turtleboom

Thanks for the responses. I've just found out the power was likely to have been out for about an hour, but could have been as long as 3 hours (power was restored to different parts of our neighbourhood at different time, the power company can't provide exact details). I think I'll err on the side of caution this time. Our power is generally very reliable, and I don't cook overnight very often, so this is a pretty rare event. Edit: Just read DocDougherty's response. Thanks for the info. The core was above 60C for over 16 hours. Maybe I'll reconsider my decision. Thanks. Thanks again.

Hi, Hopefully someone can help out with a bit of a problem I have. I'm cooking short ribs for 48 hours @60C. When we went to bed at 11pm, the bath was working nicely at 60C. This morning, my wife woke up at 5:30am and discovered that we had a power outage overnight. When she woke up, power had been restored and the sous vide rig was at 60C (I use a Sous Vide Magic and rice cooker - it automatically restarts when power is restored). We're trying to find out how long the outage was, to estimate how much the water temperature would have dropped during the blackout. The short ribs had been in the bath for over 24 hours before the power was cut. How can I tell if they are safe to eat? What temperature can the bath drop too before I have to throw them away? Thanks.

I recently bought this booked based on the discussion in this thread. The book is definitely a bit of a stretch for my abilities but there are a lot of achievable recipes. The only thing we've cooked so far is the salmon with bois boudran sauce. This was only the second time that I've cooked fish sous vide, and the first for salmon. Generally I don't pay too much attention to how long something has been in the water bath for - provided the centre has been brought up to temperature. I took the same approach with the Salmon. Heston says 50 degrees for 15 minutes. We did 51 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. The salmon was still moist and not overcooked, however it was falling apart which made searing the skin very difficult. In the end, our skin wasn't at all crispy. Next time I'll follow the instructions a bit closer. The sauce is pretty intense. By itself, I was really worried that we had wasted our time with it. However, it matched wonderfully with the salmon. Heston suggests 2 tablespoons of sauce per serve and I would definitely not exceed that. We were also a bit concerned about the crushed potato side. You boil the potatoes with garlic until they are quite soft, then crush them, then mix with a whole pile of herbs, a mustard and vinegar dressing and some lightly sautéed shallots. Our concern was that it would have the texture of lumpy mashed potato. We thought about popping it under the grill for a few minutes to give it a bit of crunch. In the end, the texture was a bit weird, but the flavours were amazing. Probably one of the best potato dishes we've ever made. The whole thing was probably one of the best dishes to come out of our kitchen!