Sous-Vide is generally used for heating things at lower temperatures - kind of the whole point is that you can set the temperature so you never have to worry about overcooking. The SousVide Supreme is accurate to 1 degree F, and that’s pretty much what I’ve seen (set it to 155, and it tends to range from 154.7 to 155.3, for example.)
So yeah, it’s not the thing to use for high temperature and pressure.
So can you overcook goods in this thing?
That looks awesome. I cook as a hobby and I have problems with meats sometimes not cooking all the way through. It’s really a pain sometimes to put a piece of pork or steak into the oven and have it come out half raw.
What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever cooked in that thing and how long did it take?
Welllll, I’m gonna try it! Of course, using my lower-cost technique, I’ll throw some chicken in a Zip-Loc bag and cook it in hot water. So there, you fancy-schmancy gourmet chefs who can use french words!
I’ve got a Foodsaver. Can I freeze my juices/marinade and then vacuum it/them as a solid along with the meat/veggies?
From what I’ve read in the messages, it seems like it does the work of a slowcooker, which you can buy for less than $100.00. Couldn’t you get the same results from cooking the chicken in a slow cooker set on low for 7-8 hours?
No. Because the water bath is at a precise temperature, the food can’t go above that temperature.
You do risk affecting the texture if you leave things in too long; for example, tender pieces of meat can get overly mushy if you were to try to cook for a long time beyond the recommended time.
Yeah, as long as you leave the meat in for the right amount of time (there’s a chart that comes with it, or there’s plenty of Internet resources), you will not end up with raw meat. But kudos for you for that to be your problem - far too often people overcook food because they’re terrified of undercooking.
Biggest thing? Hmmm, the issue isn’t so much “big” as “thick.” A one-inch-thick steak takes 1 hour, for example, whereas a two-inch-thick steak takes 4. As far as thickness, I’d say the filets we made the first day were the thickest, at close to 2.5".
Biggest overall? Probably the pork ribs - one rack, divided into two pouches. I cooked those suckers for 58 hours, and they were great!
I’ve read of people doing whole tenderloins, though. There’s a video of it here.
Yup. That’s the recommended way if you don’t have $2500 to drop on a chamber vacuum sealer.
You can definitely approximate sous-viding that way; the problem is that most slow cookers don’t maintain the precise heat to the degree that the sous vider does.
See above. You can definitely do similar things with a slow cooker, but they won’t give you the fine control that a true sous-vide setup will, nor do they maintain the temperature as well. You’ll have to be checking the temp a lot, and making minor adjustments. There’s a lot of difference between a steak cooked at 138 degrees and one at 143, for example, and you’re going to have trouble maintaining that with a crockpot.
that is sort of the cheat I use =) I make up marinades and use a cheap plastic ice cube tray and pop the marinade cubes out and store them in the freezer in a zippy bag. When it is time to marinate something, I just pop a cube into the zippy bag with the meat and toss it in the fridge. Sometimes I pop a marinade cube in a zippy bag with the meat and put them both in the freezer, so that when it is time to defrost, they defrost together. [ I tend to buy the bulk packs of chicken thighs and brine them before separating them into portions and zippy bagging them and freezing them. Some I premarinade and some I leave plain.]
You said you’ve cooked eggs in it - how do you do that since they’re liquid?
In the shell.
One very famous use of sous-vide is the 64 degree (C) egg. The idea is that at that temperature, the yolk gets to the perfect level of doneness - warm all the way through, slightly thick, but still liquid - while the whites are just done enough to be opaque and custard-like.
It’s impossible to do that with standard cooking methods, because the whites will get more done before the yolk reaches that perfect temperature.
We did those once, and they were… different. I’m going to have to try them again, because I remember thinking that that the whites seemed a little too raw to me. They were definitely cooked - white all the way through - but very, very soft.
I ate them on a day that I later came down with a really bad stomach virus, so I’m sure that’s clouded my thinking. People really rave about sous-vide eggs, so I need to revisit them.
Sounds like they are done ‘coddled’ - one of my favorite ways to have my eggs.
I like to do them in a lidded ramekin - bed of spinach with bacon crumbles, crack the egg into the nest, sprinkle on some herbs and grated parmesan. Cover and bake very gently in a water bath.
Coddled is the closest traditional cooking method to the 64 degree eggs, but it’s not quite the same. It’s all about the white with the sous-vide - it’s just different than anything I’ve had before.
Here’s a description of sous-vide eggs, with an interesting picture about a third of the way down of eggs cooked at different temperatures. If my memory is correct, mine looked more like the 63.3 degree picture than the 64.4 degree one.
Wow. That is great. Those sorts of things used to be huge and cost thousands of dollars.
I have been cooking steaks in the oven at 275 for about 25 minutes before searing them to get that pink to the edges thing going.
FYI, there’s a new review on the SousVide Supreme in the Huffington Post.
So, I’m confused by this “never overcooked” thing. Could you put something in before work and eat it 8-9 hours later? Woudl it just disintegrate? Or would it be a mass of bacteria by then?
As far as disintegration and how long you can cook things, it depends on the cut of meat. Tender cuts - chicken breasts, tenderloin, etc - will have texture problems if overcooked. I don’t know if they’ll disintegrate per se, but everything I read says that you want to avoid overcooking tender meat.
More robust cuts of meat, on the other hand, you can easily let go for 8-9 hours or more. I did pork ribs for 58 hours, and they were incredible.
Bacteria is not an issue. I was very afraid at first, when I realized I was keeping meat right smack in the “danger zone” for hours at a time. But a little research proved that the commonly used criteria for killing bacteria is for an insta-kill - for example, cooking your pork to 165 (or whatever the number is) will kill any bugs pretty much instantaneously.
If you’re going to be leaving meat at a lower temperature, you can also kill the bad stuff if you leave it there long enough. This FDA Document talks about the recommended times for various types of poultry. Meat is similar, but I can’t seem to find my guide on that one. Suffice to say that as long as you’re following basic sous-vide recipes, you’ll hold the meat at a hot enough temperature for long enough that bacteria shouldn’t be an issue.
I’ve been considering this for a couple months now. I tried the hacker way with a cooler and the remote thermostat from our smoker and the steaks were wonderful but it was a bit of a hassle. The supreme is definitely in our future.
Where do you get your cooking times? Do you have a favorite recipe book or resource?