Bought equipment for "Sous vide" few days ago. I am just curious if anybody here use this method of cooking, especially for venison. I just started experimenting with pork brisket and shoulder.

Here is experimental 1kg (~2 pounds) of pork shoulder, marinated and injected with brine composed of water, curing salt, dark cane sugar, powder garlic and liquid smoke. Vacuum sealed. Will keep in fridge to cure for few days and later turn it into "ham". Not sure if I will coat it with something and sear it after "boiling". I just like the flavor of meat by itself, no need of overriding that.





Any recipes you can personally recommend?

Jiri

I had never heard of "Sous Vide" so I had to look it up. It looks like a nice way to cook some things.

The downsides I see are that you will never get that nice grilled taste on the outside and it takes a loooooong time to cook. It also means nothing will come out crispy or with a crust.

quote:

Not sure if I will coat it with something and sear it after "boiling".

That sort of defeats the purpose doesn't it?

I guess Europeans don't use crock pots or cooking bags?

Sous vide is one of the recent fads. And like most fads I hope it will be over soon.
One of the bad things is the competition - I can cook it at a lower temperature than you can ! That's what's driven ,a recent study has shown , that those who 'sous vide ' have a higher incidence of food poisoning !
The whole thing revolves around "simmering" and the definition there of. In proper cooking many things are simmered but few are boiled.
My family's definition was to have an occasional bubble break the surface. Simmer vs boil can make a big difference.
No, we didn't use thermometers they didn't invent them in those days. And we never had food poisoning !

quote:

It also means nothing will come out crispy or with a crust.

Grenadier: It is not true, or: Of course, that low temp vacuum "boiling" will not make any crust or so. But it will produce exact doneness of the meat side to side, corner to corner. After that process, you can sear it.

Some links:

http://www.seriouseats.com/rec...e-steaks-recipe.html
https://sansaire.com/cook-steak-sous-vide/
https://www.chefsteps.com/gall...t&premium=everything



Sous vide "exact temp control" is also good for pickling, ham making and what ever. It will stabilize temperature perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftCT-ddzEpo

Jiri

mete:

Sous Vide is used in high end restaurants for decades. Now, it is popular and "available to public".

Jiri

I've been using it for a few months now. Bought an Anova sous vide on Amazon on black friday for something like $79. Pork chops and steaks in that, followed by a smoking hot cast iron pan or a ripping hot grate on top of a charcoal chimney have no equal. I haven't toyed with any of the non-protein uses for it. Makes a nice cheater pastrami, too!

FFemtRN5287:

I have Anova too. Use it in All American Pressure Canner, of course without lid.

Now I put cured shoulder (on the photo) to it, on 68 C/154-155 F for 24 hours.

It is just my second attempt, so what is your recommendation for finishing that shoulder? (I want to keep it together, not to "pull"). Use any glaze on that and finish in the oven (short time, high temp)? Or use propane torch?

I am just looking for some ideas . . .



Jiri

no smoke - no interest

I got a nice one for mom 3 or 4 years ago. We made pork ribs in it. I believe they were in for 36 hours. After taking them out of the Sous Vide, we put them on the grill, with barbecue sauce for about 5 minutes. They were great. We could just pull the meat right off of the bone.

We had dinner the other night at a restaurant with some people that made it sound like sous vide was the only way to cook. It just sounds like too much trouble to me.

I bought one on one of the Black Friday sales. Will take it to the beach condo.

Might be the best way to cook a steak on a induction stove top. No grills allowed.

Mike

Shoulder continue:

After 20h in the bath, cooled down in cold water, sauce reduced (water boiled out) => thick glaze to which I added more liquid smoke and coated the shoulder with that. After I put it to "hot air" oven on 250 C/482F for 15-20 minutes.

Jiri , looks good .Fortunately I just had my breakfast , otherwise I'd have to eat the computer screen !
Here, when it becomes a 'fad' all reason is lost .
Learn the basics. When making a simple broth it should never boil , only simmer .Yes it makes a difference , try it and compare. Protein gets tougher the higher the temperature while connective tissue breaks down.
Some of the worst situations are those who want to be on TV so they get a cooking "show". Some of those know little about cooking and start the process including books, a line of pots and pans .
Some of the real ones like the little old white haired lady from Alsace never really made it since she didn't have the BAM ! or the music ,etc. I'll take the real ones.

Greetings. I've got 2 of them and have given 2 as gifts. I use mine a couple times a week. They work great. My wife's work is unpredictable. Sometimes she get out at 5:00, sometimes at 8:00. So planning dinner can be difficult. I'll start big protein the night before or in the morning. For steaks I start them when I get home at 5:00. When she walks in the house the cast iron goes on the burner and we're eat'n in 10 minutes.

I cook elk/venison, poultry and beef and it comes out perfect every time. Works great for veggies also, (hence the need for a second one). Try chicken breasts at 175 deg. for 1 hour and eat directly out the bag, PERFECT. Also do a tri-tip at 131.5 deg. for 8 hours and deep or pan fry. I have also finished all meat with a propane torch if no cast iron pan available.

Everyone I've fed goes out and buys one. Must be something to it.

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
FFemtRN5287:

I have Anova too. Use it in All American Pressure Canner, of course without lid.

Now I put cured shoulder (on the photo) to it, on 68 C/154-155 F for 24 hours.

It is just my second attempt, so what is your recommendation for finishing that shoulder? (I want to keep it together, not to "pull"). Use any glaze on that and finish in the oven (short time, high temp)? Or use propane torch?

I am just looking for some ideas . . .



Jiri

I think you did just right with the hot oven. That's how I did a prime rib roast. Looks like your pork shoulder came out nice!

The pastrami hits the smoker for 3 hours after a day and a half in the sous vide.

Since my wife's birthday is past, as is Christmas, I think I'm going to buy her one of these next Christmas, or maybe for our anniversary. She loves to cook. I think she would enjoy playing around with this.

I also have the Anova. Everything I've cooked in it has been fantastic. It all comes out tender and juicy.

Best damn steaks I've ever made at home. I just finish mine with butter, garlic and thyme- which is how I finish my skillet steaks any way.

I'm thinking of getting a second unit for veggies.

The one great thing is that it is great for entertaining- you can put your stuff in and forget about it- have some drinks and then sear to finish- every steak is cooked perfectly.

And the beauty of it is that you can have rare meat with the fat rendered and no matter what the grade of steak it all comes out tender.

Something from yesterday:



Twelve pieces. Added pepper, butter and vacuum sealed. Eleven frozen (you doesn't have to defrost before sous vide), last one cooked. It was amazing. After sous vide process, sauce from bag collected, meat seasoned by salt and pepper, seared on hot pan and also by torch. Meat removed, brown residues deglazed with white wine, added collected sauce and added a very little of liquid smoke, thicked to gravy poured over meat.

Sorry, it was so good I was not able to take picture of that . Next time.

Jiri

That might be my favorite application for it!

Put a steak in a freezer for 45 minutes Use a stitch to carmelize the outside, then drop it in its water bath.

Crazier yet. Freeze a hamburger patty with liquid nitrogen-torch--water bath. Bingo, perfect hamburger. Carmelized and crunchy in outside. Perfect inside

What does that much exposure to plastics do for you?

Can't be good, food grade or not.

quote:

What does that much exposure to plastics do for you?

Can't be good, food grade or not.

Nothing wrong with that. It is well tested to be safe also at elevated temperatures. You can trust it or not...

I put used plastics into dedicated bin for recycling too.

Actually I can have pre prepared and frozen steaks in the freezer for long time without any loss in quality.

Jiri

Sous Vide is not a new process and I am wanting to get a Sous Vide Supreme, from what I have read and heard meat is not the only food that can be prepared/ preped in it vegetables are outstanding from all sources I have. I have heard that cakes and other desserts can be prepared in one also, I am not sure how this can be done as a cake needs to rise and most items are done in a vacuumn sealed bag.

Sous vide for around 2 years
the main thing for us was the inconsistency of meat quality available & sous vide made tough stuff edible & good stuff exquisite.

I had an interesting Sous Vide experience Saturday night. We went to a Japanese-Peruvian restaurant near downtown Dallas (Nikkei).

http://www.nikkeidallas.com/

On the online menu it is described as "SLOW COOKED ROCOTO POUSSIN HALF CHICKEN, COCONUT PIRI PIRI, ONION COMPOTE" The menu in the restaurant described it as "Sous Vide". If they hadn't used that term, I would have called it "overcooked and dry".

Just a little critique regarding the restaurant. Since it is really a tapas bar in disguise, be ready to spend $100 to get your fill of food, piscos, and jaguar paws. Also, you need to be 21, but not older than 25. If you are a woman, your skirt must reach from the bottom of your navel to a point no more than 6" below your navel. Your tits must be 99% exposed. (Oh my, if I was only 40 years younger and single.)

If you are a guy, you must wear a tee shirt two sizes too small for you, jeans, look needy, and wear your ball cap on backwards. (In one case a poor loser wore his ball cap backwards, but it also had a small blinking red light on the bill that literally screamed, "look at me, look at me", please".)

A good spot to sit and people watch, but good for little else.

The experience nearly changed my mind about getting my wife one of those sous vide machines.

Kensco:

Sous Vide steak is the most juicy one you will ever eat. Jiri

I'm leaning towards buying this model for my wife in a few months.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...ezsousvidecookers-20

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
Kensco:

Sous Vide steak is the most juicy one you will ever eat. Jiri

Ask Kensco if it is juicier than the ones I eat?

Ken: I've had Pera Wine and Tapas bar on my list for a while, but haven't gotten there yet.

Jiri said "juicy", not "jumpy". Gato's steak is still quivering on the plate when it arrives.

We've not tried Pera, but there again, if it has Tapas in the title, I always figure I'll have to have three of the $14 tapas to fill up.

They seem to have a very nice menu. May be worth a shot.

I have heard that it is the best way to safely cook bear meat1

Pork ham sous vide:

Pork ham (2 pounds), injected with brine made out of water, curing salt, dark cane sugar, cardamom, garlic, coriander, nutmeg and liquid smoke. Cured only one day. Tied together, vacuum sealed, sous vide processed. Liquid from sous vide process reduced, surface coated with that a put into oven for 10 minutes on max. temp. to make a crust little. It is nice, but for optimum result, it needs more days of curing.

Wow! That last photo is gorgeous.

I just read about doing a "smoked reverse sear" ribeye that the author claims is "a similar concept to sous vide cooking". I will probably give that a try soon. http://www.vindulge.com/2016/0...smoked-ribeye-steak/

Kensco:

Thank you.

BTW The 1st and 2nd picture is for Gatogordo, 3rd is "overcooked"

Gato's probably pissed that you put string around his meat. Once you get string-burns on his cut, he won't eat it; overdone.

Re: Pic of pork above, the only raw/rare pork I eat is prosciutto or similar. That actually looks great, but I prefer country cured for a year or so.

But I'm not pissed at all. I am always interested to see how many people have little or no taste buds.

Long story short: A good friend, Ben Hudson, now deceased, who was the first senior shooter to win the Grand American Singles Championship, at the time in Vandalia, Ohio, was with a group of friends at a trap shoot, in Tampa, Fl. He would always eat his steaks well done, even in fine steak restaurants.

So they took him to dinner at Bern's Steakhouse, which, if you've been there is like a bat cave, very dim. They arranged for the waiter to ignore his cooking request and bring him a rare steak. He ate the steak, all the while raving about how good it was, how he'd never had a better steak, etc. etc. (BTW I am much less impressed with Bern's but that is another story). Near the end of the meal, one of the friends took out a flash light and showed him the blood red interior of his steak. He was nonplussed, but from then on he ordered medium rare, too old to completely change his mental blocks.

I think most people who eat their steaks anywhere past a light medium rare have blocks, or maybe, they just are blocks and are unable to appreciate the better tastes of life. Life is too short to eat the ruins of what would have been a good steak.

Next time Kensco can fit a hog hunt into his busy golfing schedule, I'm going to have a low light steak for him.

Uh-Oh! Guess I'm going to have to be sure my Petzl headlamp has new batteries.

Batteries won't help your taste buds, sex life maybe......

Ordered the

https://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...ezsousvidecookers-20

for Mother's Day. We'll see what she thinks, and how much she uses it.

My wife opened the ChefSteps CS10001 Joule Sous Vide

https://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...ezsousvidecookers-20

and she was like a kid in the late 50s opening her Christmas present and finding a chemistry set. She doesn't know what to do with it yet, but she knows she has endless possibilities. She's got the App. downloaded to her iPhone. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have a meal out of it, and we'll begin to form an opinion as to whether this is a way of cooking we want to pursue.

Kensco:

Now, it is ~7pm here. I promised myself not to eat more today. I visited this thread and have to make small steak for me