NY_Amateur

Have you personally used this torch? Have you noticed any off flavors? That's really my only concern but that combined with the not cheap price of 50-70 dollars makes me a bit wary. If you (or someone else) have cooked with these with no ill effect, I will be all over it like a hobo on a hot dog. Thanks!

Can someone please recommend a torch for searing after sous viding? I was under the impression that propane was a no-no because of off flavors it may leave but I did see a torch in the WD-50 kitchen on a recent visit there so I am not sure about this. A specific torch model please, that is actually usefull for searing multiple steaks or whatever. I have a mini butane torch now and it works well but it can take 2-4 minutes to properly sear a steak and makes serving more then myself difficult. Should I just go to home depot and get a generic propane torch?

Which brine do you recommend? what were the major differences?

I also just got a circulator on ebay. My advice is to clean the heck out of it when you get it. I did this by a) boiling water in it b) scrubbing the heck out of it c) putting hot water and bleach in it to sit for two hours, d) boiling water in it again e) hot water and Citranox f) boil it water in it again for a few hours. Rinsing between each step. This may be a little paranoid but I think its better then getting some nasty bug. That foodsaver is what I have and I love it so far does everything I ask it to.

So here is some information that would be good to keep in mind while doing something like this with a non chamber vac. Sugar (and salt and other things) lower the freezing point of water. If you freezer is like mine and does not do a great job freezing things you may wish to mix marinades with out these additives. I made Kalbi marinated short ribs (and if anyone wants to critique my recipe its a small variation on Dok Suni's here). I use half a kiwi along with one small clove of garlic finely chopped and no wine for four packages of 1lb each (I didn't have any but if I did I would just cook off the alcohol first, chalk it up to laziness). Long story short this meant my marinade never froze and I had to get them into the water soon as 36 hour ribs were becoming 34 or less hour ribs, so I had to just pour it in semi gelled and hope for the best (I have a foodsaver). I think that if I had mixed the soy sauce, oil, garlic, and kiwi separately or maybe even leave out the kiwi and the garlic it would have gone a lot smoother.

That's what I figured but you never know, maybe someone has a high pressure test chamber to play around with.

Ok now it all makes sense when its laid out like that, thank you very much for that. Now the question is to figure out how much difference that 3psi makes. On a somewhat related note the NYT article on Thomas Keller / Sous Vide (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/magazine/14CRYOVAC.html) mentions that the watermelon is "cryovacked" at 20 pounds per square centimeter. Besides the odd mix of imperial and metric this works out to be something like 129 PSI which is a little over 9 atmospheres. 14.7 PSI however works out to be 2.27 pounds per square centimeter which makes some sense, misplaced decimal becomes 22.7 rounded down to about 20 for the average reader. I am not aware however of a vacuum chamber sealer that can also pressurize the chamber, do such things exist and are they ever used? Or is this just a case of something being lost from spoken to written. EDIT: One more question, hopefully I will be contributing soon instead of just asking. I made striped bass the other day and it was well cooked after 25 minutes at ~47 C (using a pot on the stove for this so there was significant temperature fluctuations) but not at all flaky, instead it was much more meaty. Was this a function of the fish or cooking method?

I have read this entire thread at least twice now as well as learned about as much as I can about sous vide on the internet and I still have quite a few questions that I would like to pose to the community. Any help would be appreciated. It's interesting what you think you know versus what you actually know when you start cooking this stuff, I had the chance to try compressed watermelon and I asked the chef how inches of mercury his machine pulled when he compressed it and then I found out that modern machines are measured in millibars (close to a full vacuum, 20 millibars, about 29.33" of Mercury or .59" depending on you count), so needless to say I have a lot to learn and look forward to doing so. Once I tried the compressed watermelon I noticed that it tasted about the same as the watermelon I compressed at home and so I am curious as to whether or not the extra vacuum is worth it. Once I figure out how to post images on here I will upload the photos I took of the watermelon I compressed if anyone is interested. It was interesting that the physical size did not shrink at all but I emailed Ideas In Food about that and Alexander replied that the compression is at the cellular level, I assumed this would lead to macro scale compression but apparently not. That may be helpful for someone trying to replicate this in an edge sealer like mine. Can anyone confirm for me the difference in compressed watermelon (or other soft fruits) at varying levels of vacuum? Is the difference noticeable between say 300 millibars, 200 millibars, 150millibars, 100, ~0? FYI I got a vacuum guage and measured the aux port on my foodsaver v2840 to be pulling approximately 200 millibars or 23" of Hg. I had read that someone said theirs could pull 65mb (is that the right way to abbreviate that?) which is ~28". Secondly, I just got an old but working Lauda B and will be cleaning that tonight/tomorrow so I am excited to try some of the longer cooking recipes as well as those requiring more precise temp control than what I can realistically achieve with a pot on the stove. But for the cleaning, is it safe to circulate 80% isopropyl /citranox/bleach? or should i just soak it in these wonder substances for a while? I plan on doing at least the bleach and the citranox, can anyone else recommend things to use? Third, I have designs to build an at home vacuum chamber for significantly less then a professional one, this will probably end up terrible and I will have to make do without it but my main question is, is a bag in a closed impulse sealer able to be vacuumed in a chamber or is the seal tight enough (on the impulse sealer when closed but not sealing) to make this unfeasible? Again thanks to everyone who has posted in this thread as you have been immeasurably helpful especially DouglasBaldwin, NathanM and Pounce!