825 replies to this topic

[MartinH]

Back on March 11 KennethT asked whether anyone has done just a marrow bone and if so, what temp/time? But there were no responses then. Anyone have any experiences with sous vide marrow bone?

[PedroG]

I did ossobuco with marrow bone at 58.5°C for 12 hours, the meat was pink, succulent and fork-tender, but not falling apart like after traditional braising, and the marrow was soft.
For the recipe see http://sousvide.wiki...m/wiki/Ossobuco

[KennethT]

Back on March 11 KennethT asked whether anyone has done just a marrow bone and if so, what temp/time? But there were no responses then. Anyone have any experiences with sous vide marrow bone?

I think back at the time, I wound up doing it at 176F for about an hour... worked ok - the marrow came out in one piece and was nice and soft - but I think too much of the fat may have rendered out... I'd be curious to try it again a little differently...

[LoftyNotions]

Has anyone seen/tested this:

https://www.sousvidesupreme.com/sousVide-supreme-order.php

It looks like a very good home solution! I am getting it as soon as we move to a bigger place...

There's a thread about the Sous Vide Supreme here: SVS

[e_monster]

I'm surprised that the rosemary came through but not the garlic. My small amount of experience with aromatic herbs in vacuum is that they don't work. In my case it was using fresh dill over salmon in a gravlax cure under vacuum. The cure worked fine, but the dill didn't come through. Note however, that Douglas warns against using garlic in sous vide. Though that might only apply to raw garlic.

It isn't so surprising -- not all aromatic herbs are equally aromatic. Dill is much less aromatic than rosemary and juniper berries (at least fresh ones) and even tarragon. I, too, have found that dill is pretty subtle. With rosemary, i also find that toasting it before using it for sous-vide tames it a little bit.

As others have mentioned roasted garlic is not all that 'garlicky' (for want of a better word).

For a couple of years I avoided using raw garlic sous-vide because so many people reported bad results and I relied on garlic powder. A few months ago, I decided to explore using raw garlic and found that if you use the right amount and balance it with some acid and oil in the bag that you can get a nice garlic flavor that is neither too intense or too raw.

I am using this with chicken when I cook it in the 140F to 155F range (lately the temperature is determined by how quickly I want the chicken to be ready). I haven't tried this at lower temperatures -- I suspect that the garlic may mellow a little bit more at these temps than at lower temps.

The amounts will vary on the particular garlic that you have and your taste. Here is what I do. I use a garlic press and press a medium-sized clove into a tablespoon or two of olive oil. I add a little salt and the juice of 1/4 to 1/2 of a meyer lemon (for this use I am preferring meyer lemons to standard lemons) and about 1/4 to 1/2 cap of liquid smoke. I use this amount for two boneless/skinless breasts or 4 thighs.

At 155F, I cook them for an hour or so. At lower temps, I cook longer to make sure they are pasteurized.

[yosemit3]

Back on March 11 KennethT asked whether anyone has done just a marrow bone and if so, what temp/time? But there were no responses then. Anyone have any experiences with sous vide marrow bone?

I did ossobuco with marrow bone at 58.5°C for 12 hours, the meat was pink, succulent and fork-tender, but not falling apart like after traditional braising, and the marrow was soft. For the recipe see http://sousvide.wiki...m/wiki/Ossobuco

I've tried slices of marrow bones @ 135F, overnight packed with sous-vide garlic and BBQ sauce. Great spread on toasted garlic bread (LaBrea). I didn't take notes, careful with the sauce, or it's intrusive.

[MartinH]

Re: marrow bones, thanks for the suggestions. I'm planning a comparo test:
1. fry (with marrow removed from the bone, dusted with flour);
2. roast (450F/230C for 15 mins - because the web is full of a recipe from Fergus Henderson for roast veal marrowbones with parsley salad);
3. SV warm and quick (176F/80C for 1 hour, as KennethT did);
4. SV cool and slow (135F/57C overnight, as yosemit3 did).
In each case, I'll lightly season each the same way with s&p. I hope I can report back after the holidays. Perhaps others can try a similar test to compare results.

[Shaun Ginsbourg]

Thanks for your reply Douglas

I will give that I try

I forgot however to ask one further question: if I am using milk (or 1/2 milk, 1/2 water) as my liquid, what should I consider to be the danger zone in terms of cooking temperature. I would guess that 80C or above would be safe, but again I would appreciate your thoughts.

[DouglasBaldwin]

I forgot however to ask one further question: if I am using milk (or 1/2 milk, 1/2 water) as my liquid, what should I consider to be the danger zone in terms of cooking temperature. I would guess that 80C or above would be safe, but again I would appreciate your thoughts.

Shaun,

Using milk is not a problem from the food safety standpoint. Indeed, the `danger zone' for all foods is between 29.3F (-1.5C) [the temperature at which Listeria monocytogenes begins to grow] and 126.1F (52.3C) [the temperature at which Clostridium perfringens stops growing] unless there are additional hurdles which preserve the food between those temperatures. [Note that the danger zone only applied to pathogenic microorganisms, there are spoilage and beneficial microorganisms which can grow at temperatures above and below the danger zone.] Examples of hurdles include canning (which makes the food shelf-stable by reducing the vegetative pathogens and spores to a safe-level and prevents recontamination), decreasing the water activity (e.g., drying meat to make jerky or curing it in salt), decreasing the pH of the food (say by adding acid or through fermentation), etc.* Frequently, several hurdles are combined to allow the food to be stored at temperatures within the danger zone for extended periods of time.

* For extremely detailed scientific information on food preservation techniques, I recommend checking out the "Handbook of Food Preservation" edited by M. Shafiur Rahman from your local library system [which can probably get it through inter-library loan from a research university].

[Shaun Ginsbourg]

I just had my first (of many I hope) sous vide Xmas dinner.

I sourced a rare breed (Wessex Saddleback) suckling pig with a dressed weight of 10-12 kg.

My set up consisted of a 20 litre (4 1/2 gal) urn, a Sous-Vide Magic temperature controller, and a 28cm Sunbeam Food Saver.

My technique was borrowed from Joan Roca, although I allowed a longer cooking time given his use of a smaller piglet.

I broke down the pig and individually bagged the pieces each with a few tablespoons of olive oil and peppercorns. (Olive oil can be solidified in the freezer which helps avoid having to seal liquid using a Food Save). I cooked in three batches, each batch at 70C/158F for 14 hours. Each batch was rapidly cooled in an ice bath and refrigerated in the meat chiller until prior to service.

About two hours prior to service I reheated the bags using a domestic oven at 80-85C. After taking the meat out of the bags I removed the bones (after reheating it was possible to remove the bones by just pulling them out). I then attempted to crisp the skin up using non-stick pans on the stove top, using a thermometer to ensure the core temperature was raised enough.

The texture of the meat was very good: moist and tender. It was not fork-tender - as I have often seen meat described on this post - but that would not have been to my taste. My efforts to crisp the skin were only partially successful due perhaps to lack of patience and care. But the method was fundamentally sound and I would recommend it.

I note that Thomas Keller has a recipe which is basically an assiette that uses a suckling pig of similar dimensions to the one I tackled. It is a highly technical method that involves differential treatment of different parts of the pig. I can see how this would produce better results, even if the results of the simpler technique I used were more than satisfactory.

I served the pig with mille-feuille potatoes, shallot confit, sous-vide apple wedges, and a coleslaw made with wombok, fennel, watercress, chervil, and hazelnuts dressed with an apple mustard vinaigrette (Thomas Keller being the inspiration behind some of these accompaniments.) I opted against Joan Roca's accompaniment of orange gastrique which, although delicious-sounding, seemed incompatible with potatoes.

[Ruth]

Shaun

Last summer I cooked a suckling pig sous vide using Joan Roca's method. I chilled and refrigerated the pieces still in their vacuum bags. Before serving I crisped the skin over a sear burner. I kept one of two pieces back (I think I even froze one piece) and crisped those in a cast iron pan. All emerged beautifully crisp and I would do them the same way again. A few weeks later my husband and I were at Can Roca and suckling pig was on the menu. It could have been the same pig that I took off my grill! Joan Roca's recipes are supremely reliable.

Ruth

[Markdmd]

I got the 'Sous Vide Supreme water oven' for Christmas. There is no virtually assembly, it is intuitive to use right out of the box. Slick looking, the footprint is relatively small, it is easy to lift for water fill/empty, quick to ramp up to selected temperature and seems quite accurate (verified with IR thermometer). Compared a ribeye v tri tip (salt/pepper/garlic/butter)132F for about 6 hrs, both perfectly medium rare, the tri tip incredibly tender and succulent. Yesterday did eggs 148F for 1 hr and they were exactly as documented here: http://amath.colorad.../sous-vide.html

Still a rookie having used it only twice but thus far I give it two thumbs up.

[Shaun Ginsbourg]

I can see both pros and cons in using the Sous Vide Supreme instead of a temperature controller / cooker combination.

Cons:

1. The combination is potentially cheaper: about $150 for the controller + between $50 and $200 for the cooker depending on size (cf $450 for the Supreme)

2. The combination gives you a potentially bigger water bath. I use a 20 litre urn that cost A$100 on Ebay and could safely cook about 3kg meat - in the 10 litre bath of the Supreme I would guess you are limited to 1 - 2 kg before your heat transfer from water to meat becomes too slow. (Doug Baldwin can probably provide some figures on all this).

Pros:

1. Slick design, all-in-one package

2. Less bench space

3. No need to worry about PID settings (although the Sous Vide Magic has an auto-tune function for this)

What is not clear from the Sous Vide Supreme specs is: (a) power of the heating element, which determines how quickly you can get your water bath to the right temperature, and (b) how well insulated it is, which determines how efficiently and therefore economically it operates. Also the specs do not indicate there is any circulator built into the device, from which I would assume that the precision of temperature control no better than the combination using cooker that heats from the bottom.

[jk1002]

>> Also the specs do not indicate there is any circulator built into the device, from which I would assume that the precision of temperature control no better than the combination using cooker that heats from the bottom. <<

There is no circulator. They have a perforated bottom and based on comments I read on on one of the blogs they have multiple heating zones that they activate to generate some sort of current within the bath.

Judging their marketing, they are after the no carb dieter rather than the "How can we poach this in butter" Egullet food scientist so this is maybe why they leave lots of info off the table.

[Jolly]

What is not clear from the Sous Vide Supreme specs is: (a) power of the heating element, which determines how quickly you can get your water bath to the right temperature.

If anyone is interested, I can do some power draw / time measurements for my Sous Vide Supreme machine once I get home (Jan 4th)

[Markdmd]

Presumably the insulated lid eliminates the need for circulation?


[Moderator's note: discussion continues in Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment 2010]