Anyone else using sous vide? I just got a sous vide supreme and have done 12 hr chuck, 48 hour short ribs and 63 degree eggs. Looking for some suggestions for time /temp combos and bag additions from anyone who is also experimenting. So far my online reading seems to be sourced from Keller and Douglas Baldwin. I have heard mixed reviews on Keller’s Under Pressure, any thoughts on the book? Thanks!!
Yup, there’s a couple sous-vide threads here - I’ll let you do the search because I’m sleepy.
I’ve been sous-viding for several years now, as have a few other people here. I’m heading off to bed now, but if there’s anything in particular you’re wondering about, ask away, I’ll be back tomorrow.
I have Under Pressure, and it definitely leans towards the more complex side. Lots of esoteric ingredients and recipes that take days to cook. That said, I do use it as a reference at times - it’s good to know, for example, what temperature Keller thinks is perfect for duck breasts (or whatever). I can’t say I’ve used it a ton though.
Doug Baldwin’s reference is good. I’d definitely pick up his book if it’s not still free (it used to be downloadable as a PDF but something tells me that’s not true anymore.)
I also like the Modernist Cuisine series of books as references, but they’re pretty pricey. There’s a lot of stuff you can find from just Googling, and honestly, I do that as much as anything else.
Yup, I currently have a corned beef in cooking. When I get ready to serve it we will toss an assortment of veggies [probably potato wedges, carrots, onion wedges and celery sticks] in olive oil and herbs and roast them, then toss the slab of corned beef in to do some light browning around the edges while the cabbage steams.
We also seal ribs in portions and then finish them on a grill, mrAru would have normally grilled the ribs and I don’t like a lot of carbon from the burning of the sauce on my ribs so it works out nicely.
There is also a killer baby artichoke recipe where you seal the baby chokes in with a lemon juice/olive oil marinade and cook them, then finish them on a grill. Goes great with garlic aiole - I found the recipe online.
Also if you want to make small beef wellingtons, you just do the beef in portions, then wrap with the mushroom duxelles in puff pastry so the beef doesn’t get under or overdone.
I have had a sous vide for about a year. Honestly, I don’t do anything very fancy with it - I like it for being able to cook something all day and eat it when I get home from work. I vacuum seal chicken in various marinades or rubs and freeze it (Penzey’s spice blends are good for this). In the morning, I throw chicken in the cooker and set it for 60 C, and in the evening, it is perfect and tender. Steak is better if I cook it overnight, but it’s the same basic idea (I usually use flank steak). I am somewhat constrained in my cooking by wanting my two small children to eat what I cook, but they will usually eat meat from the sous vide with no problem.
I have a lime chicken that turns out great, that takes the extra step that I freeze the marinade first so I can vacuum seal it with my sealer. I don’t have fixed amounts - I just taste it until it’s right - but the main components are lime juice, brown sugar, cream cheese, lemongrass, fresh ginger, and cilantro. Blend with stick blender and freeze in ice cube tray before sealing. When the chicken is ready, I make a roux and pour in the liquid from the chicken, ending up with a creamy lime ginger sauce. Very tasty.
O my, this sounds scary. May i ask what a sous vide is… or is this just another example of me living under a rock?
Sous= sous chef? Vide=life/living?
Do you sear it after it is sous vided?
It means under vacuum. It’s an old process, so I don’t know if the vacuum refers to modern vacuum bagging of the food for immersion under water, or something else. But basically foods are put in vacuum sealed bags and immersed in water maintained at an ideal cooking temperature. It may kept that way for a long time to slow cook tough meats.
I’ve only sous vided anything once as an experiment. It was a roast and it went into a hot oven when it was done for 10 minutes to brown the outside. I don’t know what is typically done with steaks when people do it at home, but some restaurants will cook steaks sous vide just to rare temperature and then sear then on a grill or pan before serving.
I will be trying a piece of bottom round in the upcoming week. I’ll update with details.
People do the same thing at home as far as searing. The one thing about sous-vide is that there’s no nice crust on the outside of the meat when it’s done, so you pretty much have to grill/broil/torch it to finish. But there’s no need to cook to rare at home. Just cook to whatever temp you want, the searing doesn’t last long enough to change the inside temperature, unless you want it to.
It’s a stupid name. It does mean “under vacuum” but the real cool thing about sous-vide is the water bath and precise cooking temperature. You end up with perfectly-done food with no guesswork or technique involved - if the water bath is 134 degrees, for example, that steak is going to come out perfectly medium-rare without you having to do anything.
It’s not just for tough meats, either. Fish, for example, does wondrously sous-vide.
What I don’t really understand is what the expensive gear is for.
I vacuum seal it myself, put it in a large pot of water in a very low oven. I have a thermometer in the oven and one on a stick in the water, so I can monitor the temp. It’s consistent, reliable and simple.
Can anyone explain what the machines do that is so much better? Surely it must be something, they cost an arm and leg! I feel like I am missing something… 
What temps are you using? Most ovens don’t go down low enough for sous-vide - mine bottoms out at around 200 degrees, and that’s far too hot for almost all the sous-videing I do.
Also, it’s the precision that you pay for. I’m guessing you get pretty decent results for some things with your method, but can you hold it at precisely 134 degrees (NOT 136 or 131) for 5 hours? How about long & slow cooking - I do ribs at 155 degrees for up to 48 hours. There’s a world of difference with a 1 or 2 degree temp change for a lot of delicate foods, and I can’t see how you’d ensure the exact temp you want with the oven method.
Don’t most sous vide machines also circulate the water to make sure the temp is constant throughout?
StG
It’s just greater degrees (heh) of precision and ease.
Thanks for the replies everyone! Looks like I will be doing alot of experimenting. And googling! I think I’m going to keep a journal.of sorts so I can tweak the recipies a bit. The steak I did was amazingly tender and flavorful. A $3 chuck at 55.5 for 24 hours with a quick sear, it was amazing.
The fancy equipment isn’t really all that fancy, but because of the magic of supply and demand manufacturers can charge high prices and people still buy 'em. Basically, a sous-vide cooker is exactly the same as a laboratory water bath. Early on, that’s what chefs used. A little while after that, the laboratory equipment makers started selling directly to chefs, but these guys are in the business of selling small numbers of precision devices to labs that are used to buying simple equipment for four or five figures. Now, there are manufacturers selling sous-vide water baths for the consumer market. Because it’s a trendy technique, people are currently willing to pay High End Kitchen Gadget prices.
If the technique ever becomes really ubiquitous, you’ll be able to buy a reasonably precise circulating water bath at Walmart for $50. As you infer, it’s just a bucket with a heating element, circulating pump, and a temperature controller.
The oven itself indicates the temp less precisely (I think) the lower I go, hence the extra thermometer in the oven. But it certainly goes as low as 45C, I don’t think I’ve tried lower than that. Because I get the water to the exact temp before I start, and because water keeps its temperature very well, it actually stays very consistent. I’ve stirred the thermometer-on-a-stick through the water to test that the temp was consistent and it always was. Which makes sense, because the surroundings are all the same temperature.
When I first started doing it I would obsessively check all the time, obviously very conscious that I wasn’t using the proper “gear”. But the method is absolutely reliable. I can get the exact temp I want, and sustain it for any amount of time I want. Once it’s at the right temperature no more fiddling is required, and it’s really very easy to get the right temperature in the first place.
Perhaps it is slightly less precise than sous vide machines (not noticeably, the thermometer indicates the same temperature throughout) but then the results are always exactly what I wanted/expected.
I wonder if perhaps the only thing is that keeping the oven on for hours costs more electricity than a sous vide oven would? I’m not sure, OTOH, how that compares to the original (high) cost of the sous vide machine.
It has consistently baffled me. I haven’t been able to find any information of it online either. Just one guy who used a beer cooler and then topped it up with hot water occasionally. He said it worked, but not for very long. Obviously, the oven works for however long I want.
Eh, maybe I’m crazy. Maybe my oven is very good (it is). I dunno.
Your experiences with your oven aren’t typical, from what I’ve read on the Internet. Maybe you do have the perfect oven for sous-viding. I’ve got a pretty high-end oven as well (though it’s old) and I know I couldn’t do it simply because the lowest temperature it goes is 200 degrees.
Most ovens also cycle on and off, rather than staying on all the time. And they have hot and cool spots, if it’s not a convection oven.
Anyway, it’s great you’ve figured out a way to make your oven work. I think the real answer to your question is that most people can’t, and that’s why we buy the appliances.
I have heard of people doing it on top of the stove. That would cause issues for long-term cooking, I imagine, as most people don’t want to leave a burner on overnight or anything like that.
I might snap you guys a picture of my crazy set up next time I do it! It looks pretty silly… 
My experiment was done in a large beer cooler. I used a candy thermometer*, zip lock bags, and kept the temperature stable by adding boiling water every 45 minutes to an hour. Worked fine. I plan to add an immersion heater and thermostatic control, and that’s it. Really any heating vessel that you can control precisely with a thermostat should work. If your oven is that good, that would work fine.
*The thermometer is actually made of metal and glass, candy would have melted.
My setup is indeed a bucket heater, a cheap aquarium air pump, and a SousVideMagic temperature controller. I usually use it with a big old stock pot but I have hooked it up with a rice cooker, a slow cooker, and a five gallon bucket.
To me, the best part of sous vide cooking is that I can cook up a big batch of individual servings of simply seasoned meat and then keep in the refrigerator for two to three weeks or in the freezer for several months without loss of quality. I always have a stash of skinless, boneless chicken breasts made up; just put it in a pot of water at around 135F or so to bring it up to serving temperature and then sear it in a skillet or on the grill, or use the liquid in the bag to make up some sort of sauce, or just chop it up and toss it in the risotto or make some chicken salad sandwiches, or whatever. Always perfectly cooked meat and always at hand with just a short non-fussy hot water bath to bring it to serving temperature.
Here is a link to the Baldwin PDF: A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking. The dead-tree book contains only a small part of this information; it is mostly just recipes for various sauces and was a disappointment for me … save yourself a copy of the PDF while it is still available.
gracer - please post pix and details/your experience. I’m now searching on the interwebs but not finding much guidance for your hack.
I’m an idiot, I never considered this but we’ve got a brand spanking new really nice Miele where the defrost setting is 75F, proofing at 110F and convection bake starts at 125F…