Leg of Lamb & Chicken Sous vide with only 1 water bath. Best appr

[andrestorrubia]

Hello - I am throwing a BBQ next saturday (2 days from now) and I want make some chicken and and assortment of red meats including (Spanish) leg of lamb.

Background: I few weeks ago I was in the same position and armed with Douglas Baldwin's tables, the wealth of information found here and a Thermo I set the water temp to 63C pouring hot water here and there to keep water temp as constant as possible and calculated the time the chicken would need to be in bathed to reach 61C core and same for the baby lamb (to rearch 54.5C core). The results were amazing and it gave me the final push to acquire a real water bath; which I just received (SWiD from Addelice).

Since I now have a real water bath I can do +0.5C water temperature (vs. desired core temp) which I expect will be better than doing 63C and shooting for e.g. 54.5C which requires relative careful timing; but the problem is that I need to cook the chicken to 61C and the lamp to 54.5C... and I only have 1 water bath.

How would you do it; I think I have the following options:

a) Cook the chicken first to 61C for e.g. 4 hours, drop temp to 55C and ADD the lamb. At this point the chicken will be at 61C and will be kept warm for ~38 hours at 55C while the lamb is being cooked. The lamb will be done at 55C for ~38 hours.

b) Like a) but starting on Friday to get shorter cooking time for the lamb and warming time for the chicken, i.e. chicken cooked 4 hours @ 61C and lamb & chicken 20 hours @ 55C.

c) Cook chicken first at 61C for e.g. 4 hours; chill it in ice bath and keep it in fridge. Cook lamb for 24-38 hours @ 55C and add chicken 3 hours before meal time to warm it.

d) Same as c) but inverting order: cook lamb first at 55C for 24-38 hours; chill it and cook chicken at 61C for 4 hours, drop temp to 55C and warm (chilled) leg of lamb for X hours.

I have never done long cooking time and I do not know of bad side effects of holding chicken warm for so long. Also, in my first short time experiment with leg of lamb, I used a leg of baby lamb which is more tender. Since I like the intense flavor of lamb, I will but leg of lamb instead this time; which I think will benefit from longer cooking times.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Andres

[ScottyBoy]

Ice bath the chicken after 3 hours. Cook your lamb and add the chicken to the bath pretty much 10 minutes you'd like to serve it. The bath will bring it back up very quick.

[andrestorrubia]

Thanks! How long would you recommend the leg of lamb to be cooked for? 24hr or more?

[ScottyBoy]

If I was gonna rock it I would do chicken at 60c for 3.5 hours and the lamb at 55 for 24 hours assuming the leg is boneless.

[andrestorrubia]

The leg is not boneless, how does it impact cooking time?

[ScottyBoy]

Hmmmmmm never done it, I would tack on another 12 hours for 36 though considering the time to extrude all the flavor from a dense bone.

Hope other chime in since we're leaving my comfort zone to instruct on something I've never CSV.

[andrestorrubia]

Thanks Spencer! I followed your instructions almost to the letter (although I just cooked the leg of lamb for 20 hours due to timing constraints). The result was magnificent, as I guess you can expect when serving such a big piece of SV'd meat to guests who've never eaten SV'd.

Best part was seeing an almost toothless 2-yo eat stripes of leg of lamb as if it was chewing gum! :-)