PedroG

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If you want to pasteurize starting from frozen, compare Douglas' table 5.8 (pasteurization time from 5°C) and 2.3 (heating time from 5°C)), and if the time in 5.8 is longer than in 2.3 (which is the case up to 50mm thickness), add this difference to the time in 2.4 (heating time from -18°C). To reduce surface contamination, you might consider a short dunk in (almost) boiling water before freezing.

Just season, marinate, rub, vac seal and freeze. No thawing, just from the freezer to the SV-bath, times according to table 2.4 in Douglas Baldwin's Practical Guide.

Thank you, Douglas, for your Egg cooking time table in post #28. I did "perfect eggs" for the first time. The eggs had 14.0-14.5cm circumference, so at 75°C your table recommends 16 minutes. With 16 minutes, to our taste the egg yolk was a bit overdone with just a small creamy center. So I tried 14.5 minutes, the yolk had remained creamy, rather a bit liquid, and the white was also a bit liquid, the eggs easily slided out of the decapitated shells. The third run with 15 minutes resulted in "the perfect egg" to our taste with a sufficiently firm yet soft white and a perfectly creamy yolk. So at 75°C it is really time-critical, and next time I'll start with 1 minute less than recommended in the table. For fast and easy removal of the eggs from the water bath without scalding my hands, I had placed them in an ordinary plastic bag with a few dozen holes punched in it to allow free circulation of water, and suspended on a skewer.

In this video the water temperature must have been 60°C or above, as the Takaje Deluxe is specified to pull 80% vacuum (the Takaje T-43 Pro would pull 90%, it would boil at 46°C). See my table and a post in the main SV topic.

See the discussion in the old SV-topic. A chamber vac may pull 99.9% or better, whereas most clamp type machines pull 80% (some more expensive ones pull 90% like the Lava V300). See also Flash Pickles (Cool Stuff to do with a Vacuum-Sealer, Pt. 1) and Flash pickle with sous vide by casquette. Vacuum infusion can be done in a rigid vacuum container (with a clamp type or a chamber machine), the effect may be enhanced by going through several cycles of applying and releasing the vacuum. Vacuum compression is done by sealing a bag under vacuum (in a chamber machine) and then applying atmospheric pressure by releasing the vacuum.

Take a look at my version of this approach. I didn't care for having all the electronics in a plexiglas box directly over the water bath and wanted to be able to plug in different size heaters and multiple circulators. I spent a few bucks more since the heater is larger and I bought the PID from Canada with relatively high shipping costs. There is also no soldering to be done in my approach. I can have the control box on a counter and the water bath on the floor or in a large sink. I usually put the stock pot in a large sink in the basement and the cooler on the floor. This doesn't need to be in the kitchen at all. I prefer Paul's approach. The Marshalltown 742G Bucket Water Heater plus the cables of the pump and the temperature probe are less bulky on the water surface of the container, allowing to use a cover with only a small notch to prevent evaporation (which is important in LTLT cooking), and the electronics are away from the moisture in the bath. If the aquarium pump should quit service when you cook at 60°C or above, you might consider a heat tolerating pump, see my post in the old SV topic (it's 6V, so you need a power adaptor). And as Paul stated, you are more flexible with the PID-controller in a separate box. As for the temperature probe, I should recommend one with a long mantle tube, so the junction with the cable does not have to be submersed.

The discussion is continued in The Food Saver/Vacuum Sealer Topic 2011

Pedro, Thank you for the link to the guide for tuning a PID. It is the first time I have seen such a lucid and comprehensive article on this subject. My big cooler has been working just fine but now I will fine tune it according to the article. Hi Paul, Thank you for the flowers, which I pass on to the main author Frank Hsu and the other co-authors Robert Jueneman and Peter Black. The authors might eventually work on an updated version of the PID tuning guide. If anyone has any suggestions, please PM me. BTW: is your big cooler really 75 liters? Regards Pedro

One of these days we had duck breast. After SV (8h at 58°C/136°F) I dabbed dry and air-dried the cross-hatch-incised skin with a 2000W heat gun (550°C/1020°F only, which I normally use for shrink sleeving), then seared in smoking hot rice bran oil. The skin was acceptably crisp, but maybe not as crisp as it would be when treated separately (which I never ried so far). Robert Jueneman reported an allegedly 732°C/1350°F heat gun to be insufficient for crusting a ribeye steak in less than five minutes per side, whereas with an Iwatani blowtorch it took him one minute, and in smoking-hot rice bran oil it takes 30 seconds. But skin-on poultry is of course the contrary of nonfat cooking, and thus strictly speaking off-topic. Well, nonfat is IMO good for Weight Watchers and rather not for foodies.

I just tried bagging some water, and yes, your method works. Thanks for the tutorial. It is a bit tricky, as the tubing attachment must be lifted out from its holder to regulate the vacuum, but I am confident that with some practice one could get excellent results. I have another idea concerning sous viding liquids - I wonder weather using a sealed and vacumed glass jar holding the liquid inside the cooker would work. The takaje valve would make this possible, and it would greatly simplify the sous viding of creme anglaise for instance, and the jar could be re used. Also Pedro I have to thank you for suggesting a Weck canner for a possible vessel. Encouraged by you and Dougal's post about his experiences with his Lidl cooker http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=129877&view=findpost&p=1761768 I bought a Clatronic EKA 3338 http://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/2136208_-eka-3338-clatronic.html which seems to be the same model, I have been using it in the last few days paired with a SousVideMagic 1500D, and the setup shows lots of promise indeed. I shall report about it in more detail in the sous vide equipment topic. Regards: drago Drago, I continue the part of the discussion not concerning the Food Saver topic here in the main SV topic. Of course you can use glass jars to heat liquids in a sous vide water-bath, this makes a high-precision bain-marie. For solid food it will work only if you cook the food in liquid, this makes presicion braising. I am looking forward to your report on the Clatronic EKA 3338 canner. When you try to find optimal PID-tuning values, you may consider the paragraph I contributed to Frank Hsu's PID Tuning Guide:

I got a Takaje vacuum sealer as a Christmas present; I think this might be the machine you are looking for. http://www.takaje.it/?page_id=88 It comes with valves, which can be applied to jar lids, and the machine has an attachment for sucking the air out of the jars. They are also selling bottle plugs, and vacuum boxes, but I have no experience about those (yet). It works very well, tough I have only been using if for a couple of weeks. Hi Drago, welcome to eGullet! And thanks for the link, very interesting machine. Can you regulate the vacuum via the built-in external-vacuum-tube, as shown in my post on sealing liquids? Some links on the takaje homepage do not work, so here are some useful links: Takaje catalog Valves for jar lids Vacuum box Bags at a reasonable price (100 pcs./package) Video showing machine and accessories Regards Pedro

Sealing liquids is possible with clamp-type machines. Other members stated this long ago. I did nod manage to do so at first, but now I have learned the trick. It does not work with fully-automated machines that have no "seal"-button and no external vacuum-port. Place the machine in a way that the bag can hang down vertically. Place the adapter on the external vacuum-port (without the tubing). When you start vacuuming, air will enter through the external vacuum-port, so almost no vacuum is built up. By closing the port with your finger, vacuum will rise and so will the liquid in the bag. Before the liquid approaches the sealing bar, reduce vacuum by lifting your finger, and press the seal button. Make a second and eventually third seal in case the first one should not be perfectly tight. In fact, a chamber vacuum machine is not necessary for sous-vide cooking, it would be an overkill. If you need 99.9% vacuum e.g. for boiling/reducing at room temperature or for extreme vacuum-compression, go for a chamber machine. If you will go far beyond 10'000 bags, you might eventually eventually recoup the higher price for a chamber machine by the lower costs for the bags. If you have bad experiences with Food-Saver, there are other brands on the market. I bought my Magic Vac Elite 11 years ago, and it is still going strong.

As you don't have sous-vide equipment, you might try the water-pot in an oven method. Recently I did turkey breast steaks, brined overnight in 7% NaCl / 3% sucrose, bagged with marinade and mustard (it remained 3 weeks at 1°C/34°F), cooked SV 1h at 60.5°C (sufficient to pasteurize), dabbed dry and seared in 200°C/392°F rice bran oil for 1 minute. It came out tender, juicy and succulent.

I did chicken breast filets several times, usually bagged with marinade and mustard, cooked at 60.5°C/141°F* for the time needed to pasteurize according to Douglas Baldwin's tables, and seared in almost smoking-hot rice bran oil. They came out fork-tender and juicy every time, even when dropped directly from the freezer into the water-bath. Once I injected them with coconut oil (see http://egullet.org/p1690291), and they came out even more juicy. An accompaniment I like very much is the bell pepper and onion relish Douglas Baldwin describes in his cookbook p.75. * I prefer 60.5°C to 57.5°C because cooking time for pasteurization is about halved, avoiding drying out and mushiness from longer cooking times while avoiding toughness from higher temperatures.

Sorry Pedro, my off the cuff comments were not based upon a rigorous test of the setup. I built it in November and have no idea what the starting temperature was or how full the containers were and did not record the times for a scientific analysis. I immediately came to the conclusion that it would be easier on the heater and circulator to start with hot water and use the system to top off the temperature, which I have done every time since. Thank you for your table. It is certainly instructive and will be indispensable if hot tap water is not available. Hi Paul, if your gallons happened to be quarts, the laws of physics would apply. Or do you really cook in a 75-liter-cooler? Regards Pedro

My 1000W bucket heater does heat up my stock pot in about 10 minutes and my 20 gallon cooler in 30 minutes. I find it a lot faster to fill them with hot tap water and then let the heater finish the job. My hot tap water is 50C so I can get going right away. you can see my setup on page 137 of the new index or go to my sous vide cooker. I used a 20 amp SSR which will handle two of these heaters and could probably keep a bathtub at the set point if I wanted to do something that big!! The PID pulses the heater as it reaches the SP and I have seen no overrun at all in either container. Once it reaches the SP the pulses drop off to one or two every few minutes. I wonder how fast your system is ramping up. Cheating physics?? According to my calculations a 20 gallon cooler (about 75 liters) would take almost 3 hours to heat from 22°C to 55°C, and your 5-gallon-stockpot (19 liters) would take nearly 45 minutes. My 2000W FreshmealsMagic takes about 20 minutes to heat 15 liters from 22 to 55°C, and my 400W VEGA stockpot takes 3/4 hours to heat 7-8 liters from 22 to 55°C, which is in accordance with the theoretical calculations. Of course in reality the heating curve flattens with rising temperature as a consequence of heat loss. Click the image to enlarge.

Utilization of meat leftovers from sous-vide cooking Sometimes when you buy a nice cut of meat, your eyes are bigger than your and your beloved's stomach. So what to do with the leftovers? In Tyrolia (Austria) they make a "Gröstl", in Solothurn (Switzerland) they make a "Gnusch", in the Seftigenamt (a region in the Swiss canton Berne) they make a "Gmüder", and we (Pedro and SWAMBO) make a varying concoct using ideas from all of the three. We call it "Gröstl", but it is not necessarily a typical Tyrolean Gröstl, and it is different each time, and we usually do not top it with a fried egg as they do in Austria. Ingredients All your meat leftovers Onion (compulsory) Any hard vegetable (we prefer celery stalks, or zucchini) Any salad (iceberg lettuce or endive/chicory or any other salad leaves, may contain carrot julienne) Fried potatoes, or alternatively sweetcorn kernels Sherry or wine or bouillon or the gravy you preserved from your last LTLT.cooked meat for simmering (I usually prefer Sherry) Eventually some cream (or crème fraîche) Salt, pepper, parsley, caraway seeds (typical for Tyrolean Gröstl), paprika, condiment (in Switzerland we use "Aromat" by Knorr, which contains sodium chloride, sodium glutamate, lactose, starch, yeast extract, vegetable fats, onions, spices, E552)' vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil) Mise en place cut your meat in small cubes or slices cut the onion(s) not too fine (place the first cut below your tongue to avoid tearing during cutting) cut the vegetables about 3-4 mm thick cut the salads to pieces smaller than 4 cm, distribute on the cutting board and season deliberately cut the potatoes to 1 cm cubes place 3 heavy skillets with ample oil on the stove Cooking in skillet 1, stir-fry the onions, add the hard vegetables still stir-frying, add salad, add sufficient liquid (Sherry or wine or bouillon or gravy) for simmering under a cover until soft. If desired, reduce heat and add some cream at the end. in skillet 2, stir-fry the potatoes until soft (in case of sweetcorn kernels, add to skillet 1 after stir-frying and use skillet 2 for skillet 3) in skillet 3, as soon as the vegetables and the potatoes are soft, sear the meat in just smoking oil for 30-60 seconds, then add to skillet 1 Serving You may mix the potatoes with the vegetables and meat to make a rather typical Gröstl, or serve the fried potatoes separately; we prefer the latter, as the potatoes stay more crunchy. Do not forget to serve a glass of good dry red wine!

OK, I posted another recipe (Ossobuco SV). Previewing unchecks the tag, so before clicking "add reply" the Modernist tag has to be checked again. Chris: what about hierarchical tags? E.g. "Modernist" includes "Sous Vide", but "Sous vide" shows only "Sous Vide". Hitherto I used to post my recipes in the Sous Vide Wikia, but I will let the Sous Vide Wikia RIP because it remained a one-man-show and because Wikia staff took the Monaco skin away from us and forced the "New Look" upon us which makes articles carefully formatted under the Monaco skin look ragged.

For short cooking times like e.g. bringing frozen fish to 45°C/113°F or the like, I don't even use a beer cooler, I just fill the kitchen sink with warm tap water, check the temperature from time to time and adjust with a little hot water. But I would not use a simplified method for very temperature-critical cooking.

Thank you, Nathan and Douglas, for your very comprehensive posts! A really outstanding start into the new topic. What kinds of meat will benefit from aging / conditioning? If memory serves me, it is recommended for beef, but not so much for veal or pork. What about lamb? Poultry?

Olla podrida sous vide Origin Not rotten pot, but mighty or rich pot! Originated in 16th century Spain, olla poderida became olla podrida and was falsely translated into French as pot-pourri. Ingredients For two servings * 100g Brisket well marbled, cooked SV 48h/55°C, large dice † * 100g Pork meat well marbled, cooked SV 24h/55°C, large dice † * 100g Lamb chops without bone, cooked SV 4h/55°C, large dice † * 100g Chicken breast, cooked SV 2h/58°C, large dice † * 100g Chorizo, sliced approximately 4mm † * 125g Chickpeas (garbanzos), soaked overnight in water † * 1 Onion chopped medium-fine † * ½ Savoy cabbage approx. 200g cut into pieces, thick leaf veins removed * ½ Celeriac approx. 200g quartered, sliced about 2mm * 2 Carrots sliced approximately 120g about 3mm * 1 Leek approximately 20cm / 100g sliced about 5mm * Extra virgin olive oil * Rice bran oil * Dried parsley qs, aromatic, black pepper † Beef, pork, lamb and chicken (or at least two kinds of meat) as well as chorizo, chickpeas and onions are mandatory ingredients, other vegetables vary according to desire and availability. Cooking Boil chickpeas in water for 30-60 min. Sauté onions in olive oil, add chorizo, continue sautéing, add chickpeas including its cooking water, add remaining vegetables, cover and cook to the desired softness, stir from time to time. If additional liquid is needed, you may add Sherry instead of water. Reduce heat. Season to taste. Add parsley. In a heavy skillet, sear the meat dice in just smoking hot rice bran oil (very high smoking point allows very quick sear, not overdoing the center of the meat). Sear one kind of meat at a time and transfer to the pan with the vegetables.

Qwerty, I think the tables in Douglas Baldwin's Practical Guide are a very good and practical compilation. For bringing your tender proteins to the desired core temperature (which fully depends on your taste) in a fool-proof way, you have to measure the thickness, see here and here ("cheat sheet") and here (thickness ruler version 2). When dealing with roasts which are rather cylinders than slabs, take into account the geometrical factor, see the tables Douglas Baldwin posted here; in short, cooking times for cylinders are slightly more than half the times for slabs. The cooking times in Douglas Baldwin's cookbook seem to be appropriate for cuts of "usual" thickness. For tenderizing tough meat, see the many suggestions in the index post #5 ff. There are two ways of gelatinizing collagen: 1. Enzymatically below 60°C/140°F (it may take 12 to 72h hours depending on the kind of meat). Be aware that by this method, very thick tendons or other thick chunks of connective tissue may escape gelatinization, as the enzyme collagenase originates from the muscle fibers and may not penetrate thick layers of collagen. 2. Thermally at temperatures slightly below 80°C/176°F, which can be achieved by traditional braising as well instead of sous vide. Temperatures above 80°C/176°F should be reserved for vegetables, as meat is turned into cardboard at these high temperatures.

See http://egullet.org/p1744686 and http://egullet.org/p1777743 -> you get better than ±0.1°C stability at much lower cost than an immersion circulator.

PID-tuning With the new 1500D controllers from FMS, up to Software version R4 the P-band could only be set in integer degrees; P=0010 meant P=10°C (or F). This was of no concern with rice cookers (well-insulated with high power and high thermal inertia) which required very large P-bands like 10°C (P=0010) to avoid overshoot, but with less well insulated, lower wattage cookers requiring very narrow P-bands, this used to be a disadvantage. Especially with the FreshMealsMagic (high power, poor insulation with the original polycarbonate container, and very small thermal inertia as a consequence of the heating element being immersed in the water) the P-band could not be set low enough to provoke oscillation, so typical closed-loop-tuning was not possible. Now finally with software version R5, the P-band can be set in decimals, i.e. P=000.5 means P=0.5°C. Here are some results of stability measurements with an FMM controlled by a SVM 1500D with software version R5: With a very large P-band, excellent stability is achieved, which gradually deteriorates with smaller P-bands; from P=0.5 to P=0.2 there is a discontinuity in the relation of P-band and stability, so with P=0.2°C there is obvious oscillation. I use P=20°C to have an ultra-stable bath for sensor calibration purposes, but not for practical cooking. The following two test runs with P=0.5°C and P=0.6°C show that with a fast-reacting cooker (FMM) running the PID-controller in P-only mode (zero integral term and zero derivative term) is sufficient to have fast ramping up, low overshoot, good stability and fast disturbance recovery, obviating the need to bother with further tuning on integral and derivative terms. P=0.5°C makes an extremely fast and responsive system with almost no negative offset at the price of only fair stability (±0.09°C, which is still far better than the ±0.4°C Douglas Baldwin mentions in his guide with a PID-controlled steam table water bath). P=0.6°C makes an almost equally responsive system with excellent stability (±0.04°C, which equals the stability of a circulating laboratory water bath mentioned by Douglas Baldwin in his guide) at the price of a 0.1°C negative offset. The third diagram shows the much slower disturbance recovery with classical PID-settings after auto-tuning. Finally, I tried to find optimal PID-parameters for a 1500D/FMM combo with the lowest P (P=1°C) that can be set in 1500D version 1 up to version 4: P=1°C, I=1800 sec, D=6 sec, Ar=30% yields no overshoot, very fast disturbance recovery und very good stability (±0.06°C). See the fourth diagram below. “Ar” is a parameter that mitigates integral action to avoid overshoot. With rice cookers, large P-bands are necessary to avoid overshoot; this results in considerable negative offset necessitating correction by an integral term and in slow disturbance recovery necessitating a derivative term to counteract disturbance. Optimal tuning of a rice cooker is obviously much more tedious than tuning an immersion heater like FMM. P=0.5°C makes an extremely fast and responsive system with almost no negative offset at the price of only fair stability (±0.09°C): P=0.6°C makes an almost equally responsive system with excellent stability (±0.04°C) at the price of a 0.1°C negative offset: The following diagram of a test run with PID-settings after auto-tuning shows much slower disturbance recovery and more overshoot: The last diagram shows no overshoot, very fast disturbance recovery und very good stability with P=1°C, I=1800 sec, D=6 sec, Ar=30%.