Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 4)

[jackal10]

You might want to contact Rich Hollway at http://www.theyardfoods.co.uk/menus/ready-to-go-foods-menu/

They are doing something similar quite successfully in the UK, and could share experience, Rich was my MBA student, and he is using some of my recipies.

Freezing will limit your quality, better if you can sell fresh but pastaurised and sealed.

One way of reheating is to take the fresh or thawed food in the sealed bag and immerse or pour about the double the quantity of boiling water over it, off the heat and leave it to warm. You can control the temperature by the amount of boiling water.

Be sure to prepare and confirm to an HACCP. It will keep you out of trouble with the health inspectors.

I agree with Douglas about fish, except in dishes like fish pie where a certain amount of overcooking is acceptable.

One thing that seems to be missing from your menu is pasta. Fresh pasta pastaurises well, so you can have ravioli, lasange and the like...

Your menu is also a bit short on sides. I'd like to be able to pick up a complete meal pack, including vegetables, rice or potatoes or whatever is appropriate.

Deserts also.

[photon]

...I am opening my own place selling prepared meals that people take home and heat up. Everything that we will sell is vacuum sealed, and the better part of it cooked en sous vide. ...

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My first concern is food safety. When home and professional chefs cook sous vide, they have completely control of the cold chain. It is highly likely that the food you sell will be temperature abused, and sous vide prepared foods do not spoil safe. At the very least, you should pasteurize the food for a 6D reduction in Listeria monocytogenes and have very short and prominent expiration dates. This of course limits what you can prepare --- most fish will taste overcooked if heated for the pasteurization times in Table 3.5 of my guide.

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Food safety is a huge concern to me as well, which is why I am so restricted when it comes to the way the meals are reheated. I am following a HACCP plan that I developed using some of the guidelines in your 'practical guide to sous vide' (thanks for all your hard work on this, by the way). I am considering tacking it a steep further by treating the surface of meats by quickly searing or grilling before bagging to reduce the potential surface pathogens. My process goes something like this: initial cooking (sear), cooling (41 F), bagging, cooking en sous vide following predetermined time temp for the recipe, cooling in ice water bath to 41 F, freezing. My hope is, keeping it frozen until reheated, I can stop the anaerobic spores from vegetating, which kinda sticks my with the reheat from frozen problem. I think this process limits the risk of time temp abuse to people not folowing the 'reheat from frozen' that will be clearly labeled. Because I feel like I have to instruct people to use boiling water in some way, otherwise there is no way of knowing the temp of their water, some things become a little dry. I am trying out two methods: putting the bags in cold water and bringing it to boil, and placing bags in boiling water and then killing the heat. So basically unless I have a break through I am restricted to things that work with this method, like pastas, soups etc.

Using these methods do you think it possible to under cook the product en sous vide, relying on the reheating method to finish the job, without running the risk of food born illness? because this may salve my dryness issue.

[photon]

You might want to contact Rich Hollway at http://www.theyardfoods.co.uk/menus/ready-to-go-foods-menu/

They are doing something similar quite successfully  in the UK, and could share experience, Rich was my MBA student, and he is using some of my recipies.

Freezing will limit your quality, better if you can sell fresh but pastaurised and sealed.

One way of reheating is to take the fresh or thawed food in the sealed bag and immerse or pour about the double the quantity of boiling water over it, off the heat and leave it to warm. You can control the temperature by the amount of boiling water.

Be sure to prepare and confirm to an HACCP. It will keep you out of trouble with the health inspectors.

I agree with Douglas about fish, except in dishes like fish pie where a certain amount of overcooking is acceptable.

One thing that seems to be missing from your menu is pasta.  Fresh pasta pastaurises well, so you can have ravioli, lasange and the like...

Your menu is also a bit short on sides. I'd like to be able to pick up a complete meal pack, including vegetables, rice or potatoes or whatever is appropriate.

Deserts also.

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Thank for your post man! I checked out that site, and it looks they have a good thing going. Do you know the reheating method used for their sous vide food?

I will be adding some pasta to the menu, thanks for the suggestions.

[Ken Fox]

...I am opening my own place selling prepared meals that people take home and heat up. Everything that we will sell is vacuum sealed, and the better part of it cooked en sous vide. ...

←

My first concern is food safety. When home and professional chefs cook sous vide, they have completely control of the cold chain. It is highly likely that the food you sell will be temperature abused, and sous vide prepared foods do not spoil safe. At the very least, you should pasteurize the food for a 6D reduction in Listeria monocytogenes and have very short and prominent expiration dates. This of course limits what you can prepare --- most fish will taste overcooked if heated for the pasteurization times in Table 3.5 of my guide.

←

Ditto. If you poison anyone, your business model will suffer an early death

[cigno1]

New to sous-vide and have found this thread to be very helpful. Also new to EG and dont understand where I have been this whole time.

I have questions about vacuum packed meats and their shelf-life. My walk-in keeps an average of 40 degrees. I buy whole lamb carcasses two days off of slaughter (not sure that this is relevant). How long will individually packed muscles (ie. shoulders and shanks) keep safely? Will there be any physical evidence of spoilage? Will traditional braising techniques safely kill bacteria?

Thanks in advance

Chris

Edited December 30, 2008 by cigno1 (log)

[BradUrani]

Someone posted a while back with the 3 basic approaches to sous-vide safety

and I can't find the post anywhere. It was something along the lines off:

Less than 130F: from refrigerator to mouth in less than 4 hours

130-145F: enough time to pasteurize depending on temp and thickness or sear first.

Above 145: heat all the way through

Can anyone point me towards that post?

[DouglasBaldwin]

Brad: I'm afraid you are somewhat mistaken. Please see my guide for more information.

Chris: I'm afraid I am a bit confused by the wording of your questions. Is the meat you are storing in your walk-in raw or cooked? I do not recommend storing raw meat in vacuum pouches --- many psychrophiles can grow at those temperature. Meat cooked sous vide and rapidly chilled can be stored for up to 10 days at 5C/41F (see my guide for more details).


[Moderator's note: discussion continues in Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 5)]

Edited July 24, 2013 by Mjx (log)