e_monster

Excellent post Pedro. I would like to throw in an additional thought. Unless there is a compelling need to cook at the edge of safety, I think it is wise -- even if you have calibrated your setup -- to give yourself a margin of safety that is beyond the theoretical precision and accuracy of one's equipment. I have had an enlightening email exchange with Suyi Liu -- the designer of the Auber Instruments PID Devices (which were sold by Fresh Meal Solutions as Sous-Vide Magic until late last year) -- in which he explained calibration drift, etc. I will summarize that information in another posting in the next few days. Long story short, these devices can (but may not) experience calibration drift over time -- usually such a drift is fairly small but under certain conditions can be a few degrees -- as can the high-precision thermometers used to calibrate the devices. Because various things can cause your system to drift slightly over time, it is wise when pasteurizing to give yourself some additional margin of error. In most cases, when pasteurizing, this is happening at temperatures and with proteins where cooking at one degree or two degrees higher than the margin should have minimal impact on texture but will have a huge impact on safety. Also, these devices need to be calibrated to a temperature between 65F and 145F or so. Within that range they are (when functioning properly) accurate to less than 1/2 degree Fahrenheit. So, you can't do an ice water or boiling water calibration since those temperatures are well outside the range where the probes operate correctly.

Not all cuts of meat lend themselves to staying low and slow. Cuts that have a significant amount of fat that you want to render need to be cooked at temps above 170 or so for the fat to render. For prime rib, for instance, you would want to trim most of the fat, use a torch before cooking to start the browning and then go low and slow the whole way (Blumenthal does it at something like 130F for 22 hours -- Thomas Keller does it in the mid 200s (Fahrenheit). Cook's Illustrated did an article a long time ago in which they compared different methods and found low and slow was preferred by all their tasters. (You can then torch post cooking to get a crust without disturbing the interior flesh.) For meat that has a lot of fat that needs to be rendered out -- like brisket -- then you need to cook above 170 until the fat renders out. But these techniques don't lend themsselves well to everything -- and any method that gets you the result you want is valid. Any that's just my thought.

At 140F it is fully cooked, very juicy and very tender. If you are slow roasting a chicken it takes a long time getting there, so it is possible that the proteins or some other chemicals in the tissue set differently than if the temperature got to 140F quickly. If you search the web, you will find almost universally that people that execute the recipe as Blumenthal describes are skeptical before doing it and afterwards rave about it.

I realize that conventional wisdom is that pre-searing before bagging amplifies these flavors. But my experience has been that pre-searing has minimal effect if you post-sear. I did a number of blind-tastings of short-ribs and steak where some samples were pre-seared and some were pre and post seared and some only post-seared. I repeated these a few times and consistently post-seared only was preferred. Your mileage may vary or tastes be different, but I have noticed that other people that did blind comparisons found the same thing.

I have used Blumenthal's method three times and they came out amazing. I didn't have any trouble with the skin sticking when frying -- but I didn't leave it in the pan long enough because I was afraid of overcooking it. I had another problem though. I was using a very precise temperature controller to keep the oven at 140F -- and all three times, the bird's temperature stopped rising when the internal temperature hit 125F (which didn't happen until the bird had been in the oven for 6 hours). I eventually had to raise the oven temperature to 170F to coax the bird's internal temperature to 140F. This has happened each time I have used this technique. I wonder if Blumenthal is relying on the temperature cycling that happens in normal ovens when he recommends 140F. (As a test, I let it go 12 hours once at 140F and the temperature still didn't go over 125F). (And, yes, I used several thermometers to ensure that it wasn't a failure on the part of the thermometer). Thoughts anyone? Any ideas on why the temperature would stall like that?

Freezing does not make meat pathogen-free. Bacteria and mold spore are in suspended animation for the most part. Some parasites are killed (which is why when you cook salmon at low temperature you want to use salmon that was frozen and thawed). You should consider frozen meat to be just as likely to be contaminated as unfrozen meat.

While that amount of error obviously isn't optimal, it seems reasonable for our purposes. An error of .4F seems reasonable to me for setting the offset for sous-vide cooking. Even if the error had been .6F that would be reasonable though obviously smaller error would be nice So, the blanket statement that digital fever thermometers are not acceptable for setting the offset does not seem warranted -- unless someone is cooking things were .6F is going to make an important difference. A sample size of two is hardly sufficient to condemn all digital fever thermometers -- especially when we don't know the brand or reputation of the one whose error was great than .4F. Glass fever or basal thermometers are probably generally more accurate and less error prone than inexpensive digital fever or basal thermometers, but I think all but the poorest quality will be within .5F -- and the more reliable digital fever thermometers will be more on the order of .2 to .4F. The more important question is whether our PIDs have a predictable or unpredictable variation regarding offset in relation to absolute temperature. If the variation is predictable, it would be fairly simple to come up with a a formula or graph that would allow one to map from the displayed temperature to the actual temperature within a reasonable margin of error. This would obviate the need to send out the unit to someone to have it calibrated or re-calibrated.

Robert, When you say "I have NOT found the digital fever thermometers to be acceptably accurate", what do you mean by "acceptable". What sort of disparity (in quantifiable terms) did you find? I'd be curious to know the range of error you found -- and to know more about how many brands you tried. What was the standard that you were measuring against?

Interesting article. Thanks for the link. If I read the graph correctly, at temps above 55C the maximum error is less than 1C and doesn't happen until 90C. The non-linearity seems to mostly be in a temperature range where for proteins a variation of 1C isn't going to make a critical difference. For most applications, there won't be much difference between cooking at 75C vs 76C even after many hours. Did you repeat the trials enough times to find the non-linearity predictable? If so, it would seem that one could have an offset table that should have you pretty close. The easiest temperature for most people to calibrate to is in the range of 36C to 38C since very accurate (+-.2C) thermometers can be purchased for less than $20.

I don't think that cooking at 137F would have caused it to be dry. If there was no pink at all, I would wonder if your bath actually ended up being above 137F for enough time to cook the chop at a higher temperature. At 137F, there should be some pink. There are two reasons that I can think of as reasonably possible culprits: 1) Your PID's temperature offset may need calibration. If you haven't calibrated it, do so. It is not unusual for the calibration to be off by a few degrees which is easily fixed. The easiest way to check it is by setting the PID to 100F and then using a digital thermometer made for checking to see if you have a fever and seeing what temperature it reads. Those thermometers are very accurate through a tiny range (something like +- .2F in the range of about 96F to about 108F) and they are usually pretty inexpensive. They are useful for calibrating the PID IF the PID is off by a constant amount through the range in which you will be using it -- and at least with the Auber units I have found that to be the case. If it doesn't read within a half degree of 100 you will want to enter an offset on the PID. My first unit was off by 2 degrees. Since the meat wasn't pink at all, it is likely that the meat spent time about 140F. It has been a while since I cooked pork at 140F but I seem to recall that even at 140 it is at least a little bit pink. (Perhaps my recollection is wrong). 2) Your PID's setup being such that there is temperature cycling going on that you didn't notice. Since it ran for 20 some odd hours, it is possible that the temperature went to 140 or above when you weren't looking and overcooked the meat. There are other explanations but those seem the most likely to me.

Here is my second attempt at using the Iwatani to give a sous-vide steak a nice browning. The steak was cooked to 131F so a deep pink red medium-rare. The picture isn't great but I think that you will see a marked improvement from attempt number one -- which leads me to think that there is an issue of technique. I believe that with more practice the results will get better. This time I decided not to be afraid of burning the steak -- i.e. I would learn more by overdoing it than by underdoing it. So, I cranked up the flame and had it very close to the steak -- to avoid scorching the steak, I kept the torch moving -- going back and forth over the steak. Total time per side was probably on the order of 45 seconds. The mixture adjustment ring was turned all the way counter-clockwise. For the next test, I try the mixture adjustment turned the other way. I will also explore the influence of torch distance. There were a couple of spots that scorched a little bit but that was a failure of attention rather than something unavoidable. My taster gave the flavor two thumbs up.

Since no one has replied to this. I am not sure if the dryness was due to cooking time or your actual chop or how compressed the bag was or how the chop was treated after coming out of the bath. Keep in mind that a piece of meat that is not juicy to begin with won't become juicy via sous-vide cooking. Brining helps enormously with pork and chicken. Even a little bit of a really light brine (let's say 3% to 5%) in the bag can help. Also, over-compression of the bag (as documented elsewhere in this topic) can cause a dry mouth-feel even if the meat isn't technically dry. How did you brown the chop? The method of browning could also influence. Typically being in the bath too long will cause texture issues (like overly soft meat or meat falling apart) rather than dryness per se. At least, that is my experience.

As SLK and I have implied, you can't extrapolate results between different cuts and different kinds of meat (unless, of course, you have a really solid understanding of the similarities of the cuts/meats). There are a few things to keep in mind: 1) Different cuts of meat even from the same animal can have very different characteristics and so the appropriate temperature/time and "forgiveness" vary. 2) Different kinds of meat can be structurally and chemically quite different and so the appropriate temperature/time and "forgiveness" vary. What works for chicken thighs may or may not work for chicken breast and almost certainly won't apply to something very different like short ribs (on one extreme) or file (at another). 3) You need to know what the cooking is intended to accomplish. The temperature/time combination to achieve a particular goal will be different from cut to cut and from type of meat to type of meat. If the goal is to bring meat up to temp -- you need to know how long it can be at temp before it starts to undergo undesired structural changes. The time is different even among tender cuts -- ribeyes can generally stand more time in the bath (though not necessarily benefitting from it) than filets. Some combinations of cut/meat/cooking goal are very forgiving and some aren't. For example, there isn't a huge different in result when cooking a decent quality tri-tip at 133F for eight hours or twelve hours. But a four hour difference in cooking time for some cut/temperatures (like a filet at 133) would make a big difference. Eggs are a perfect example. If you cook an egg at 160F, a difference of just a minute or two is the difference between a perfect yolk and one that has started to set too much. If that was too obvious and simplistic, I apologize. Doug Baldwin's guide covers these issues very well.

With tender cuts of meat, you really don't want to overdo the cooking. You will see this warning over and over in this thread. For some reason, people have the notion that longer is better -- but that is really only for cuts of meat where you need tenderizing. For a tender cut (filet, ribeye, etc. anything over a few hours will start to have an adverse effect. At four hours, it won't be bad but it won't be as lovely as it would have been if it had only been cooked for a half hour or an hour. With filet, I wouldn't leave it for more than an hour (at temps under 133F). When experimenting with getting 'perfect tri-tip', I turned one into a a really unappetizing chunk of flesh by cooking it to long (at 133F). I went something like 36 hours and it looked beautiful but in the mouth it was soft almost to the point of being mushy. To my taste 7 to 10 hours is all a decent tritip needs. So, when deciding on cooking time, it pays to think about the purpose of the cooking. With tender cuts, the goal is to just bring it to temperature. As cuts get tougher, there is also a goal of tenderizing the meat at the same time that you are keeping it at your ideal doneness. And how long that process needs to be will depend on the cut. Tritip is a little tough on its own and so needs more time than tender cuts but nowhere near as much time as tough cuts like chuck, short ribs and brisket.

I have found that poultry skin and fish skin can't really be nicely crisped with the torch -- if someone has had better results I'd like to know their method. For fish (and I have done a lot of experimentation), you are best off removing the skin (the fishmonger should be able to do it free of charge when you buy the fish) before brining and cooking the fish. Then, just before taking the fish out of the water bath, crisp the skin in a hot frying pan with some grapeseed oil or other that has a high smoke point. I then top the fish with the crisp skin when serving. With 116F salmon (which is awesome) it can't spend really any time in a frying pan without losing something.

Paul, Can you give the recipe/proportions of the solution that you recommend? Also, how long do you typically need to leave the steak in the pan for a suitable crust to develop with this method. I plan on doing some more experimentation. I am going to work on the torch technique to see if I can do a better job than I got on the first attempt. It may turn out to be a bust but I am inclined to explore since there are some well-respected chefs that use them.

Here is my first attempt at searing a ribeye with the Iwatani after cooking the steak sous-vide to 128F (on the rare side of medium-rare). It clearly is going to take me some practice to get it so that it rivals what I can do with a pan -- but getting it right in a pan took a lot of practice too. It may be that using a super hot pan will be the best method but I want to work with the torch more before deciding since cleanup is a lot less of a hassle when using the torch. The taste was great and the flavor definitely benefitted from the torching. But the crust is not as nice as when I pan sear (I didn't do any color correction so the colors are a bit washed out -- the meat was a deep red rare-medium-rare):

I think that the flavor and mouth-feel will be best if you go for crust development rather than grill marks. A nice crust contributes a lot to the flavor -- grill marks not so much unless they are scorch marks. If you put it into a medium-hot pan and flame the side that is face up -- I think that you will end up cooking the steak a bit more than you would if you either used a super hot pan for 30 seconds a side or if you use the torch but have the pan at a warm temp rather than hot temp. Because torch searing takes longer than searing in a really hot pan. The reason for having the pan warm (but not hotter than the steak -- is that if you put the steak on a room temperature piece of metal -- it will quickly rob heat from the steak. I, too, have just started working with the Iwatani (which can be had for under $30) to do the searing/crust for steaks. It clearly is going to take me some practice to get it so that it rivals what I can do with a pan -- but getting it right in a pan took a lot of practice too. It may be that using a super hot pan will be the best method but I want to work with the torch more before deciding since cleanup is a lot less of a hassle when using the torch. Here is a nice ribeye cooked at 128F for an hour and then torched with the Iwatani. The taste was great and the flavor definitely benefitted from the torching. But the crust is not as nice as when I pan sear (note that I didn't do any color correction that meat was a deep red medium-rare on the rarish side: By the way, there is a nice kitchen torch thread elsewhere here: Kitchen Torch Recommendations

Just to be clear, you're comparing a Bernzomatic pencil torch to an Iwatani cooking torch? And the Iwatani won? Well, I'll be damned I appreciate your asking for clarification before rolling your eyes. Jut to be clear: NO. The torch I am comparing it to is not a pencil torch. Here is a link 'Pencil flame' just describes the flame shape -- not the size. This torch is a full-sized plumbing torch. It has a powerful but narrow flame -- they are mostly used for plumbing solder. The narrowness of the flame makes it time-consuming to use on anything large. It has the same BTUs as the Berzomatic TS3000 but doesn't have the igniter and regulator in the head and the flame width is a narrow -- I actually don't know that the TS3000 has a different shaped flame -- it might suffer from the same deficit in terms of flame width. Anything more powerful than the Iwatani wouldn't be terribly helpful. As it is the Iwatani is strong enough that you have to take care not to overdo it.

The Iwatani blowtorch is in a completely different class from those gourmet shop creme brulee torches. The Iwatani blowtorch is at least as powerful as the best plumbing propane hardware torch, but in a more compact and kitchen friendly form. I still love mine and use it several times a week. Thanks for the tip about the Iwatani. You are right it really packs a wallop nothing like the gourmet store creme brulee "toys" -- it is almost scary. It is more powerful than my Bernzomatic (I have their basic pencil flame torch that doesn' have an igniter) and quite adjustable (both amount of heat and flame width). The pictures on the web can make it seem deceptively like the little creme brulee "toys" but it definitely is much more powerful than them. I was able to pick one up at a local restaurant supply store for $23 plus $10 for 4 cans of butane. The cans are not Iwatani brand (they are ChefMaster brand -- which seem to be stocked at a lot of stores around here). The people at the store insisted that these butane cans will work perfectly with the Iwatani (despite the warnings on the torch to only use Iwatani brand cans). I did a few tests and these cans seems to work perfectly. I will pick up an Iwatani butane can when I next run across them. (Some asian markets here stock them as Iwatani butane stove burners seem to be pretty popular). I did a little comparison test "carmelizing" (which ended up being closer to burning) and the Iwatani won hands down vs. the Bernzomatic. This was the first time that I detected off-flavors from the Bernzomatic -- which I suspect was related to my adjusting the flame while I was torching the food. I also used it tonight on a nice thick ribeye that I cooked sous-vide for an hour at 128F. As I read through the various threads here and elsewhere about using blowtorches for browning meat, I realize that there are a number of issues that get conflated and influence whether people think that they are useful/appropriate. Since some chefs (Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal) that I really admire and respect (and who I think are very skilled) use blowtorches regularly, I think it is clear that in the right hands an appropriate blowtorch can do wonderful things. A lot of the bad results that people mention can be attributed to some combination of: poor choice of equipment, poorly behaving equipment, poor choice of task for the equipment, and unrefined technique. In the brief time that I have had this torch, I am realizing that it will take time to learn to get optimal results with it (heck... it took me a lot of work to learn to control my stove and pans) and to figure out to what tasks it is well-suited. Using a roofing torch to crisp poultry skin probably doesn't tell us anything about whether a more appropriate torch is useful for browning a tri-tip that was cooked sous-vide. Like Douglas, I have found that torches are more useful for working with beef than poultry -- but I may take another shot at working with poultry in the future once I know this torch better. -- If one is cooking steak sous-vide to achieve a nice rare or medium-rare all they way through, using medium-heat will undo what you achieved by cooking sous-vide. Cooking a steak from scratch using medium-heat you can get an awesome steak that is medium-rare and has a nice crust. But if you leave a medium-rare sous-vide steak in a medium pan long enough to develop a great crust, you will also be cooking more than just the surface of the steak and so you won't get that great effect of nice crust surrounding completely medium-rare meat. In my experience, when you cook a steak sous-vide to achieve medium-rare doneness, you want to use a very hot pan for a brief amount of time to develop the crust. And, yes, you can get it nicely browned without charring the outside in a blazing hot pan. So far, I haven't succeeded in getting poultry skin crisped the way I'd like with a torch -- and it might not even be do-able. But Dave Arnold's example isn't dispositive. The fact that his torch gave off-flavors is an indication that the torch he used isn't appropriate for the task -- whether or not there is an appropriate torch. I'm not giving up on this yet -- but I suspect crisping with oil -- either pour-over the way he did or by putting it in a hot pan with peanut oil (the way Blumenthal does in his In Search of Perfection series) is probably the way to go. Anyway, that was a long way of saying that the Iwatani so far has my thumbs up. Oh, and it feels a lot better in the hand than my propane torch.

That wouldn't work. You need one temperature controller per cooking device. Even with the same brand/model of cookers the response is going to be different enough that the temps would not be reliable -- in complex systems like this small differences in input can result in large differences in output. Not to mention that the power draw would be too much -- even if power draw weren't an issue -- it wouldn't work very well (if at all).

It is not surprising that the settings vary from what is mentioned in the manual. The manual (at least the one that comes with the Auber Instruments version) makes it clear that the settings represent ones that worked for the particular devices that they used and that you are likely to need different settings if you use different equipment. Devices that heat from the side are especially challenging because the weak convection currents results in irregular latency. Adding a bubbler (you don't even really need the airstone) will help. And you should re-auto-tune once you start using the bubbler because it significantly alters the dynamics. Other people's settings may be of limited use unless they are using near identical equipment. The settings they give as the default work almost flawlessly on my Presto Multicooker (which only heats from the bottom) but are far from optimal from any of the 'side-heating' devices that I have tried.

If the auto-tune parameters work -- they aren't as wacky as you think. If you look in the archives, you will see more about this. The manufacturer actually suggests that for some devices, the results will be best if used as P only or a PD device. Usually, the 'wacky' parameters are settings that essentially are PD with an I value that has little influence. It is worth trying it as a P only or PD device and seeing what results you get.

I disagree with the blanket statement that chicken sous-vide needs to be done skin-on. It really depends on what you plan to do with it. Chicken sous-vide does not always require a post-cooking sear. And I have found that if you want crisp skin on the chicken, you will get much better results removing the skin before the chicken goes into the bag and crisping it separately. Crisped after being cooked sous-vide does not yield the same texture and mouth-feel as really nicely crisped poultry skin that hasn't been sous-vided. I love sous-vide skinless thighs or breast sliced and served on a bed of cooked leeks and mushrooms. (NOTE: so that you know where I am coming from, I consider crispy poultry skin to be one of my favorite things to eat).

Douglas, How do these torches compare to the creme brulee torches one sees at places like Williams Sonoma? Is this more high-powered? I can't get a sense from the pictures how this compares size-wise to the little creme brulee torches one sees around. Thanks