Reheating sous vide

[bonkboo]

I want to sous vide some servings that I can freeze so my wife can pull them out firing the week and reheat for dinner. I am curious as to how best do this. Thoughts?

[ojisan]

I put the still sealed bags back into the sous vide pot set to a lower temp than they were cooked at - no need to defrost.

[bonkboo]

For how long? Though I'm thinking my would prefer a non sous vide option.

[nickrey]

I quite often fill a sink with water at around 55-58C. Put the package in there and the large thermal mass of the water both defrosts and reheats the packages. Finish with a quick sear on a very hot pan or with a blow torch and you add a Maillard effect. If you are worrying about bacteria, no need as long as you cooked the food originally long enough to pasteurise it. With the water defrosting/reheating the package is not long enough in the danger zone to be of concern. If your water in the sink gets too cold, top it up with some hot.

[OliverB]

if it's just for a week, why freeze it? It'll be just fine in the fridge. And how to heat it depends on what it is. A complete dish? Or just a steak or fish and she makes a salad do go along?

If it is just for a week that you're away I'd just make a large soup, reheat some on Mo, some on Wed, grill some chicken to slice on a salad (cold) on Tue and Thu and tell her to go out with friends on Fri :-)

Or you could SV chicken or pork, make a sauce, reseal and she can open it onto a plate and nuke it, maybe make some pasta to go along?

Just throwing around ideas, as I don't know what you want to offer, full dinners (like home made TV dinners) or just a protein? Just for that one week or as an ongoing every week thing?

The most gentle reheating you'd get with the SV setup, put it in frozen, should be warm in half an hour. That way she could have SV meat and a 2nd bag with SV veggies, even a bag with sauce etc.

[SkwrHdz]

I do this quite often, in fact this evening's supper will include chicken breasts previously bagged, cooked Sous Vide, then frozen.

To reheat, I set the Sous Vide Supreme to one degree lower than the cooking temperature then when it reaches that temperature I put the still frozen chicken breasts, still in their vac bags, in the SVSupreme for about 40 minutes.

As the food has been previously cooked it will be safe, and as the temp is just fractionally lower than the cooking temp it doesn't matter at all if you leave it in the water for quite a bit longer.

At first I was really surprised that the relatively low temp would not only defrost but bring it up to eating temp in such a short time.

[bonkboo]

Thank you all for the ideas. I think that for the that week stuff my wife can reheat. Longer term frozen stuff I'll do with my sidekick. A sous vide supreme would be easier for her. She's not into setting the rig up.

[Todd in Chicago]

Bonkboo....

Probably about 95% of my sous vide cooking is done exactly this way; meaning I cook quantities of items and freeze for reheating later. My "go to" reheat temp is 130 F. I typically find that putting pretty much anything in at 130 for about 30 mins will reheat the food through, particularly if adding some additional finishing such as searing (blowtorch, pan, grill, etc.). The only exception is if for some reason I've originally cooked something at a temp LESS than 130 F. Obviously, I only want to reheat AT or LESS THAN the original cooking temperature, or more appropriately the original CORE temperature that I sought to achieve with the original keeping.

There are additional problems that arise from this technique however; such as in my freezer I currently have approximately 120 bags of frozen items! Yikes! You may ask, "How can I keep track of all this "stuff"?".

;-) Easy! Myself and a fellow eGulleteer (BHSimon, programmer extraordinaire) created a website to do exactly that! It's called ModernistCookingDB. Not only that, but one of my favorite uses of the site is what we call the "Meal Planner" report. This is something your wife can use to see what your current inventory in your freezer is, and pick and match items to put together a meal. Attached is my current "Meal Planner" report. Of course note that each item you see is already completely cooked and just needs to be reheated (which I accomplish via the method I described above). The nice thing about reheating is that even if I'm going to reheat items that were originally cooked at different temps, for example a beef tenderloin originally cooked at 130, and some beets originally cooked at 180, the reheat temp is the same for BOTH items since you are not cooking, but only reheating. So I can put in the beets, some carrots, the steak, and a bag of demi-glace and reheat all at the same temp. Darned convenient!! :-)

Cheers....

Todd in Chicago

Modernist Cooking DB_ Reports.pdf

[Ttogull]

Todd (or anyone else) -

Would you comment on the quality of the reheated food, particularly highly seasoned food? I am having a cinco de Mayo party with barbacoa, chile con carne, cochinita pibil, etc. I would love (and my wife would love) being able to spread the prep over weeks instead of a few days. I tend to use a lot of curse words and become a bit maniacal. I've heard salt might be an issue, but not from a trusted source. It would be great to have everything ready and taste tested beforehand.

Just to be clear, very little of the food will be cooked sous vide, just reheated sous vide. In fact, if this works, I might be motivated to cook more outside than I would otherwise.

[Todd in Chicago]

Todd (or anyone else) -

Would you comment on the quality of the reheated food, particularly highly seasoned food? I am having a cinco de Mayo party with barbacoa, chile con carne, cochinita pibil, etc. I would love (and my wife would love) being able to spread the prep over weeks instead of a few days. I tend to use a lot of curse words and become a bit maniacal. I've heard salt might be an issue, but not from a trusted source. It would be great to have everything ready and taste tested beforehand.

Just to be clear, very little of the food will be cooked sous vide, just reheated sous vide. In fact, if this works, I might be motivated to cook more outside than I would otherwise.

Ttogull....

If you look in my "Meal Planner" report above, the following items have been cooked traditionally and were then vac-sealed for freezer storage:

Sauce

Kung Pao

Masala

Pesto

Poblano Mole

Soup

Coconut Curry Squash

Marmite Consomme

I can tell you that I've not had any problems with those items. I think as long as you can vac-seal your items, and it is not an extended period of time, I think you'll be just fine. For sous vide cooked items, I believe you can freeze them for longer periods of time. I've had a beef tenderloin that was cooked for a year before we ate it, and you wouldn't have known the difference between that one and one that had been frozen for just a few days.

If you are worried about the salt in particular, maybe you can salt lightly while cooking and add additional seasoning before serving.

Anyone else care to chime in for Bonkboo?

Cheers...

Todd in Chicago