[Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

Well I did my second SV experiment yesterday. A Chicken breast and a couple of tenders with just S&P. 1.5 hours at 60-degrees.

Came out deliciously juicy. Somewhat bland as they were just some purdue ones that were in fridge and needed to be eaten. I may drop it a couple of degrees next time.

Pepper was pretty coarsley grated, so got big mouthfuls of pepper when I encountered it. need to use a fins grate next time. it also looked like it had "burned" into the breast.

Looking forward to getting some decent chicken this weekend and adding more ingredients to the bag.

[Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

I also had an off flavour when I cooked something for a long time.  I think it was due to my plastic bag.  Make sure if you cook for a long time that you have boil safe bags.  I only made this mistake once and have not had problems since.

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Thanks for reply howsmatt

I'm using foodsaver rolls, so these should be OK. I;ve stred, but never cooked, food in them before. Maybe I'll try the chuck this weekend in some beef bourgignon

Regards

Mark

[Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

For future reference, if your dinner plans change like that in the future, take the meat out of the bath after 48 hours and chill in an ice bath and store in the fridge or the freezer (see Doug Baldwin's pages for guidelines about storage) and then put the meat back in the bath an or or two before you will be serving it to bring it up to temp.

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Thanks for reply e_monster.

I didn't notice any strange smell before bagging. Never occurred to me to take them out for 24 hours, but I was curious to see how they would be after 72.

Regards

Mark

[Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

I've tried 48 hr. short ribs a few times now.  The first time with just basic seasoning, S&P.  Results were OK, and everyone enjoyed them, but I thought they could be better.  Next time I used a store-bought beef marinade (Stubbs) and I thought they were excellent, much improved from the first batch.

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Thanks for reply bob

What temp did you do them at and how do you finish them? How much of the fat did you remove before you bagged them?

I wish I'd taken photos of them. Maybe it was just a bad batch: there seemed to be so little meat on them. My wife actually asked if they were pork (because the flavor was so odd)!

[Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

Well I did my first long cook SV this weekend and ate the dish last night. Was extremely disappointed with results. I'm sure some of it is down to my technique.

I have an old polyscience IC (got a few months ago on ebay for a few hundred $) and 8" deep acrylic full size hotel pan with lid. (I cut the lid to fit around the SV heater and used a Extech thermometer to monitor water temperature (as Poly has analogue scale and wasn't sure about accuracy/stability). Never varied by even 0.1C in 3 days.

I cooked short ribs at 55.4C (131.8F) for about 76 hours, followed by a few minutes per side in hot skillet. (Originally planned them to be on for about 48 hours, but dinner plans changed on Sunday). All I used was S&P and a bit of garlic salt.

Colour was fantastic: perfect medium rare and texture was pretty good (when I could find meat).

The taste and smell however were somewhat odd/unpleasant. After starting cooking, I read about 40-50 pages of this thread and realized I should have probably taken all of the fat off. I've seen other people mention an off taste with long cooking times.

Can anyone offer any hints/tips on what I did wrong?

It was very disappointing after such a long wait. Problem now is the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) has reduced significantly :-(. My next dish (hopefully chicken curry tonight) better be spot on.

Regards

Mark