Sounds like fun. You might want to try the following method in combination with the Sous Vide for steak. I tried it a few times this summer and was pretty happy with the results.
Lay out a bed of rock salt. Lay 1 inch thick well marbled steak on bed. Press down firmly. Cover top side of steak with more rock salt and press in. Let sit for one hour. Rinse VERY thoroughly. Then pat dry with paper towels VERY thoroughly. The salt does a very good job of tenderizing the steak. And despite what you would think, if you do the rinsing and drying correctly the steak will not be salty.
It would be interesting to do this in combination with Sous Vide. I’ve just done it with the grill so far.
Time on salt is proportional to steak thickness. 1/2 thick equals a half hour and so on and so on.
The lamb chops were great! The best I’ve ever made. didn’t have to watch the time, which was great because we received a delivery of some medical equipment just as I was getting ready to remove the chops from the cooker. No problem, it can wait.
I may go back to the torch so I don’t have to scrub a pan after searing.
I am just getting a Sous Vide setup and thought I would ask a question here rather than start a new thread.
“Is it generally safe to do Sous Vide with commercially bought products that are already in a vacuum sealed pouch?” It seems like a waste to tear open a vacuum sealed pouch like lamb chops, just to season and reseal them in another bag. As far as I can tell, any commercially available bag will be made of a combination of polyethylene and nylon, and be of food grade. I can’t wait to get started.
It may be food grade and technically safe, but one of the whole points of using a sous vide is slow-cooking with the spices involved, rather than adding them later. So, maybe, if you’re getting pre-sealed meat in sauce, that’d work, but if it’s bare lamb chops and you want them seasoned, you need to open, season, and reseal.
Could it be possible that plastics that are food safe for packaging and sale would not be safe for cooking? Don’t know that it’s a fact, but could it be so?
Yes, adding seasoning is probably an important point. I was hoping to maybe add it before finishing, like searing. I will have to experiment. This may not be a big deal, but I can get all sorts of amazing food like local grass fed beef, already vacuum sealed.
Yeah, I just don’t know. One of my concerns about cooking Sous Vide, is cooking in plastic and possible leaching of chemicals. But if the bag is food grade, the low temperatures of Sous Vide is hopefully safe.
My unit came with two packs of bags as well as a vac sealer, but I’ve been using the bags from my Foodsaver as they are good for boiling. No issues so far.
I bought my brother a Big Green Egg after coveting one for years. It was a big underwhelming. Cooking in it is a bit of an event versus firing up the gas grill. It takes a while for one of the big ones to really heat up so that it retains the heat. I know purists would say I’m blasphemin’ but a kind of gas option would make it a lot easier to use most of the time. For a thousand bucks it wasn’t quite the bee’s knees I was expecting - just sayin’ you might want to test one out first.
This is an old thread, so since I posted the BGE envy, I’ve gotten one. Mr. Athena was kind enough to buy me one for my birthday almost a year ago.
I actually do like it quite a bit. We have both it and a gas grill, and the gas grill has been used only once since we got the BGE. It’s slightly more hassle to get going, but not enough that I don’t want to use it.
Overall the food always tastes better on the egg. I use it to smoke things quite a bit as well. It’s not for everyone - the learning curve is fairly steep - but I really like it.
I always laugh, though, because sous-vide is considered the fancy gourmet way of cooking, whereas grilling is the down-home redneck thing to do. In reality, sous-vide is so easy it’s almost a no-brainer, whereas using the egg requires a lot of fiddling and babysitting and you need to know what you’re doing. If I want to make a great meal without any work, the sous-vide comes out, no question at all.
This is all very true. We use the Egg so much more now that we’re past the first year learning curve. We started off only using it for low and slow cooking but now I bake bread on it, we make pizza, grill steaks and thanks to a great dessert idea from Fenris I’ve been grilling fruit and vegetables too. The gas grill is still on the patio but it only gets used when my husband isn’t home or when we need the extra grill space.
I haven’t been using the Sous vide as much lately but it will cycle through again. It’s the beginning of winter so the crockpot is in heavy rotation with soups, stews and other comfort foods.
Cool, I made my first Sous Vide meal, salmon. It was very good, but not the best ever. Obviously I have things to learn to dial it in better. One thing was the fish was not very warm, which I like. I did sear it quickly at the end, but that did not really bring the temp up.
How many people wash their used Sous Vide vacuum bags for re-use? They are about $1 each, so kinda expensive, especially when you package each portion separately, but washing them is a pain, and will get old quick.
Such a time does not exist. Winter merely winnows the fair-weathers from the die hards. Somewhere there’s a picture of me flipping steaks on a Weber kettle in a four foot Minnesota snow drift.
Also, I couldn’t sous vide ribs. Ribs need smoke and bark.
I think that’s true with charcoal. At least it’s true with the egg. However, my Weber gas grill definitely lacks heat during the really cold parts of the winter.
Try it. Trust me. I hear what you’re saying, but there is something about 155 degrees for 30 hours that is magic. It’s not the same as smoke and bark, but it’s equally good in a deliciously tender, juicy, and flavorful way.
The polymers themselves should be quite safe - the problem is whether they have any included softening agents or other additives - which is fairly easy to determine if you’re buying them new in bulk, but not so much for existing packaging.
That said, I imagine the risk of contamination from plasticisers, cling/anti-cling agents, etc is likely to be greater for a 5 minute boil (i.e. the poached egg in clingfilm or omelette-in-a-baggie methods) than it would be for prolonged periods at 55-60 C. Sous vide temperatures aren’t so very far outside of the ‘store between’ range for plastic bags anyway.