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Beer-cooler sous vide


Fat Guy

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When my friend Sean, who over the years has been my partner in many a weekend-warrior cookery project, turned me on to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's article about his beer-cooler sous-vide hack on Serious Eats, there was little doubt what we'd be doing with our Saturday.

Lopez-Alt contends that many sous-vide-type applications can be replicated using zipper bags and a beer cooler full or hot water. His presentation is compelling. He does a comparison of steak showing that meat cooked the beer-cooler way and the Sous-Vide Supreme way is indistinguishable. He doesn't claim this is a total replacement, but that for relatively short cooking times it works admirably.

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We decided to cook two things in the beer cooler: eggs and chicken breasts. We wanted 147 degree (F) eggs and figured that thin chicken breasts would cook nicely in about the same amount of time as the eggs (45 minutes, we figured). We worked in F because that's how Sean's Thermapen was set.

We consulted some of Nathan M.'s tables and realized that we'd be slightly overcooking the chicken but we wanted to be able to do everything together. We also consulted Chris Amirault and Chris Hennes who suggested aiming for a final temperature of 146 F, the theory being that with a cooler you lose about a degree F every 15 minutes so you need to start a little high and finish a little low.

Earlier in the afternoon we did some temperature calculations with the cooler filled only with water, testing every 15 minutes with the Thermapen. Starting at 151 F we got:

T -45 151 F

T -30 149 F

T -15 148 F

T -0 146 F

That was right where we wanted things, but we figured food would suck up some energy so we decided to start at 152 F.

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The idea was that we were going to make an approximation of ramen, starting with a broth made from all the Thanksgiving bones that were in the freezer, and adding 147-degree eggs and chicken to the noodle soup.

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To seal the bags we followed Lopez-Alt's advice to lower the zipper bag into water almost to the top to squeeze out the air. We put a little stock in each bag for flavor.

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The chicken came out beautifully. I make no guarantees from a food-safety perspective but if we're all alive tomorrow then it worked.

Unfortunately, the eggs just didn't work out. When I started to peel one of them it had a totally raw appearance. I poured it into a bowl of hot broth but that didn't help.

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In the end we threw some eggs into the pasta water for a couple of minutes to bring them up to temperature. Of course they lacked the texture we had been hoping for, but at least they were edible.

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I guess without a circulator the bottom and top of the vessel don't stay the same temperature. The chicken was basically floating but the eggs sat on the bottom.

Happy New Year.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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I'd be interested to know what the water temp actually was down there in between those eggs: they look like they are pretty densely packed, and as you say, without a circulator or frequent stirring, the local temperature was probably much lower. Were they started at room temp, or out of the fridge?

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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The eggs came out of the fridge about an hour before we started.

I don't know the exact solution to the problems we had with the eggs. Maybe this method just isn't any good for eggs in shell. If the chicken hadn't come out so nicely I'd just dismiss the beer cooler altogether. But now I may be curious enough to experiment a bit.

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Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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A bigger cooler and a rack on the bottom might help. I wonder how carefully cracking the eggs into a plastic bag would work.

Peter Gamble aka "Peter the eater"

I just made a cornish game hen with chestnut stuffing. . .

Would you believe a pigeon stuffed with spam? . . .

Would you believe a rat filled with cough drops?

Moe Sizlack

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I bet a smaller number of eggs in plastic would have worked, but we wanted eggs in shell.

So much to talk about with sous-vide eggs. I think a new topic is in order.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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I just looked at Douglas Baldwin's egg pictures. Interestingly, the highest temp he shows is the temp you started with, but he kept it constant for 75 minutes. Looking back through the pictures, at around 12-14 degrees cooler, the egg is looking pretty raw.

So I think you'd have to start with a significantly higher temp. I'd probably try 15 degrees higher to start with. Yolkwise, the ending temperature of the bath is probably more relevant than the starting temp.

Edited by IndyRob (log)
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I've started a new topic: All about "sous-vide" eggs for discussion extending beyond the beer-cooler method.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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When my friend Sean, who over the years has been my partner in many a weekend-warrior cookery project, turned me on to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's article about his beer-cooler sous-vide hack on Serious Eats, there was little doubt what we'd be doing with our Saturday.

Lopez-Alt contends that many sous-vide-type applications can be replicated using zipper bags and a beer cooler full or hot water. His presentation is compelling. He does a comparison of steak showing that meat cooked the beer-cooler way and the Sous-Vide Supreme way is indistinguishable. He doesn't claim this is a total replacement, but that for relatively short cooking times it works admirably.

....

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.

Peter F. Gruber aka Pedro

eG Ethics Signatory

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