Re: Sous vide
 

I've had a Chef's Choice slicer from Metro Kitchen for a number of years. It has an 8" blade and is reasonably easy to clean. For the number of times per year that I use it, it is more than adequate and it is easy to get parts for (although I have not had to do that yet).

My only complaint is that the sucker is heavy -- not an issue when using it, but it is an issue when I go to stick it up on an out-of-the-way shelf for storage :rolleyes:

Re: Sous vide
 

A different Sous Vide question:

When looking at cook times and temps on the internet I see huge variances -- some will say to cook at 135* for 2 hours and others will say 138*/140 for 45 minutes. I've seen this beef, lamb and now pork (1" pork loin chops). How do you know which time/temp combination to go with?

Re: Sous vide
 

The time/temp are minimums. I use the temp that I want for my doneness and am playing with the duration since it won't cook the meat any more but will affect texture.

Re: Sous vide
 

Michael, there is also a time vs temp equation for killing bacteria. You can pasteurize with high temp (165F and up) almost instantly, or you can slow kill over time at lower temps (above 130F).

http://www.cookingissues.com/wp-cont...mperature2.jpg

Sous vide brings up an interesting issue with low temp cooks, like the steak I cooked the other day was 45 min at 129F. 129 is below the minimum kill temp, and 45 is no where near long enough to pasteurize at the minimum temp. The grace there is that whole muscle is less risky since bacteria live on the surface and can't penetrate the meat and that I sear with a blowtorch. Ground, on the other hand, every bit of it is exposed to air during the grind and could become contaminated.

I don't know the numbers of cases, but according to my contact who runs the butcher program at the university, most cases of bacterial food poisoning are due to improperly handled and improperly cooked (under-done) ground beef. Most people are scared enough of salmonella on chicken and turkey that they over cook those ground meats. Beef, people think of medium rare hamburgers. While they taste great, they are, unfortunately, potential risks. Almost no one gets bacterial food poisoning from a medium rare or even rare steak though.

Re: Sous vide
 

Thanks, Adam!

Re: Sous vide
 

I made some pork loin chops (from Costco) seasoned with salt and crushed garlic at 140* for an hour, then seared 60 seconds on a side in lard:

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/attach...9&d=1450838678

I think these are my best Sous Vide dish so far.

Re: Sous vide
 

Mark, what I did was cook the veggies and potatoes first.
After I pulled them out, i put them into an ice bath, then the refrigerator.
Then when I had about an hour left in my protein cook time, I put them in the lower temp water bath to reheat them. They were perfect.

I've considered doing a cook with 6-10 bags of potatoes, freezing them in the vac sealed bag, and then throwing a bag in with the lower temp meat to reheat.

Re: Sous vide
 

I just select a temp that I want my meat to be cooked to.
I already know that I don't want my beef cooked above 135° and my pork above 140°.
From there I use the minimum time, and if I cook it a bit longer; no worries.
Using a 1" Pork chop as an example, I don't think there would be any noticeable textural differences between a chop cooked for an hour vs one that has been cooked for 3 hours.
With that big of a window, I don't see any reason to really worry about the cook time. As long as I hit the minimum, I'm fine.
If using a more delicate piece of protein, like fish, I would pay more attention to the time.

As for the pasteurizing the meat, I read the min temp is 130° and the food needs to be held there for 112 min to completely kill all bacteria.
As the temp goes up, the time needed to pasteurize comes down.
When I did the rack of lamb, I cooked it at 130° for this reason.
I prefer my lamb at 125°.
I am finding with the sous vide method, since the doneness is edge to edge, I can actually cook meat to a higher temp, since I don't have to worry about the outer portion being overcooked while trying to reach the desired temp in the center.

Re: Sous vide
 

That's what I was thinking as well, Dom. Didn't pan far enough ahead to do it yesterday so will have to buy more steak to perform more experiments. The things that I do for science.

But the carrots and sugar peas will be cooked!

Re: Sous vide
 

Thanks for the info!

Re: Sous vide
 

Looking forward to any creations that you guys whipped up for Christmas dinner.

Re: Sous vide
 

Santa must have seen this thread. Took good care of me this year.

Re: Sous vide
 

My presentation is for sh!t, but the prime rib roast was delicious

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5809/...9c52e813_z.jpg

Re: Sous vide
 

Looks fantastic, Vin!

Re: Sous vide
 

No pics, but did another turkey breast. Turned out fantastic. 4 hours at 145. Nice and juicy. Didn't even need the gravy I made.

Re: Sous vide
 

Did flap steak 139 for 11 hours great fajitas. Two mor packs still in going to go till tomorrow and see how much better they are.

Santa bought me a searzall so will see the difference tomorrow

Re: Sous vide
 

Hopefully you got the searzall before the price went up. :D

Re: Sous vide
 

Looks good, Vin.
Did you carve it with a chainsaw? I hope you asked Santa for a knife sharpener. :D

Did a rack of pork for Christmas dinner.
4 hours @ 138°
Finished exclusively with the new Searzall that was under the tree.
There's going to be a bit of a learning curve with the Searzall, but overall I was happy with the results of the sear
I used the same fresh garlic and rosemary seasoning I did on the other porkchop I posted here.
The finished product was spectacular.

http://i867.photobucket.com/albums/a...psza1db1ik.jpg

http://i867.photobucket.com/albums/a...psibt9sg6f.jpg

Re: Sous vide
 

Looks great, Dom!

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Brisket underway. 24 hours.

Re: Sous vide
 

Waiting to see how good Anova's customer service is. One of the display segments for the temp on my cooker went out again. It was actually failed on the first plug in right out of the box, but then it came back on after a few minutes. I decided I'd wait to see if it happened again, it did. Submitted a warranty claim Monday morning, waiting to hear back.

Re: Sous vide
 

Good luck, Adam!

How did that Brisket turn out, Mark??

Re: Sous vide
 

Quite good, Michael. Fall apart tender. The fat cat just fell off, so I used it as part of the sear. Didn't need the sear (fell apart) but I like crunchy bits.

Re: Sous vide
 

What temperature did you use?

Re: Sous vide
 

185

Re: Sous vide
 

Put some country ribs (pork shoulder) in the tank about 5 hours ago, will pull them out tomorrow evening at somewhere around 34-36 hours. Currently running the bath at 140F, but debating if I want to raise it a bit.

Re: Sous vide
 

Any updates, Adam?

I did some garlic confit yesterday. Real simple, and real delicious. Followed the recipe on the Anova app.

http://i867.photobucket.com/albums/a...psqod4wxxl.jpg

I have some ribeye steaks for later tonight.
Going to sear them off with only the Searzall.

Re: Sous vide
 

About 2 days after I put in the CS request, I received an email asking me to confirm my address and that was the last I heard. They didn't indicate what they were doing, nor have they emailed a tracking number, so I don't really know what they are doing.

Garlic confit, I'm going to have to try that.


The country ribs went for about 31 hours at 140F, came out very tender, almost too tender. I could have, and still might, make pate out of them. The nice part was being able to easily remove and discard the chunks of fat since they didn't render.

Re: Sous vide
 

meant paste, not pate. :fp

Re: Sous vide
 

Another 2 inch thick ribeye for dinner last night.
1.5 hours @ 132°
Seared off with the Searzall.

http://i867.photobucket.com/albums/a...psz9ffjjaw.jpg

http://i867.photobucket.com/albums/a...psjioconhz.jpg

Re: Sous vide
 

Now that's a steak. :tu :dr

How do you like the searzall?

Re: Sous vide
 

Cooking meat with a blowtorch! What's there not to like? :banger

There is a bit of a learning curve, but the two pieces of meat I used it on, I was happy with the results.
I feel like it takes longer to use the Searzall than to just heat up a pan, but that may be because I still don't have it down pat.
Like most things, I think I'll get better with it the more that I use it.

Re: Sous vide
 

Anyone trying searing in a fireplace?

Re: Sous vide
 

Thanks. I may invest in one at some point.

Here's a good primer for those who may have just bought a IC unit.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/f...&utm_campaign=

Re: Sous vide
 

I currently have a lamb shoulder in the meat Jacuzzi.
About 20 hours into a 48 hour cook.

Re: Sous vide
 

Well, my cooker went completely batshit crazy yesterday. The display segment that was out came back on, but now the cooker seems to completely ignore the set point and just comes up with wildly inaccurate temp readings. It started doing this about 3.5 hours into the 4 hour cook for the garlic confeit, which, BTW, despite the machine going nuts, I was able to limp along to finish the cook and it is delicious.

Customer support at Anova doesn't seem to have done anything since they asked me a week ago to confirm my address.

Personally, I thought the -1768F degree reading that it was sending over BT was kind of droll considering that absolute zero is only -460F.

Re: Sous vide
 

That sucks, Adam.
I would hope that they have a replacement Anova overnighted to you.
Maybe ask for an upgrade to a WiFi model for your trouble.

Re: Sous vide
 

Thanks Dom. You would think that any company that cares about customer perception and loyalty would do something like that after dropping the ball on this one for the last week-10 days. These bozos don't even seem to know what "customer service" means. I tried calling them about 30 minutes ago, CS is supposedly open from 9am-5pm EST, went straight to the overnight voicemail, which could mean a few things, typically though it means that no one is there to turn off the night attendant. At this point, I'm one step away from filing a chargeback through my CC.

Re: Sous vide
 

Well, something woke them up, only took 8 days since their last response, or 12 since my initial request... They sent me a pre-paid waybill for FedEx and a promise of "and as soon as its flagged enroute, we'll send you a brand new unit right back to you!".


:na <-- my "I'll believe it when it happens" face.

Re: Sous vide
 

And I just received a phone call from someone over at Anova apologizing profusely for the delay and claiming the company had extended holiday down time. Plausible, but the situation could have been avoided had they simply put that on the website ahead of time, in the email auto-responder or on the help desk VM.

Re: Sous vide
 

Made Sous Vide shrimp this evening -- 1 pound of Trader Joe's frozen, peeled and deveined shrimp with tails. Followed Dom's recipe (EVOO, smoked salt and pepper) and cooked them at 149* for 15 minutes. After the Sous Vide was done, I put the shrimp in a cast iron pan with a little avocado oil for about 90 seconds.

These were by far the best shrimp I have ever cooked!

Re: Sous vide
 

Starting my first long cook. Venison shanks for 44 hours @ 145F. Seasoned with just salt, smoked salt (just two large grains per bag), black pepper and a bit of dried thyme. Recipe calls for 48 hours, but I just now thought about cooking them. They'll be Sunday's dinner.

Re: Sous vide
 

I really enjoyed those shrimp too, Michael.

I just pulled out, and seared off a top round roast beef.
35hrs @ 130°
I have it cooling down, as the plan is to do cold roast beef sandwiches for lunch.
I also have a couple of racks of pork in a brine that will be for dinner tonight.
planning to cook them for 4 hours @138° just like the one I made for Christmas.

Re: Sous vide
 

Damn Dom, do you have your IC running 24/7? :D

One thing I noticed this morning was condensation build up on and around the unit. This is the first cook I put plastic wrap over the top. You can see the water vapor wafting up around the IC. Adam, I wonder if that was the cause of yours going flaky? Mine hasn't acted up, but I did open the plastic wrap.

Re: Sous vide
 

Certainly anything is possible, and I did notice the steam / condensate issue when I had the cooker attached to the ice chest and used the metal coated bubble wrap to seal the top of the cooler, but that was days before it went bonkers. I would honestly hope that they would have thought to take into account steam and condensation when they were designing something that was going to sit over a large vessel of hot water for hours or even days on end.

I kind of suspect that mine might have been doomed with bad circuit board components from the word go. When I first received the unit, the display was partially out, then it came back on and worked normally for a while. Then it went out, then dim, then back to normal, then out. Every time I plugged it back in, the display segment behaved differently.

The night the machine went totally nuts, I didn't even have plastic wrap or a lid on the pot.

I looked on Anova's forum and there are other reports of people having their cookers go nuts in a similar manner to how mine did, some of whom also ordered right around the same time I did. Maybe Anova had some problems/defects in the production run.

Re: Sous vide
 

That's right, I remember you mentioning it acting weird well before it crapped out.

Re: Sous vide
 

No worries, I think your concern about the condensation has merit, as we don't actually know how they designed the inside of this thing.

When I get the replacement unit sometime next week, I'll start shopping around for an ice chest that I can cut up a bit and seal around the cooker for doing larger batches / roasts or just longer cooks in.

Re: Sous vide
 

This was a little while back, a 3.5# tri-tip that I cooked for 7-1/2 hours at 132F, then finished/seared on my Santa Maria grill over a bunch of wine barrel staves. I had to use an ice chest with no lid for the water vessel.

The flavor was great and the texture was phenomenal.

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/attach...1&d=1452354103

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/attach...1&d=1452354112

Re: Sous vide
 

That Tri Tip looks fantastic, Adam. I usually marinade my Tri Tip in pureed onion, oil, garlic, salt and red pepper flakes.

I wonder how it would come out if I put the marinade in with the meat in the cooker...

Re: Sous vide
 

I think a small quantity of marinade would be fine, Michael. I had coated the tri tip with a heavy rub of garlic powder plus other spices and salt when in the vacuum bag. I wiped some of the rub sludge off with my hand before searing it.