lordbre

You are absolutely right. Proper cleaning might eliminate this problem, however, if you are too concerned about it I can understand that you won't use this type of equipment.

The bath must be at least 20 years old, but it still works fine. Some word to those of you who are thinking about how to set up their equipment. Both of my water baths were from ebay, the first was around 50$, the second around 150$. The latter was unused, thus absolutely safe for food. The given tolerance from the manufacturer is +/- 0.1°C which is absolutely sufficient for cooking SV. I wouldn't bother to look for rice cookers, auqarium pumps and other strange stuff when I can have a precise lab device at such a low cost. And in my experience, the homogeneous cooking results prove that you don't need active cycling water at all (at least in baths this size (6 and 10 liters)).

Just to show you some results of my own experience: My first device was a somewhat ancient 6L bath from GFL: This bath works quite well except the built-in thermometer is not working. I fixed that by using an external thermometer. Fortunately, the thermostat works well. The results were also very nice: Duck breast @62°C for 4 hrs. In August, I got a new water bath: It is a 10L bath from a German manufacturer (Memmert). This one is fairly larger and has digital control which is by far better to operate. This weekend I did a very nice back of a deer (hope this is the right term for it) @59°C for 5 hrs. which came out very nice: The meat was super-tender and absolutely juicy. My guests just rated it as perfect (so did we).

I got this table from wikipedia.org: Term Description Temperature range Extra-rare or Blue (in French, bleu) very red and cold 115–120°F 46–49°C Rare (saignant) cold red center; soft 125–130°F 52–55°C Medium rare (à point) warm red center; firmer 130–140°F 55–60°C Medium (cuit) pink and firm 140–150°F 60–65°C Medium well (bien cuit) small amount of pink in center 150–155°F 65–69°C Well done gray-brown throughout; firm >160°F >71°C Of course, this source may not be that reliable at all, but from my own experience, the temperature ranges given correspond very well with the final results. Just for discussion... P.S: Sorry for the bad formatting

Thanks for your replies. What I did not consider was that putting the in fact cooked meat in the oven will dry it out completely and bring it to well-done, especially because it was a very thin cut. I will keep an eye on that for sure! I prepared the meat myself, it was a very big cut of 2.5 kg with a lot of fat between the muscle meat. I removed most of it because I am not sure, how this fat would influence the taste over such a long cooking time. The cut itself was not marbled at all, so it might also be not the best base for a good SV brisket. Unfortunately, the meat in Germany are is cut quite different from that in the US which also can be a problem... But I should contact a real good butcher for having a cut that is more suited for cooking SV. I still got another of these cuts in the freezer, and will do the following: 1. Prepare it without too much liquids in the bag 2. Maybe lower the temperature to 55 or 56°C. 3. Cook it for full 48 hours. 4. Just torch it and the serve it - I won't try to keep it warm in the oven anymore Of course I am going to give you impressions from that as well! Thanks and have a nice day Markus

Hi all, thanks for the great inspiration you ALL gave me over the past months! I did some experiments with sous vide cooking, and all went fine...until yesterday. I cooked brisket at 57°C for about 40 hours. The meat came out quite nice looking, but after cutting, it looked quite well-done and was very dry to eat. It had a strange consistency which was quite tender but on the other hand quite tough...the taste was good anyway. But overall it lacked the moisture I usually get from meat cooked SV. Some facts to the cut: Thickness between 0.5 and 2 inches, but the result was absolutely homogeneous. Things I can exclude: 1. Water temperature was constant @57°C, I use a lab waterbath with perfect ability to hold temperature. 2. Vacuum bag was intact for the whole cooking process. So here are my questions: 1. What went wrong? 2. I put some frozen beef stock in the bag for marinating - does this matter? 3. After opening the bag, I put the meat in the oven at 90°C for about 5-10 minutes to cook the sauce from the bag liquids - was this the reason for the meat drying out? 4. How come that the meat looked well-done at this temperature? Was the cooking too long (I suppose not). I would be very thankful if you guys could help me out - keep on writing your experience here, it helps GREATLY!!! Markus from Munich