agent00F

You'll be ok. You might want a finer grind just to make sure the end texture is uniform (to prevent that aforementioned problem with bits from different areas). You might want to experiment first with some store sausage to get an idea of what you'll get.

The OP is presumably cooking this right after making it or it's coming out of the fridge. It's a matter of few hours at most esp when immersion temp is 70degC. Those super-paranoid can run the thermal transfer equations against bacterial reduction curves themselves. If this is dangerous then the time it takes for sausage to cool down from manufacture to refridgerated temps (by air not liquid) is far more so, yet we don't have the same complaints forcemeat is inherently dangerous unless flashfrozen.

Meat tends to hang out in the open much more than consumers realize, and the inside of a vacu-sealed bag tends to be pretty sanitary. I suspect it's the same crowd that's reluctant to leave the house for fear of ebola.

> Just out of curiosity, is ramping the temp over time somehow more risky with sous vide No, the sous-vide technical crowd just tends to be more paranoid about this sort of thing. If you're cooking to 160 for more than couple hours, there's no need for probing. You can try 150 to retain some of that rawer meat "flavor". The thing to watch out for in ground-up meats is that bigger peices of tendony-type bits gelatize much slower than the meat, so avoid those in the mix if you want short/low temp. Same for meats like chuck blade where the meat tenderizes much faster than the tendon edges and therefore less unsuitable for sous-vide unless you seperate.

As an example to illustrate, the control knob on a gas range directly influences the amount of gas/btu/power it outputs, whereas the same control on electric ranges are a thermostat. These are entirely different way to control the range/output (power output generally integrates over time to temp, minus losses) even though recipes always call for low/high heat without differentiating what that means. No amount of skill/experience can discern the "right" temp curve from that unless you can read the author's mind what the result should be like.

SV doesn't require any more "vacuum" than dunking a bag in water to increase surface contact area. The temp control itself is no more complex than any other digital microcontroller which exists in just about any modern kitchen appliance. > Virtually anyone can press go/stop. Few can cajole a variable horse. That's the point. Riding a horse is more difficult than driving a car despite the car's greater mechanical complexity.

This statement implies that tradition cooking is more fundamental which just conflates "tradition" with "fundamental". This is an obvious error since what came before is largely arbitrary. For example, riding a horse is no more "fundamental" than driving a car. Generally SV (ie cooking at a specific uniform temperature) is the more basic/simple/controlled technique (in contrast to the many variables of an open fire); it simply takes a slightly more complex tool to do so. Same for the Go/Stop pedals in a car vs the nuances of cajoling a horse. Braking everything down to distinct elements is the best pedagogical method. ---- This stems into the discussion above about taste preferences in SV meat. My own technique for creating less mushy results is to stab it with a bladed tenderizer (a la Jaccard) so the cook times can be shorter for just as "tender" results, and therefore retain more texture. The real challenge with SV is rendering/gelatizing the fat/tendons before the rest of the meat turns soft; this can only be done by butchering a bit more to seperate the different elements here before cooking. To hammer home the first point, though less "traditional", more descrete seperation of animal tissue is a more controlled and therefore more "fundamental" than throwing everything into the same pot and hope for the best.

It's usually not too bad until it goes a few hours near 80 or so, which is necessary for stuff like tendon or oxtail. The "leak" is slow and almost like a diffusion where you see some flavor in the water. I'm mostly concerned because I just got an immersion circulator so the liquid comes in contact w/ the machine whereas I've been using a controlled slow-cooker before.

Hi, just wondering if anyone's got experience with various types/brands of bags at higher temperatures. The issue I'm running into now is that Ziploc freezers start leaking at the corners/edges once the temp edges towards and past 70deg C. Perhaps there's a better/sturdier brand? I prefer using water displacement for most things to vaccum bags which tend to crush food and get messy with liquids. Maybe those hold up better since they do seem "thicker", but the plastic itself seems fine so it's the specific construction that's the issue I searched and wasn't able to find much on the topic. Thanks.