Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment, 2011

[HowardLi]

Can't remember where to put this, but I did an informal test yesterday with some salmon cooked at 50.5 C. First took the bags out at ~1 hour, drained, rebagged, and resubmerged the fillets, and took them out once more about 20-30 minutes after. Additional liquid had been squeezed out from the meat, so I guess that's conclusive enough for me to believe that time matters.

[nickrey]

Can't remember where to put this, but I did an informal test yesterday with some salmon cooked at 50.5 C. First took the bags out at ~1 hour, drained, rebagged, and resubmerged the fillets, and took them out once more about 20-30 minutes after. Additional liquid had been squeezed out from the meat, so I guess that's conclusive enough for me to believe that time matters.

I wonder if it was as much a function of the rebagging/recompression as the cooking.

[HowardLi]

Can't remember where to put this, but I did an informal test yesterday with some salmon cooked at 50.5 C. First took the bags out at ~1 hour, drained, rebagged, and resubmerged the fillets, and took them out once more about 20-30 minutes after. Additional liquid had been squeezed out from the meat, so I guess that's conclusive enough for me to believe that time matters.

I wonder if it was as much a function of the rebagging/recompression as the cooking.

I used zip-top bags without vacuum, so I doubt that recompression was the cause. All other variables remained the same (inasmuch as I didn't touch them).

[dougal]

Decided to try some steak today, got a nice thick sirloin ... but have to say, after yesterday's revelatory chicken breast experience, it was a bit... meh. ...

... I want to try it with a REALLY good steak, something with a bit more marbling should be more interesting.

...

As has been noted previously, sirloin isn't the best for sv.

If you insist on going with tender meat, cook it for a short time, just to bring it to temperature. (Use Pedro's ruler!)

But you can do pretty good steaks from 36 hour 56C topside ...

SV does great things with tough cuts. Try some "stewing lamb".

[Neil Smith]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton? I got a leg of mutton and cooked it for 24 hours at 70⁰C (158⁰F). It wasn't too successful. The connective tissue had dissolved nicely, but the muscle bulk was definitely overcooked, dry and stringy.

I was thinking of trying the last bit at around 63⁰C (145⁰F) for 48 hours. Does anyone have any thoughts on how well that will work?

[paulpegg]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton? I got a leg of mutton and cooked it for 24 hours at 70⁰C (158⁰F). It wasn't too successful. The connective tissue had dissolved nicely, but the muscle bulk was definitely overcooked, dry and stringy.

I was thinking of trying the last bit at around 63⁰C (145⁰F) for 48 hours. Does anyone have any thoughts on how well that will work?

I would try 55C for 48 hours. It should come out juicy and medium rare. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper, add a 6-10 garlic cloves and a sprig or two of thyme wrapped in a paper towel. This will prevent the garlic and thyme from overpowering the flavor of the meat.

[PedroG]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton? I got a leg of mutton and cooked it for 24 hours at 70⁰C (158⁰F). It wasn't too successful. The connective tissue had dissolved nicely, but the muscle bulk was definitely overcooked, dry and stringy.

I was thinking of trying the last bit at around 63⁰C (145⁰F) for 48 hours. Does anyone have any thoughts on how well that will work?

I would try 55C for 48 hours. It should come out juicy and medium rare. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper, add a 6-10 garlic cloves and a sprig or two of thyme wrapped in a paper towel. This will prevent the garlic and thyme from overpowering the flavor of the meat.

I agree with 55°C/48h if you like your meat as pink as possible, otherwise at 58.5°C collagenase works faster, but above 60°C collagenase gets inactivated and collagen starts shrinking and squeezing liquid out of the muscle cells. So my advice is to cook tough meat either between 55°C and 59°C (collagen gets denatured enzymatically) or braise traditionally (collagen gets denatured thermally) at 78°C (not above 80°C where actin coagulates and cell contents are densely compacted, resulting in a texture like cardboard or shoe leather). See Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, page 152.

See also paulpegg's experience with leg of lamb upthread.

Edited August 31, 2011 by PedroG (log)

[dougal]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton? I got a leg of mutton and cooked it for 24 hours at 70⁰C (158⁰F). It wasn't too successful... the muscle bulk was definitely overcooked, dry and stringy.

70°C is why it was overcooked.

You should definitely be aiming below 65 - and I too would suggest aiming for below 60.

BUT I don't know your sv rig and how accurately calibrated, stable and uniform it might be.

Just because the panel says 55.0, that doesn't mean that the meat is getting a true 55.000

You don't want the meat to be getting less than a true 55 if you are cooking for more than 4 hours.

So, if your confidence is only "its 55 to within a degree or two" then you shouldn't be dialling in less than 57.

I'm satisfied that my home-made rig is good within about half a degree C. Its probably better than that, but I can't be sure (without more investment in calibration), so for now an indicated 55.5 is my bottom end for long cooking.

Garlic. I'd hesitate to use 6-10 cloves of garlic even with a big chunk of sv sheep. (See below about meat quantities.) Garlic sv is unlike garlic in a roast. Tread gently. Its easy to make a garlicky gravy/sauce/butter for adding at service or table.

Wrapping herbs in something like a paper towel makes it easier to catch them - it won't do much for modulating their potency.

For long cooking (such as 12 hours and more), one thing to remember is that the size of the piece of meat only affects the time it takes the centre to get to temperature - it doesn't affect the 'cooking' time needed at that temperature.

Essentially, a single portion and a large joint cooked for the same 36 hours will be pretty much equally 'cooked'.

You can use this to experiment with small cuts and "scale up for production" without significantly altering the cooking time (or temperature). Its VERY different to cake-making!

If you take a piece of meat, divide it into four, and prepare and bag them identically, you can experiment and compare the effects of different timings - putting one bag into the waterbath every 12 hours, to get 48, 36, 24 and 12 hour results ready at the same time for comparison. (Just identify which bag is which!)

Then you'll know what time suits your taste for that particular cut - so you can repeat it with larger pieces!

My guess would be that leg of mutton (a roasting cut, remember), at 56C or so, is going to be fine at about 24 hours, and maybe a bit pappy by 48 hours (which a "stewing" cut would likely need).

[Anna N]

I decided to try endive sous vide and followed the technique from here. I should have strained the orange juice/saffron mixture but forgot. I think they would have benefitted from a touch more sugar – perhaps my orange was not so sweet. Otherwise I think the experiment was a success. Have chilled and refrigerated the second endive to enjoy later.

Ready for the sous vide bath.

Seared and ready to serve.

[ScottyBoy]

Yum, bitter sweet

I cooked my chicken breasts this time with a knob of bacon fat in the bag. Over the top, very good.

[Robert Jueneman]

I'm satisfied that my home-made rig is good within about half a degree C. Its probably better than that, but I can't be sure (without more investment in calibration), so for now an indicated 55.5 is my bottom end for long cooking.

The price of a decent basal (ovulation) thermometer, e.g., the Geratherm, is about $13, and in my tests they were as accurate as my NIST-certifiied reference thermometer could read, to within 0.1F or better.

Anyone who has ANY kind of a sous vide rig, from a DIY up to a PolyScience immersion circulator, and uses it without calibrating the temperatures produced, has got rocks in their head and may be endangering their health and their loved ones.

Bob

[jmolinari]

Question on Pedro's ruler, which is based on Douglas' tables...

Looking at data, it doesn't seem that the conductivity of chicken is that different than beef....yet the tables show that it's quicker to heat a piece of chicken by 58 degrees (5->63) and pasteurize it, than it is to heat a piece of beef 50 deg.

I'm not sure i understand how that's possible....

Also, it seems that a chicken breast i made tonight, measured at about 45mm when raw, but when i took it out after about 3 hrs i remeasured it b/c it looked bigger, and sure enough, it seemed to be around 55mm. How do you account for the meat tightening and becoming thicker?

[HowardLi]

Question on Pedro's ruler, which is based on Douglas' tables...

Looking at data, it doesn't seem that the conductivity of chicken is that different than beef....yet the tables show that it's quicker to heat a piece of chicken by 58 degrees (5->63) and pasteurize it, than it is to heat a piece of beef 50 deg.

I'm not sure i understand how that's possible....

Also, it seems that a chicken breast i made tonight, measured at about 45mm when raw, but when i took it out after about 3 hrs i remeasured it b/c it looked bigger, and sure enough, it seemed to be around 55mm. How do you account for the meat tightening and becoming thicker?

Probably figure out how much it's going to expand by, and then base the calculation on the mid-way thickness? That's how I would do it anyway, but I'm sure it isn't quite linear because of Newton's Law.

[dougal]

I'm satisfied that my home-made rig is good within about half a degree C. Its probably better than that, but I can't be sure (without more investment in calibration), so for now an indicated 55.5 is my bottom end for long cooking.

..

Anyone who has ANY kind of a sous vide rig, from a DIY up to a PolyScience immersion circulator, and uses it without calibrating the temperatures produced, has got rocks in their head and may be endangering their health and their loved ones.

Bob

Bob, that was EXACTLY the point I was making with specific reference to the recommendation to use 55C - that recommendation having been repeatedly given to a poster previously using temperatures that were much higher (and thus safer, if less appetising!)

I was saying -- don't go closer to 55C than the KNOWN, PROVEN accuracy of your equipment.

As I said a couple of months back on the (lightly-trafficed) calibration thread --

...

My strong suspicion is that most cooking people (even most sv cooking people) would think that because the display says 131F or 54.6C, the bath must be exactly at the indicated temperature ... "Are you trying to tell me its faulty?"

The public's expectation is that the underlying accuracy is better than the precision displayed.

But that ain't necessarily so ...

And as I explained previously, my own 'reference' thermometer has a proper certificate of calibration to 'traceable standards', and is known to be within 0.4C over its entire range. Hence my cautious application of 0.5C as my margin for error.

[PedroG]

Question on Pedro's ruler, which is based on Douglas' tables...

Looking at data, it doesn't seem that the conductivity of chicken is that different than beef....yet the tables show that it's quicker to heat a piece of chicken by 58 degrees (5->63) and pasteurize it, than it is to heat a piece of beef 50 deg.

I'm not sure i understand how that's possible....

Also, it seems that a chicken breast i made tonight, measured at about 45mm when raw, but when i took it out after about 3 hrs i remeasured it b/c it looked bigger, and sure enough, it seemed to be around 55mm. How do you account for the meat tightening and becoming thicker?

Be aware of the text to Douglas' table 2.2:

Table 2.2: Approximate heating times for thawed meat to 1°F (0.5°C) less than the water bath’s temperature. You can decrease the time by about 13% if you only want to heat the meat to within 2°F (1°C) of the water bath’s temperature. Do not use these times to compute pasteurization times: use the pasteurization tables below. (My calculations assume that the water bath’s temperature is between 110°F (45°C) and 175°F (80°C). I use a typical thermal diffusivity of 1.4×10-7 m2/s and surface heat transfer coefficient of 95 W/m2-K.)

So heating times are practically the same for heating from 5°C to 55°C or 63°C.

From Douglas' table 4.1, pasteurization times for poultry I picked 63°C for the ruler because at 63°C minimal heating time and pasteurization time are about the same, as a compromise to avoid very long pasteurization times which might lead to mushiness and too high core temperatures leading to dryness and toughness.

And have a look at the wikiGullet article Importance of temperature control on pasteurizing times:

When cooking to higher core temperatures, pasteurization is achieved before final core temperature is reached.

[jmolinari]

Question on Pedro's ruler, which is based on Douglas' tables...

Looking at data, it doesn't seem that the conductivity of chicken is that different than beef....yet the tables show that it's quicker to heat a piece of chicken by 58 degrees (5->63) and pasteurize it, than it is to heat a piece of beef 50 deg.

I'm not sure i understand how that's possible....

Also, it seems that a chicken breast i made tonight, measured at about 45mm when raw, but when i took it out after about 3 hrs i remeasured it b/c it looked bigger, and sure enough, it seemed to be around 55mm. How do you account for the meat tightening and becoming thicker?

Be aware of the text to Douglas' table 2.2:

Table 2.2: Approximate heating times for thawed meat to 1°F (0.5°C) less than the water bath’s temperature. You can decrease the time by about 13% if you only want to heat the meat to within 2°F (1°C) of the water bath’s temperature. Do not use these times to compute pasteurization times: use the pasteurization tables below. (My calculations assume that the water bath’s temperature is between 110°F (45°C) and 175°F (80°C). I use a typical thermal diffusivity of 1.4×10-7 m2/s and surface heat transfer coefficient of 95 W/m2-K.)

So heating times are practically the same for heating from 5°C to 55°C or 63°C.

Thanks Pedro, but that doesn't explain why a 55mm piece of meat would take 4 hours to come to 55, and a piece of chicken would take 3 hours to reach 63 and pasteurize. If the time to reach 55 or 63 is essentially identical as you say.

I'm missing how steak could take 33% longer to reach its temperature.

I've read both Douglas' book and MC, but i never really had the numbers side by side until your ruler, which is why i'm now scratching my head.

MC gives tables for generic pieces of meat to meet a delta in temperature. If we assume the chicken breast to be a cylinder or a slab, i believe the time to reach a 60 deg. temperature delta was about 1 hour 29. Add pasteurization time to that and we're at about 1hr 40 (about 9 mins at 63C). Seems the calculations are very different between MC and Douglas, which i can understand.

What i don't get is why steak is so much longer than chicken....

Edited September 2, 2011 by jmolinari (log)

[jmolinari]

Oh, any thoughts on the thickness change through cooking?

Howard, i have no issue cooking for the greater thickness, but i have no way of knowing what that final thickness will be, so i can't account for it.

[Neil Smith]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton?

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll try it at 58⁰C for 24-36 hours, to make sure it's nice and tender. (I don't have that much lying around to experiment with, this time.) I'll let you know how it turns out.

[HowardLi]

Oh, any thoughts on the thickness change through cooking?

Howard, i have no issue cooking for the greater thickness, but i have no way of knowing what that final thickness will be, so i can't account for it.

Time for some empirical research!

[jmolinari]

Oh, any thoughts on the thickness change through cooking?

Howard, i have no issue cooking for the greater thickness, but i have no way of knowing what that final thickness will be, so i can't account for it.

Time for some empirical research!

True..i'm just surprised i haven't seen anyone mention it before given the very important relationship between thickness and cooking/pasteurization time!

[mmille24]

Is there any point to adding roasted garlic to proteins prior to cooking sous vide or is it better just to use non roasted garlic?

[PedroG]

.....

Thanks Pedro, but that doesn't explain why a 55mm piece of meat would take 4 hours to come to 55, and a piece of chicken would take 3 hours to reach 63 and pasteurize. If the time to reach 55 or 63 is essentially identical as you say.

I'm missing how steak could take 33% longer to reach its temperature.

I've read both Douglas' book and MC, but i never really had the numbers side by side until your ruler, which is why i'm now scratching my head.

MC gives tables for generic pieces of meat to meet a delta in temperature. If we assume the chicken breast to be a cylinder or a slab, i believe the time to reach a 60 deg. temperature delta was about 1 hour 29. Add pasteurization time to that and we're at about 1hr 40 (about 9 mins at 63C). Seems the calculations are very different between MC and Douglas, which i can understand.

What i don't get is why steak is so much longer than chicken....

Up to 30mm, meat heating times and poultry pasteurization times do not differ much, but with thicker cuts, poultry cooked 63°C is pasteurized before it reaches 62.5°C core temperature, so if you want 62.5°C throughout, you have to pick whatever time (heating or pasteurizing) is longer, and if you just want safety, you may stay with pasteurization time and accept the core temperature to be eventually lower (which may be desirable, less liquid loss).

Heating time tables may be quite different depending on the underlying assumptions. Douglas calculated all tables up to version 0.4h of his guide with thermal diffusivity α = 0.995×10-7 m2/s, whereas in the new version 0.4i he used thermal diffusivity α = 1.4×10-7 m2/s for heating beef, α = 1.11×10-7 m2/s for pasteurizing beef and α = 1.08×10-7 m2/s for pasteurizing poultry.

Moreover he used a geometric factor β=0.28 for all thicknesses in the poultry pasteurization table, whereas in the beef pasteurization table, he used β=0 (corresponding to an infinite slab) up to 30mm thickness and β=0.28 (corresponding to a 2:3:5 cuboid) above 30mm.

These changes are reflected in the quite different times in my old thickness ruler and the new thickness ruler.

[PedroG]

.....

Also, it seems that a chicken breast i made tonight, measured at about 45mm when raw, but when i took it out after about 3 hrs i remeasured it b/c it looked bigger, and sure enough, it seemed to be around 55mm. How do you account for the meat tightening and becoming thicker?

When the superficial layer contracts by cooking, the cut has to change its shape towards a cylinder or even sphere in order to encompass the same volume (like a balloon). So if your chicken breast thickened from 45 to 55mm, its width had to get smaller accordingly, so your cut approached cylindrical shape to some degree, speeding up heat transfer to the center. Maybe our mathematician can tell you if this fully compensates for increased thickness.

[Neil Smith]

Any tips for sous vide'ing mutton?

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll try it at 58⁰C for 24-36 hours, to make sure it's nice and tender. (I don't have that much lying around to experiment with, this time.) I'll let you know how it turns out.

I had the mutton this evening. It turned out I cooked it for about 21 hours, at 58⁰C. It was fabulous! Tender, moist, flavourful, just wonderfully good. So much better than my first attempt.

If you've not tried mutton, get some. It's great.

Thanks again for the cooking advice!

Edited September 3, 2011 by Neil Smith (log)

[nickrey]

Is there any point to adding roasted garlic to proteins prior to cooking sous vide or is it better just to use non roasted garlic?

Haven't experimented with this but would assume because it has a different flavour profile and because this infuses into the meat it would make a difference.

While keeping in mind all the cautions above about the amount of garlic that you use, I found out when I finally used it that some of the early posters on this issue obviously had a different sense of what is an appropriate amount than me. My advice would be to start conservative and work up until you find out what is best for you.