Books on Cooking Sous Vide

[rotuts]

looking forward to your take

 

@DiggingDogFarm

[MelissaH]

Much to my surprise, our library had a copy of Chris McDonald's book! I of course snagged it, and am in the very early stages of reading it (as in I just cracked it open yesterday for the first time). I might need to renew this one, to have adequate time to try it out.

[Okanagancook]

I made the lamb tongues.  Brined in a Pastrami flavoured brine for 4 days then into the bath for 24 hrs at 158F.  Came out nice and tender.  Three little tongues yielded 128 grams of sandwich meat......that will be our lunch.

 

I also made the heart recipe but used three lambs hearts.   Again, nice and tender.

 

I like the book and feel the notes on safe cooking and other tips excellent. Detailed enough but not a textbook.

 

[MelissaH]

So I'm into the meat chapters of the McDonald book, and I have alarm bells clanging in my head.

 

In the early part of the book, he spends abundant time discussing food safety, which I applaud. He especially makes a point of saying that meat that's been tenderized with a jaccard can have internal contamination, brought in from the surface in the process of making the tenderizing cuts, and talking about time at some temperature to pasteurize and make rarer meat safe to eat. Great!

 

Then, though, in the "tough cuts" meat chapter, he calls for long cook times in some of the recipes. One of these is the "Franken Flanken" recipe on page 72. In this recipe, a flank steak is cut crosswise into three pieces, which are reassembled into a thicker piece of steak with meat glue before getting bagged, refrigerated overnight, and cooked. To cook, he has you heat the water bath to 145 °F (62.8 °C) and then as soon as the meat goes in, reduce the temp to 130 °F (54.4 °C), where it stays for 24–26 hours. You can probably see where my concern comes from, given the abundant documentation elsewhere on eG of meat that goes off during a long cooking time, not to mention the potential contamination issues that could occur from cutting the steak into sandwichable pieces.

 

There is a sidebar to this recipe, which claims that putting the meat into a slightly hotter temperature bath than you ideally want will help reduce the bacterial risk. This may be true, but will the meat actually get hot enough for long enough to quickly kill the bacteria? He also gives the option of blanching the steak first in boiling water before you cut it into pieces and reassemble, although he warns that this will result in striped meat when you cut it into serving pieces. But nowhere does he say that it might be a good idea to dip the whole bag into boiling water, to kill anything on the surface that might give you off odors or a floating bag from gas production. (And I'm not sure if the boiling water dip would be enough to take care of any surface bacteria that get sandwiched between meat layers. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be enough.) Obviously, this wouldn't be a concern if you could get a hold of an irradiated flank steak and had a sterilized cutting board and knife and everything else to use when you make the beef stack. However, that doesn't seem likely, especially in a home environment.

 

Am I thinking overly cautiously? Would his technique pass muster for a government food safety inspector?

[Anna N]

 I am never going to poopoo food safety issues. Nevertheless I think that anyone who is buying and using Activa is very well-versed in food safety issues.  I have always thought that if you are "glueing" meat surfaces together you are increasing the chances of introducing bacteria, etc.  It is nothing I am ever motivated to attempt.

[Martin Fisher]

1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

Am I thinking overly cautiously?

 

A bit—but that's okay. Don't do anything you're not comfortable doing.

Meats with a much greater surface area are frequently cooked sous vide — meatloaf, pate, terrine, sausages, etc.

What's most important is that the food be cooked in a safe way, which he mentions earlier in the book—core pasteurization, etc.

See Douglas Baldwin's work, Modernist Cuisine, etc. for more detail.

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

[nickrey]

4 hours ago, MelissaH said:

So I'm into the meat chapters of the McDonald book, and I have alarm bells clanging in my head.

 

In the early part of the book, he spends abundant time discussing food safety, which I applaud. He especially makes a point of saying that meat that's been tenderized with a jaccard can have internal contamination, brought in from the surface in the process of making the tenderizing cuts, and talking about time at some temperature to pasteurize and make rarer meat safe to eat. Great!

 

Then, though, in the "tough cuts" meat chapter, he calls for long cook times in some of the recipes. One of these is the "Franken Flanken" recipe on page 72. In this recipe, a flank steak is cut crosswise into three pieces, which are reassembled into a thicker piece of steak with meat glue before getting bagged, refrigerated overnight, and cooked. To cook, he has you heat the water bath to 145 °F (62.8 °C) and then as soon as the meat goes in, reduce the temp to 130 °F (54.4 °C), where it stays for 24–26 hours. You can probably see where my concern comes from, given the abundant documentation elsewhere on eG of meat that goes off during a long cooking time, not to mention the potential contamination issues that could occur from cutting the steak into sandwichable pieces.

 

There is a sidebar to this recipe, which claims that putting the meat into a slightly hotter temperature bath than you ideally want will help reduce the bacterial risk. This may be true, but will the meat actually get hot enough for long enough to quickly kill the bacteria? He also gives the option of blanching the steak first in boiling water before you cut it into pieces and reassemble, although he warns that this will result in striped meat when you cut it into serving pieces. But nowhere does he say that it might be a good idea to dip the whole bag into boiling water, to kill anything on the surface that might give you off odors or a floating bag from gas production. (And I'm not sure if the boiling water dip would be enough to take care of any surface bacteria that get sandwiched between meat layers. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be enough.) Obviously, this wouldn't be a concern if you could get a hold of an irradiated flank steak and had a sterilized cutting board and knife and everything else to use when you make the beef stack. However, that doesn't seem likely, especially in a home environment.

 

Am I thinking overly cautiously? Would his technique pass muster for a government food safety inspector?

Using sous vide dash and assuming that the meat is 3cm thick, the surface reaches a salmonella log reduction of 6.5 at the 2:33:50. All pathogens are reduced at the core after 3:33:32 (i.e. this is when it is pasteurised).

 

That said, I wouldn't go above 55mm (2.16 inches) thick as the core will not reach pasteurisation in under 6 hours. The extra cooking time is to tenderise the flank.

[rotuts]

 

with the advent of SV , properly done , jacquard-ing is a thing of the past.

 

time is the SV bath does the tenderizing

[Anna N]

6 minutes ago, rotuts said:

 

with the advent of SV , properly done , jacquard-ing is a thing of the past.

 

time is the SV bath does the tenderizing

Unfortunately the consumer does not always have the option. Costco is now mechanically tenderizing just about everything meatwise. 

[Okanagancook]

35 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Unfortunately the consumer does not always have the option. Costco is now mechanically tenderizing just about everything meatwise. 

Really!  I am going to Costco with friends next week and was going to get some sirloin for my bath.  This is why we buy from the farmer directly.  No forking around, just good meat.

[Anna N]

43 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Really!  I am going to Costco with friends next week and was going to get some sirloin for my bath.  This is why we buy from the farmer directly.  No forking around, just good meat.

Yep. Really. Very, very disturbing. 

[rotuts]

yikes  !

 

I was going to wrangle a gift certificate  just to get some beef !

 

 

[EnriqueB]

18 hours ago, MelissaH said:

Am I thinking overly cautiously? Would his technique pass muster for a government food safety inspector?

 

No, you're absolutely right in your statements. I would not dare to follow such a recipe.

[weedy]

so it's been a long time since I looked through my copy of Under Pressure, but, for whatever obscure reason, I paged through it tonight, and (forgive me if this has been covered before) but it struck me that EVERY single recipe in that book is cooked to a higher temp than I would do generally.

 

And it had me wondering if those are actually his "real" numbers, or just the ones his legal team felt 'safe' suggesting to the public back then.

 

 

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, weedy said:

so it's been a long time since I looked through my copy of Under Pressure, but, for whatever obscure reason, I paged through it tonight, and (forgive me if this has been covered before) but it struck me that EVERY single recipe in that book is cooked to a higher temp than I would do generally.

 

And it had me wondering if those are actually his "real" numbers, or just the ones his legal team felt 'safe' suggesting to the public back then.

 

 

Yes, I think we did discuss this when the book first came out. 

[btbyrd]

I have done many, many long cooks and haven't ever had a bag go "off." Ever. I've used Activa many times and have never had an issue. Ever. I have done "Franken Flanken" before several times, with both skirt and flank steak [not that I was following the recipe... it's just an obvious application for Activa). I would never cook it for that long though. It's just not necessary. I go 3-4 hours tops (but I'm not going for the "cut it with a fork" texture that certain people seem to like for some reason).

 

The dangers of surface pathogens are real but overblown (at least around here). The hysteria on this board recently about Jaccarding is sort of ridiculous. As Martin said above, there are plenty of foods with high surface area that are routinely (and safely) cooked SV. 

 

On 3/5/2017 at 6:56 PM, rotuts said:

 

with the advent of SV , properly done , jacquard-ing is a thing of the past.

 

time is the SV bath does the tenderizing

 

Except that Jaccarding makes SV even better. As per MC, Doug Baldwin, and my own experience. 

[weedy]

Keller also "warns" about longer cooking at sub 140f. And yet 130 for 72 hrs is relatively common. 

[TdeV]

Sorry to have been so long getting back to this discussion. I bought Chris McDonald's The Complete Sous Vide Cookbook: More than 175 Recipes with Tips and Techniques

It provided many many hours of delighted reading and I have tried several of the recipes. He has a quite different discussion about food than Douglas Baldwin's.

I'm going to start another thread asking for advice manipulating one of the recipes in this book.

I recommend this book highly.

I also bought a Joule or two.