of "normal" methods. Maybe I'll give this another go sometime using those parameters.

 

So I went on Serious Eats and found an equivalent list of options for dark chicken meat along with cooking temps and times:

Very juicy but quite firm, with a few tougher spots--150°F for 1 to 4 hours
Very juicy and completely tender--165°F for 1 to 4 hours
Moderately juicy, pull-off-the-bone tender--165°F for 4 to 8 hours

I also found this comment in that article:

Well, I wouldn't say they were all that tough and chewy, but they sure weren't firm. And it didn't make me sick. The bacteria were killed...now we're simply talking about texture.

I had purchased a 4 pak of legs and only had room in the container last night to cook 2 of them (they are HUGE.) I've got the other 2 cooking now @ 165°F for 2 hours. Hopefully, these will be better.