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Sous Vide Vacuum Bag taste/odor?


knb53

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Recently I cooked some beef short ribs sous vide, 131.5F for about 2-1/2 days. They turned out great. Per a post I saw somewhere not too long ago about cooking ground beef sous vide then using the juice to make an intense broth, I took the juice from the ribs, cooked them to coagulate the proteins, strained the solids out, and used the broth to make a pan sauce of sorts.

When I tasted the broth it had a good flavor... but there was also a hint (both taste and smell) of plastic. I use what I believe to be quality vacuum bags recommended for my Pro-2300 sealer. I seem to recall that this happened one other time when I cooked something for an extended period of time.

Has anyone else experienced this? Should I be concerned about the safety of ingested molecules of this plastic, if indeed that is what's happening?

Thank you.

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I've never had a taste of plastic in anything I have cooked sous vide and your temperature and cooking times are nothing out of the ordinary for those of us who do long cooks.

You didn't mention what, if any, aromatics you enclosed with the meat. Something that you used may have contributed the taste. The only possible other source to my mind is the bags: I'd be trying a different type.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

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I've used FoodSaver bags, and zip locks, and never had any kind of plastic smell/taste, even when cooking for many hours at 185F. I can't imagine getting a plastic smell at 131F. I agree with Nick - I wonder if it was something else in the bag, or maybe some lactic acid that contributed to it? Did you sear/torch/boiling dunk the short ribs prior to the 2.5 day cook? I usually do that for long cook times just to make sure the surface bacteria is gone and can't produce any funky odors.

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Hi all,

my first post! Very excited to join this community.

I'd have to agree that I have never encountered any plastic flavours when cooking sous vide, regardless of both cooking times and temperatures used. I am, however, using a heavy duty chamber vac, so the bags I use are considerably thicker than what I have seen as advertised for suction based vacs.

There's only three situations I can think of that might have brought about the plastic flavours you detected in your broth:

1. Did you perchance use any strong acid based flavourings that might have attacked the sous vide bags?

2. Is it possible that maybe a tiny snippet of plastic from the bags was reduced with the broth? As the plastic tends to be clear, it can be very hard to spot them.

3. If you didn't pat dry the ribs before searing them and instead poured them out right from the bag into your hot frying pan, the bag might have gotten damaged from contact with the skillet and burned.

Other than that I'm at a loss, but would appreciate if you could keep us up to date as to whether you managed to figure out what was going on.

Edited by jmbuehler (log)
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Wow! This is great... (The above was my first post, too.) Really nice to have this feedback from fellow sous viders...

I don't think any of the above conditions were present... It may, therefore, remain a mystery.

One of these days I may invest in a chamber vac as opposed to the suction one I have. (The one I have is a pretty good one as these types go... I've seen it used several times on Iron Chef...) But the bags I use do have the extra honeycombed looking layer inside to make them seal.

I'm cooking a tri-tip for dinner tonight as we speak... my wife thinks I'm the king now that I'm sous viding all this stuff... We tried vegetables for the first time last night... green beans and potatoes... turned out pretty good.

Thanks again for the help and for the camaraderie!

Keith

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Welcome Keith! I don't know how much experience you have with sous vide, but if you've got a little (or a lot as the case may be) time on your hands, you might want to peruse the old sous vide thread, now closed. It's huge... so huge, that they actually made an index for it. The index is always at the top of the "Cooking" forum and there's a ton of knowledge in there. Basically any question you can think of has already been asked, and answered... probably more than a few times. There's also the 2011 sous vide thread found in the cooking forum as well. And, in case that wasn't enough, you can look at the Cooking with Modernist Cuisine thread, where lots of stuff is cooked SV and then used in other applications.

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Thanks very much for this... I will check it out. I'm fairly new to sous vide, having used my Sous Vide Magic probably 6 or 8 times now... but I'm one of these geeks who reads up a lot on things that interest me, so I've read a fair amount bought several books, etc. But book smarts and experience are two different things, so I look forward to experimenting more and learning more. Thanks again!

Keith

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I am not familiar with your type of vacuum bags, however, I am familiar with the Ziploc freezer bags that have that honeycomb layer inside of them. It's a thinner honeycomb plastic inner layer that lines the thicker outer layer, right? It's thin and is supposed to cling to the food easily to help eliminate air pockets for freezing. If yours are similar, I know I can't sous vide with these because the inner layer throws a serious plastic taste. I microwaved one and the inner layer melted before the outer layer was even distressed. Could this be the problem?

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Recently I cooked some beef short ribs sous vide, 131.5F for about 2-1/2 days. ... then using the juice to make an intense broth...

When I tasted the broth it had a good flavor... but there was also a hint (both taste and smell) of plastic. I use what I believe to be quality vacuum bags recommended for my Pro-2300 sealer. I seem to recall that this happened one other time when I cooked something for an extended period of time. ...

1/ The bags might be recommended for use with that sealer (appropriate thickness, getting a good seal, good evacuation, etc), but that doesn't automatically mean that they are good for cooking.

However sv temperatures are so low, that I would be astonished if you really were encountering problems with plastic.

2/ Happening only when cooking "for an extended period". This suggests to me that you might be mis characterising the smell/taste as "plastic" when it is actually what other people have called "funky" or even "lactic". Its hard to describe, even after you've tasted it! I got it for the first time recently. It comes AFAIK from spoilage bacteria, not plastic.

I know that I got it from using some meat that had been in my fridge for a few days, and was then cooked sv for a couple of days, without pre-searing. I think I understand where the problem arose.

I am not familiar with your type of vacuum bags, however, I am familiar with the Ziploc freezer bags that have that honeycomb layer inside of them. ... I microwaved one and the inner layer melted before the outer layer was even distressed. Could this be the problem?

"Textured" ("foodsaver-style') vac-pac bags should be made of multiple layers of plastic - each layer performing a different function. One layer acts as a barrier to oxygen diffusion, others may have to do with penetration resistance, etc.

The inside layer seems to usually be polythene (polyethylene), whose function is to melt (at around 100C) and resolidify to make the seal. Only that inside layer should melt in the sealer!

When cooking sv, you shouldn't have a problem with the seal/inside layer melting - because you aren't going hot enough.

But the seal will let go if you try to do real "boil in the bag" stuff ...

And regarding microwave heating, sugars, some oils and even some plastics can get very much hotter than the boiling point of water ... Microwaving is a much tougher 'food-safety' challenge for a plastic bag than sv cooking - even for a couple of days.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

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