e_monster

Let us know how it goes. It is possible that you needed another minute or two at 75C or you might need to raise the temperature slightly. Have you checked the calibration of your cooking device? Eggs are the thing that I cook that are most sensitive to issues of calibration.

I think the consensus is that you need to cook the skin separately if you want truly excellent crispy skin. It has been recommended to me that one remove the skin before cooking sous-vide and then place the skin between two silpats and cook at 350F (with the top silpat weighted down). Torches don't work well for crisping poultry skin. I have had ok but not great results by cooking the duck with the skin on sous-vide then letting the duck rest for a little while and then sticking under the broiler. The result was great meat and ok (but not great skin). It seems to me that the sous-vide cooking does something to the skin that prevents it from crisping in the same way as skin that hasn't been cooked sous-vide.

After I press it and take it out of the bag I trim the top layer of fat so it's flat. Then just a medium high cast iron with oil. Start on the skin side, flip and turn the heat off to let it warm through. Thanks. So, you are leaving the skin on?

72 hours is what Modernist Cuisine recommends. But liquid loss increases with time (and also with temperature). I could not find any scientific paper quantifying the relation between time and liquid loss, time and enzymatic conversion of collagen to gelatin, temperature and liquid loss, temperature and enzymatic conversion of collagen to gelatin. This would answer the question whether it is better to increase cooking time or cooking temperature (in the range from 55°C to 60°C) for increased collagen gelatinization with minimal increase of liquid loss. Who will do the experiment? I have generally been disappointed with brisket. (I have had a few that were awe-inspiring but most have been very good but nowhere near as succulent as short ribs). But I am now wondering if cooking it, and letting it rest for half an our or an hour at room temperature followed by searing might let some of those juices re-absorb into the meat. We tried that last weekend with tri-tip and it was the most succulent that we have done yet. We weren't able to do a proper scientific experiment but anecdotally, it seemed more perfect than usual. Granted, tri-tip has never been disappointing (only 7 to 8 hours at 133F) but this seemed stellar. It was inspired by the discussion of the Ideas-in-Food people recommending resting before re-warming and searing.

72 hours is what Modernist Cuisine recommends. But liquid loss increases with time (and also with temperature). I could not find any scientific paper quantifying the relation between time and liquid loss, time and enzymatic conversion of collagen to gelatin, temperature and liquid loss, temperature and enzymatic conversion of collagen to gelatin. This would answer the question whether it is better to increase cooking time or cooking temperature (in the range from 55°C to 60°C) for increased collagen gelatinization with minimal increase of liquid loss. Who will do the experiment? I have generally been disappointed with brisket. (I have had a few that were awe-inspiring but most have been very good but nowhere near as succulent as short ribs). But I am now wondering if cooking it, and letting it rest for half an our or an hour at room temperature followed by searing might let some of those juices re-absorb into the meat. We tried that last weekend with tri-tip and it was the most succulent that we have done yet. We weren't able to do a proper scientific experiment but anecdotally, it seemed more perfect than usual. Granted, tri-tip has never been disappointing (only 7 to 8 hours at 133F) but this seemed stellar. It was inspired by the discussion of the Ideas-in-Food people recommending resting before re-warming and searing.

Ohhh you deep fried. Yeah that would be awesome ScottyBoy, how did you brown/crisp your pork belly? I have a problem sometimes with it sticking to my pan. The bits that stick to the pan taste amazing but it mars the presentation. Yours looks lovely.

As Lofty suggested, all you need is to put a tube from the air pump into the water. You don't need an airstone or anything. I recommend putting a backflow valve (they cost less than a dollar) on the tubing. Not much circulation is needed to keep the water temp uniform.

I agree. If you like the egg white rubbery, reheat in boiling water, if you prefer a firm gel, keep water temperature below 84.5°C/184°F to prevent ovalbumin from denaturing. I made eggs again today. The whites were most decidedly NOT rubbery at all. Almost like yogurt. Easily spreadable, neither watery nor solid. Next time I'll try Douglas' method for comparison. Who knows, maybe I'll like those better. I'd like to try your version. In the khymos article and comments, there are a few variations mentioned. Which recipe are you using? I'd like to try your version and Doug's also.

Why is this? Did they explain? I don't know...I didn't think to ask at the time for clarification, hence my follow up here. I'll have to look in their book to see if it's covered.... My suspicion is that it has to do with the potential for some foods to re-absorb some of their juices and/or to ensure that when browning that the interior doesn't become more cooked. At Alinea, they chill the Wagyu ribeye cubes after cooking and before browning under the salamander.

The watery part of the whites is because some of the proteins in the whites don't set at the temperature of the 'ideal' yolk. I remove the eggs from the bath before they cool-- depending on how I am using the eggs, I sometimes leave the water stuff -- but if I am serving eggs to strangers, I drain it. I need to buy Douglas' book and try his technique. Interestingly (and this touches on something Doug mentioned earlier). The yolks are much more time-sensitive than the whites. You can cook eggs over night at 145F and the yolk will be quite a bit more set than if cooked for 90 minutes. On the other hand, the whites are the same. I did some experiments with multi-temperature cooking (moving the eggs between baths. But it was clear that it was going to take a lot more experimentation than I had time for to get it right -- so that the yolk is a barely set gel and the whites tender and lightly set. Doug: is this the state that the eggs will be in when using your method?

You are correct. If an egg is marked as pasteurized it is supposed to be pasteurized through-and-through. At least that is the case in California. The shells of all commercial eggs are essentially sterilized in the shell by washing the eggs in a mild bleach solution from what I understand. If they didn't do this, merely handling egg shells and egg cartons would spread salmonella as eggs are pretty (for lack of a better word) icky coming out of the chicken. The reason for pasteurizing is to pasteurize the interior since some small number of eggs have salmonella inside. Best, Edward

Hi, If you take a look in the archives, you will discover that air bubblers provide adequate circulation. You don't even need an airstone. Most setups require very little help to circulate the water adequately. Best, Edward

This is entirely a matter of taste. I personally disagree with the notion that sous-vide eggs get old pretty quick. Sous-vide eggs are a favorite in our household and we never get tired of them.

You could be right -- but since neither of us has done an A/B test to see if there is ACTUALLY no benefit. We don't know that it is an illusory benefit. Nathan has argued quite persuasively that there shouldn't be a benefit, but I wouldn't be adamant about how silly this guy's argument in until actually verifying that there is no benefit. Nathan's argument seems valid but I should also say that my neighbor (who gets to eat a lot of the sous-vide cooking that I do) has mentioned several times that on occasions when I took meat out of the cooker (such as tri-tip cooked at 133 to 135F) and it ended up waiting on the counter in its bag for a a while maybe 10 minutes before I got to removing it and torching it (usually because poor planning caused me to have to attend to something else for a few minutes) that he felt that the texture was better than the meat that went immediately from bath to torching. Now, I am skeptical that the 10 minute rest did anything -- but this has happened more than once -- and on at least one of these occasions there was some meat that didn't rest. So, it probably merits a few people coming up with an agreed upon protocol and performing it and seeing if it confirms what theory predicts. It probably will confirm no benefit to the food BUT I think it makes sense to do it before being too incensed. Anyway, that's my thought.

It isn't clear that this would actually significantly slow down the total cooling time dramatically enough to affect safety. In fact, if -- like me -- your ice water bath is not huge -- you may actually get faster cooling by having the bag fresh out of the bath going into a sink full of cold water for 10 minutes or so before putting it into the ice bath. In two stage cooling like this, the difference in time may be marginal or possibly faster since the ice isn't subject to the hot bag. Since the bag will already have been cooled somewhat, the ice bath stays cooler. This is only an issue for people using smallish ice baths and who have a limited ice supply. In any case, a 10 minute sit in cold water can't possibly extended the cooling time by any more than 10 minutes and it is probably extending the cooling time by much less since the meat will be cooling in the cold (or even room temperature water). So, I don't think that there is any reason to suggest that this would be significantly less safe than going directly into the ice bath. Best, Edward

Cheap aquarium pumps are very cheap and circulate the water fine. As long as the cooker is covered, you have minimal moisture loss since it condenses on the lid and falls back into the cooker. I have done 72 hour cooks with no drop in the water level. You don't need the added circulation of a water pump -- it really won't make a detectable improvement -- very little assistance is needed for the natural convection currents -- and as far as I know the cheapest water pumps that hold up to long-term use at non-aquarium temperatures are quite a bit more expensive than the $5 air pumps that many of us use.

If you are trying to be food safe and are using the tables that various people have produced and shared rather than directly measuring the temperature of the meat that is above the water, knowing the air temperature in the air cavity above the water doesn't help you that much as the heat conductivity of air is radically lower than that of water. All of our sv tables about time to emp are based on the time that it takes a piece of meat to get to a safe temp and the calculations assume that it is immersed in water. Food cooked in 150F water gets close to 150F MUCH faster than food cooked in 150F air.

Follow-up: I recently calibrated the sensor using boiling water (I figure, as a standard, it's closer to cooking temps than ice water is), and my sensor was under-reading by about 2.3F. Huge deal? Maybe. I'll have to do more to see. Inaccuracy of 2.3°F/1.3°C is not quite what we desire. If you do not have an ISO- or NIST-calibrated reference thermometer, you might calibrate your sensor or thermometer in ice-water (no need for distilled water, tap water will do, molecular freezing point depression in tap water is neglectable for our purposes) and in boiling water (taking into account altitude above sea level and barometric pressure; a difference of 40 mBar makes a 1°C difference) and against an ovulation thermometer at 100°F/37.8°C. With temperature stability of ±0.1°C in a PID-controlled water bath (SousVideMagic or immersion circulator) inaccuracy of more than 0.2°C is absurd. See the Wikia article Importance of temperature control on pasteurizing times (0.5°C inaccuracy makes a significant difference in pasteurizing times) and the Wikia article on thermometer calibration: sensors and thermometers are not guaranteed to be linear and equally accurate over the whole range from 0°C to 100°C; 50k thermistors (SVM 1500C and 1500D) are better than 5k thermistors (SVM or Auber 1500A and 1500B). See also the sous vide page in wikiGullet (the sum of accuracy and stability should be ±0.25°C or better for long-time cooking and pasteurizing). I think that it is worth noting that because of the non-linearity that -- depending on the unit -- calibrating with boiling water may be significantly less useful than calibrating to an ovulation or fever thermometer. On my Auber units, I have been told that the response is pretty flat from about 80F to about 150F but that between 150F and boiling there is a loss of accuracy so that calibrating to boiling water could introduce a few degrees of error. It is my understanding that there is more drift from 150F to boiling than there is from 32F to 150F. Best, Edward

I wanted to report on an experiment that I consider to have been a big success. I am a fan of slow smoked brisket -- but I hate having to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning to get it started in time to ready for a late dinner. So, I decided to try an experiment: smoking the brisket for a fraction of the time that I normally would and finishing the cooking sous-vide. I dry-rubbed my brisket (a flat since my butcher didn't have any whole briskets that day) and smoked it over hickory at about 190F for just under 2 hours. I then bagged the brisket using my FoodSaver an put the bag into a 135F bath where it stayed for about 48 hours. The result was succulent and every bit as smoky as my usual 15 hour smoked brisket. If you have a smoker and love brisket, I recommend trying this out.

Perhaps in Austria, you don't have the strains of E. Coli that we have here. When making steak tartare and carpaccio, you are keeping the meat out of the danger zone up until the last minute. When cooking, the food is in the danger zone for a long enough time that you are essentially incubating potentially dangerous microbes. They multiply much faster at higher temperatures. To be safe, even for steak tartare and carpaccio some restaurants pasteurize the meat (it takes only a very brief dunk in very hot water). Unlesse you have also got a problem eating beef tartare or carpaccio, I just don't see why you would do that. I'm with you for not cooking supermarket ground meat at such a low temperatures, though.

Hi Peter, For ground meat, you need to pasteurize the meat. Cooking at 52-53C is not safe for hamburger unless you ground it yourself from intact muscle meat whose external surfaces were pasteurized/sterilized before the meat was ground. If cooking ground meat that was not prepared as above, you need to pasteurize the burgers or else you risk pretty serious illness. At least in the U.S., there are strains of E. Coli that can cause severe long-term damage and/or death. So, I wouldn't recommend burgers that aren't pasteurized. Pasteurizing can be done at 55C if held for the appropriate time and the result is a delicious very pink juicy burger. -E

For what its worth, I have made a lot of hamburgers sous-vide using both my FoodSaver and a ziploc with the air evacuated by water dunking and the results (when served to people who did not know how the meat had been prepared). With the FoodSaver, I pay a bit of attention so that things don't get squeezed too much (I don't know if that is actually necessary, though) and people universally say that they are the best juiciest burgers they have had. I usually make fairly thick patties and cook at 132F till pasteurized and then sear with either my Iwatani torch or in a super hot skillet to create a nice crust. The interior is a nice red/pink and there is nothing chewy about the burgers. I think this makes perfect sense from a theoretical perspective. A hamburger should be loosely held together when carefully formed and has air pockets between the strands of meat. Put it under vacuum and you make a sense puck out of it that won't crumble the same way a loose patty will. I'm sure the myocin protein has something to do with that as well. There is more meat to meat contact so the protein binds more of the meat strands together.

Hi Bob, I think the focus on only the anerobic bacteria and their neurotoxins may be slightly misplaced--especially as relates to the prepration that you initially proposed, (pasteurizing at 131F and then lowering to 120F for a long period), I would be worried about bugs like e. coli, too. -- especially since you are incubating for a long time. If there are any small holes in the meat, you may get transmission of the spores to the interior of the meat where they may germinate and where they will be safe when you sear. My concern is that once cooked in the bag, you have a lot of free liquid in the bag that can serve as a vector of transportation -- so that spores can more easily relocate (something that won't happen if the meat is cooked in an oven outside of a bag). It just seems like an iffy proposition to me to have spores incubating that long. It should also be remembered that pasteurization may not even eliminate all of the living pathogens (especially if there were any holes in the meat) -- it simply reduces the amount to an amount of pathogens to a level that is safe if the meat is consumed on a timely basis. Since you are following the pasteurization by a possible incubation period, you have a somewhat less known state after your 120F cooking than you would otherwise. Anyway, that is my thought. --E This has been a fascinating and very enlightening thread, and I'd like to summarize what I've taken from it, vis a vis the food safety issues: 1. Pasteurizing beef at 131F/55C or higher kills (and keeps killing) all of the vegetative pathogens, so cooking/holding meat at that temperature is safe, virtually forever, although you don't want to overdo it, especially with cuts that are relatively tender to begin with. (We are primarily talking about beef here, and not poultry, and certainly not fish.) 2. Pasteurization does NOT kill the spores of certain harmful bacteria, such as C bot. So reducing the temperature after pasteurization to below 55C would allow those spores to germinate relatively rapidly. In the process, and especially in an anaerobic environment, potentially deadly neurotoxins could be produced. 3. Re-pasteurization at the end of such a process would again kill off any of the bacteria that had germinated from the spores. 4. Fortunately, those same neurotoxins (at least those from C. bot.) are broken down by heat, achieving an 8D reduction after 2 hours at 55C. So IF you re-pasteurized completely, as with Kenneth's pastrami-left-in-the-sink case, you are most likely safe, even disregarding things like nitrates, salt, and pH. However, this is a pretty tortuous and convoluted argument, and I would hate to think that we had overlooked something in the process. So I can't recommend that approach. 5. In any case, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean that the end result is going to taste or smell good. In particular, lactic acid build-up may not be harmful, but I wouldn't want to eat the results. Other possible decomposition (AKA spoilage) by-products could also exist. 6. The reason for proposing this not-very-well-thought-out violation of the standard cook-chill rules was an attempt to SV a relatively tough cut of meat, such as chuck, to make it as tender a possible, while still maintaining a rare degree of doneness. But it appears that the enzymes which help to age and thereby tenderize beef muscle operate at their maximum efficiency at around 120F/48C, and slowly become denatured at higher temperatures, thereby ceasing to be effective any more. So pasteurizing first, and then holding the meat at a lower temperature, as I had proposed, wouldn't do any good from a tenderizing perspective, over and above the complex food safety issues. 7. However, doing it the other way around, with a multi-stage heating approach as suggested in MC, does seem to make sense. The idea here is to SV the meat at around 120F/48C for four hours to promote maximum enzymatic action, and then to increase the temperature to 131F/55C and cook it for as long as seems necessary -- probably 20-24 hours in the case of chuck, or even 48-72 hours for brisket or short ribs, in order to slowly convert the collagen into gelatin -- a process that is primarily controlled by heat and time. 8. If for some reason the meat is not consumed immediately afterwards, either because you were preparing for later reheating, or because there were leftovers, the standard ice-bath discipline should be used to lower the temperature as quickly as possible, to below 4C. This is particularly important in the case of food that has not be exposed to oxygen, because C. bot is an anaerobic bacterium, and can germinate and produce neurotoxins while still sealed in the bag, unless the temperature is reduced to the point where their multiple rate becomes negligible. Did I miss anything?

I have found that with the right popcorn that a heatproof glass container (such as a 2 quart pyrex container) or even one of those Nordicware poppers will work great -- with a bit of added oil. The time/temperature and amount of popcorn will depend on your microwave. When our old microwave died, it took a few tries to find the right settings for our new oven. For either a 2 quart pyrex container or the Nordicware, we put in 3 to 5 tablespoons of popcorn and slightly less olive oil or canola oil than it would take to cover the kernels. You can use less, but we like what the oil brings to the popcorn. Add salt and optionally, garlic powder and/or pinch of sugar and/or pinch of chile pepper. On a high-powered microwave 3/4 power for about 3 minutes is about right. On our old microwave, it took about 3 1/2 minutes at full-power. Stop the microwave when the popping slows down to less than a pop every few seconds -- or your will seriously burn the popcorn. We have (surprisingly) found that Jolly Time yellow popcorn leaves us with the fewest unpopped kernels. Reddenbacker's microwave popcorn works well. The bulk popcorn that we tried didn't work very well. There will be more unpopped kernels than if you do it on the stovetop, but the taste is quite close and it is a lot less work (I am lazy).

Hi Bob, I believe that you are mistaken in thinking that the issue of spores is only relevant to long-term storage under anaerobic conditions. There are both aerobic and anaerobic pathogens that you need to worry about. And you are talking about holding the spores in a growing medium for an extended period of time in the danger zone. To me, that sounds like an opportunity to incubate the spores and have them start growing. Keeping the meat in the high end of the danger zone is more likely to result in growing the spores and having the resulting bacteria multiply than storing unsterile but pasteurized meat for long times in the refrigerator where the multiplication rate is retarded by the temperature. Perhaps, I am mistaken. But I wouldn't risk it without hearing from someone with real expertise because if you are wrong, you could end up being very sorry. Best, Edward