I tried a little sous vide experiment yesterday with a skinless, boneless chicken breast.
I brined it for a couple of hours, dried it, and, wanting a ‘pure’ experiment, seasoned with just salt and pepper. Not having a vacuum sealer, I put it in a ziploc bag and submerged it to nearly the top of the bag to force the air out; seemed to do a pretty good job since the bag had no visible air pockets, no water inside, and did not float.
The breast was about 1 ¼ thick so, according to a chart I found on the internet, I put it in a large stockpot at 146ºF for an hour and 15 minutes. Stirred the water occasionally and turned the fire on a couple times to keep the temperature stable within 1 degree.
Here’s the question: When I took it out, the bag had a small amount, maybe two or three tablespoons, of cloudy chicken-soupy liquid it it. Was this supposed to happen? Did the liquid come from the chicken or did my bag leak?
All meat gives off some liquid as it cooks, and if you’ve brined it, there’s even more. I don’t brine chicken breasts before sous-viding, and they indeed give off some liquid. Typically, I use it for a sauce. Saute some chopped shallots in butter, throw in the liquid from the sous-vide bag and maybe a glug of white wine, any herbs you have laying around and reduce by about half. Insta-sauce!
So… how were they? IMO chicken breasts are one of the great things to sous-vide. They turn out intensely flavored and really nicely textured - pretty good for a piece of meat that can so easily be dry and flavorless.
Using it to make a quick sauce was exactly what I was thinking if it was indeed a natural part of the process and not a result of experimental failure.
It tasted, well … due to my minimal seasoning and not searing it after cooking, it wasn’t anything I would call spectacular in any way … but it most definitely tasted like chicken, maybe even more chicken-like than usual … and it certainly wasn’t dry … definitely good enough that I plan to experiment further.
I took a few bites and then cubed it and threw it in the risotto with some thyme and some left over broccoli. Now that was good.
Note: the only way for an experiment to “go wrong” is for it to spontaneously give rise to an uncontrollable series of events, such as the chicken breast reanimating into a slab of shambling, unstoppable zombie meat that goes on a rampage and terrorizes the city; or your pantry door opening, and the June Taylor Dancers emerging to perform the wedding dance from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers in your kitchen.
Anything else is just “finding out what happens when I do this with this food.”
Literally, “under vacuum”, which doesn’t really describe what it is. Sous-vide cooking is the process of cooking food via water bath. You vacuum pack the food with whatever flavorings you want, then put it in a water bath to cook at a precise temperature. The advantage of cooking this way is that it’s impossible to overcook the food. That alone allows you to do things that are nigh-on impossible with traditional cooking methods, like cooking ribs for hours at medium heat, allowing the collagens to break down while the meat stays at medium.
Turble, if the chicken could use more flavor, maybe add a few more things to the bag? I tend to put a dollop of butter and a thin slice of lemon in with the chicken breasts. I also leave the skin on, so when you sear, it gets a nice crisp to it.
I’ve done ribs - 48 hour/54 hour/72 hour, and they are truly divine. They are incredibly tender, falling apart when you just look at 'em, but still very juicy and not overdone at all.
I did sous-vide duck breasts a couple nights ago, and they were really, really good, cooked to medium, with a orange-cardamom sauce. Yum!
"Sous vide is a method of cooking in vacuum sealed plastic pouches at low temperatures for long times. Sous vide differs from conventional cooking methods in two fundamental ways: (i) the raw food is vacuum sealed in plastic pouches and (ii) the food is cooked using precisely controlled heating.
Vacuum packaging prevents evaporative losses of flavor volatiles and moisture during cooking and inhibits off-flavors from oxidation . This results in especially flavorful and nutritious food."
I heard about it just last week and have done quite a bit of reading. Came across Iron Chef while channel surfing and sure enough, a guy quickly slips a baggie of meat into a big container of water and Alton Brown mumbles something about “Yep. He doing the meat sous vide.” If I hadn’t known what it was it would have gone right past me.
It appears to be a popular cooking method in very high-end restaurants … and I mean very high-end; not Red Robin as compared to Denny’s, but as in the places that make the “Best Restaurant in the World” kind of lists.
Athena, yes, I will jazz it up next time. I just wanted to try a very pure type thing to see the effect of the technique.
I didn’t mean to infer that he made dry yucky ribs! I just meant that it’s a risk if you try to cook ribs for a long, long time.
I just sorta threw together the sauce, and the main oomph was from some duck demi-glace from CulinArte that I happened to find in the back of the freezer. I sauteed some minced shallot in butter, then added a chunk of the demi-glace - maybe 1/4 cup - and added the juice of half an orange, about a teaspoon of cardamom, and a half teaspoon of white pepper.
If you had some homemade chicken stock that you reduced by about a quarter, I’m guessing you could do something very similar. Or with the juice from sous-vide duck breasts, if you had that laying around!
No, I’m just that obsessive about cooking and food. What? You don’t have duck livers, 3 different kinds of demi-glace, and at least 10 pounds of homemade sausage in your freezer? What the hell do you eat?!?
LOL we have the fridge freezer in the house, and 2 full sized chest freezers in the barn =)
I think the oddest thing I have is a whole skinned and gutted rattlesnake that we killed before it could get to the chickens. Yummy cut into chunks, ribs pliered out battered and deep fried =)
