TdeV

@rotuts, are you cooking the chicken breast first, then cut, flavour and re-heat? Or cut raw chicken breast, flavour and freeze?

I use the controllers with the slow cookers (no water bath) and am able to make whole meals that way . . . but it's still an issue finding "whole meal" food that cooks at the same temperature.

Yes! The truth is that i'm really interested in using Sous Vide to cook a whole meal. So tell me about that, if you please. If you should happen to casually drop the number of devices you have, well and good. Just to fess up, I have two slow cookers with two controllers. Bought because I really wanted to be able to cook two things. I'm thinking, however, of adding an inexpensive immersion cooker, because I want to be able to Sous Vide salmon and my two slow cookers don't have any water swirling action. So, that would put me up to three devices.

@Anna N, I never use Sous Vide as a way of cooking a whole meal. This is a very interesting idea! For me I usually Sous Vide the meat portion (between 132F and 165F, depending on cut). Douglas Baldwin says dried beans, for example, should be done at 185F, though my recent experience would suggest 202F for 10+ hours. (Fresh dried beans, bought last summer from the Farmers' Market). How many Sous Vide devices do you have?

it seems that most pork I do SV is at 131F, with pork shoulder at 135F.

I also was bitterly disappointed with Thomas Keller's Under Pressure. I too frequently refer to Douglas Baldwin's Sous Vide for the Home Cook. Mostly to check temperature and times. Can't say that I frequent his recipes. The biggest problem is that I can't stand his index. I'm having an interesting time converting Paula Wolfert's recipes so I cook the beans and veg in the tagine (with home-made lamb stock ice cubes) and the lamb itself in the sous vide. Of course, I can't stand her index either. I've also just bought your recommended The Complete Sous Vide Cookbook by Chris McDonald, so I'll let you know how that goes.

@Anna N, what do you think of this book? How does it compare to Douglas Baldwin's book?

Wikipedia defines pork wings as: a pork product made from the fibula of a pig's shank - a single bone surrounded by lean, tender meat. Images from the internet look like a finger-size bit of meat around a bone. Mine, however, look more like the meat (lots) which surrounds a bone. My butcher called this cut pork wings. You can see on the right that there's a small amount of bone. My butcher said he regularly ate SEVERAL of these. But this one measures 15 oz (425g). He also said it had to be cooked slowly. So, if I cook these sous vide, what temp and for how long?

The globe tea strainer that I have doesn't seem fine enough for the powdery black salt. Tonight, I used a spoon. Carefully. One interesting factoid I discovered is that a tiny, tiny sprinkling of salt doesn't taste like much.

It's very very finely ground already. No further grinding required. Just a smidge of that fine-ness gives a superb flavour. I want to be able to "dust" the top of food. Delivery by an ordinary spoon requires care and precision and one is likely to end up with too much. Oooh. Maybe I need a tiny, tiny spoon. I have a measuring spoon which is 1/64th of a teaspoon. Maybe something like that. And the pig. @KennethT, know where I can find a very fine strainer?

I bought some very fine black salt at King Arthur Flour's suggestion and carefully dusted the top of chocolate cookies. According to the main recipient of the cookies, they were the finest chocolate chip cookies he had ever eaten. My husband has decided to remove salt from his diet and this has me missing that tang. I'd like to put some of the black salt on the table, but I can't think of an easy way to dispense it. When I did the chocolate chip cookies I practised several times and then concentrated carefully, but even then, dusted some cookies overmuch. Can you think of some vehicle which will deliver a fine layer of powder?

@Kenneth, this sounds great. I'll plan on having another duck soon so I can try this!

@gfweb, this was reminiscent of the flavour of Pork Skins Chips and I don't much like their taste. Wonder if there's any way to fix that? BTW, I really like nice crisp duck skin when it's on the duck. Not so much on the next day's leftovers. (Makes me eat up all the visible duck skin the night of the duck feast!) Doesn't help what to do with the duck skin when it's been removed from the bird though.

This is what the skin looked liked crisp. I have to say that I don't think much of the flavour. (I didn't put any spices on it). I cooked it for 40-60 minutes starting at 400F then down to 325F (I wasn't watching). Did I cook it too long?

I have separated the breast from the rest of the duck and vacuum-sealed it for sous vide tomorrow. The rest of the bird is in the oven in a Romertopf with a splash of pink wine. But I left the skin behind. How do I cook this to make it crisp? This is a stainless steel cookie sheet with the skin on it. Then a second sheet stacked on top to keep the skin flat. Will this work? How long? And at what temperature? I didn't scrape the skin clean of fat. Should I have?

This discussion reminds me that I have a jar of sour cherries in the pantry. And I have a just-thawed duck in the fridge. Yum, yum!

Here are Douglas Baldwin's "Sous Vide For the Home Cook" suggestions Loin roast Rare, unpasteurized 125F (50C) 2-2.5 hours Medium-rare 130F (55C) 3-3.5 hours Medium 140F (60C) 2-2.5 hours Loin, boneless Rare, unpasteurized 125F (50C) 1-1.5 hours Medium-rare 130F (55C) 2.5-3 hours Medium 140F (60C) 1.5-2 hours Leg, boneless Medium-rare 130F (55C) 24 hours Medium 140F (60C) 24 hours Me, I often have bone-in, so you need more time to make sure that the heat gets into the meat. You can find out a lot about sous vide lamb from this site, including the whys and wherefores of long cooking times (search in upper right).

Hi @bonkboo, Leg of lamb is a cut which benefits greatly from long slow cooking. I have had tremendous results with 3 days @ 145F. You don't have enough time to do that and get the dish ready for Christmas. Start the dish immediately!

Thanks @paulraphael, I have the SousVide Dash app but I don't have much experience using it. I see I'll have to do my homework! Tonight I heated the water to 118F. Added the bagged salmon and some boiling water. Thought that I added too much hot water, so I added some cold. Thought I added too much cold, so poured in some more hot. Temp settled down to about 116F, eventually getting back to 118F. Cooked the bag for 22 minutes. Just divine. Now I have some halibut to try. And some spot prawns. The halibut is over 1" thick so I'll have to adjust my ideas a bit. Any ideas about time and temp?

I like the idea of using a kettle to heat the water back up. I just did a several days long test of the controller which was quite accurate. I'm not sure about the 124F either!

When do you start counting the time in sous vide cooking? - when you first put the plastic bag into the heated water? Or, - when the heated water comes back to the desired temperature? I have a 7 quart slow cooker with an Auber instruments controller. There is nothing to circulate the water, but it has never proved to be a problem for me before. Sous vide fish is a new activity for me. After much research I planned 119F for 20 minutes, though in future I'll try one degree lower each time. My first experiment was salmon tail and it was the most delightful salmon I have ever eaten. Water heated to 119F. Added marinaded fish in a ziplock-type bag which had been removed from the fridge not long before, and I used the sous vide water to push the air out of the ziplock bag. Temp dropped enormously (but I don't recall exactly) and it took 15-20 minutes to get back up to 119F. Then I cooked for 20 further minutes. Second experiment was salmon tail and it was as boring as I usually find salmon. I took the marinaded fish out of the fridge 1 hour or 1 1/2 hour before it went into the sous vide pot. I used lukewarm water in bowl in sink to remove air from ziplock. When the fish was dropped in, the temp dropped to 113F. I was not as anxious watching the temp rise this time, so I didn't check it every few minutes. Somehow the water got up to 124F. In both these cases I used a soup bowl in the sous vide pot to hold the fish under water. So, short of buying some new sous vide equipment, could you advise me about things I could do to minimize the temperature drop and maximize my control over the fish.

@daveb, well, it was a lot of research over a year ago here on egullet; I could determine what it was if you really want to know. I started this cooking cycle with the conclusion I should do the leg at 131F for 30 hours, and then I looked at my notebook and upped it to 145F. In this case the meat came out fine (no off bacteria). Next time I've got a smaller piece of meat I'll try a lower temperature

@btbyrd, so how does this relate to the need to give large-slabs-of-meat-to-be-cooked-at-low-temp a dipping in boiling water to kill off surface bacteria?

Will the 70 second dunking (after 2.5 hours sous vide) kill all those bugs?

@Anna N, I was wondering about that . . .