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So I'm thinking about exploring the sous vide world and I have one question. Is there any real benefit to the Searzall vs careful use of a blow torch (I use a Bernzomatic UL100 Basic Propane Torch for creme brulee)? I realize it's tradeoff between high heat/quick contact/small surface area vs lower heat/longer contact/larger surface area. I'm curious if anyone has used a regular blow torch to sear meat cooked using the sous vide method. I've used my blow torch many times for creme brulee and haven't noticed any degradation of the custard as long as I'm careful about propane flow, distance, and time spent on any spot. I know the chilled custard is a temperature barrier where creme brulee is concerned, but I'm curious about rested sous vide meat. Edit: Sigh. I dug deeper into this thread and found my answer. "The point of things like the Searzall and restaurant grade salamander ovens is that they cook via high intensity infrared radiation vs an open flame like in a grill. The infrared radiation from a flame is spread out more evenly in these devices and this gives you more controllable and consistent results." Can the first post be edited to include information like this? DiomedesGodshill fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Nov 15, 2014 |
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Nov 15, 2014 02:06
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| # ? May 17, 2024 01:18 |
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Creme brulee is one of those things where you can use a regular blowtorch and it works perfectly. Maybe some science nerd can explain why, I just know it works well but not why. When it comes to meat however the blowtorch kinda sucks because of how concentrated the heat is, and you'll get a small spot that's burnt to a crisp before areas around it can get warmed up. This is especially bad for any bumps or corners sticking out of flat surfaces. The searzall diffuses the heat so you get a good even sear across a drink coaster-sized area. It's only a slight improvement over a cast iron skillet when it comes to steaks though. Works great on chicken because chicken's shape makes it kind of hard to broil or sear evenly. A searzall is presumably also great for delicate things like fish, which might fall apart in a pan. Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Nov 15, 2014 |
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Nov 15, 2014 02:10
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That's what I figured they were for, but that's like 4 inches deep of balls which seemed crazy excessive. To each his own balls I guess.
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Nov 15, 2014 04:00
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Steve Yun posted:I do not have any balls of my own. 
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Nov 15, 2014 05:07
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Hey so Chefsteps says to shortrib 72 hours at 129°F, and Modernist Cuisine, Kenji and Polyscience say 144°F. What do you guys think.
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Nov 15, 2014 10:24
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It's been a long time since I've done short ribs but iirc I liked 144 better than 133 (I never tried 129).
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Nov 15, 2014 10:46
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Steve Yun posted:Hey so Chefsteps says to shortrib 72 hours at 129°F, and Modernist Cuisine, Kenji and Polyscience say 144°F. http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/short-ribs-time-and-temp Covers this. I personally prefer 48hr at 144 to the, frankly, weird texture you get at 129 for 72.
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Nov 15, 2014 11:00
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Like I said, I do 131.5 for 48 hours. Finish them under the broiler. It's like the beefiest steak you've ever eaten.
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Nov 15, 2014 14:22
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My Anova just did the weirdest thing -- it beeped like it had come to temp and when I went to put the food in, it showed 285F. It fluctuated a bit between 250 and 285, then shut off. Plugging it and unplugging it seemed to help. Anyone else seen that?
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Nov 15, 2014 17:53
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Test Pattern posted:My Anova just did the weirdest thing -- it beeped like it had come to temp and when I went to put the food in, it showed 285F. It fluctuated a bit between 250 and 285, then shut off. Plugging it and unplugging it seemed to help. Anyone else seen that? Email them. It seems the first batch is having some issues so report yours.
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Nov 15, 2014 18:40
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Test Pattern posted:My Anova just did the weirdest thing -- it beeped like it had come to temp and when I went to put the food in, it showed 285F. It fluctuated a bit between 250 and 285, then shut off. Plugging it and unplugging it seemed to help. Anyone else seen that? Were you heating oil instead of water or am I missing something with those temps ?
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Nov 15, 2014 19:19
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Did you have enough water in your container? That sounds like an auto shutoff because the unit ran dry and got too hot.
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Nov 15, 2014 19:21
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Water, first time it happened, had just topped up to just below MAX line before turning on. Completely weird, didn't happen before. After unplugging and plugging back in it read a normal temp and warmed to target in a normal time and held at target for the three hours I needed it to. It's currently reading the just-over-100 I'd expect given past cooldowns and the water feels about that. If it happens again I'll email them.
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Nov 15, 2014 23:15
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Is the Anova App for Bluetooth out yet? I can't find anything, but lots of places implying that it is.
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Nov 16, 2014 01:29
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MrEnigma posted:Is the Anova App for Bluetooth out yet? I can't find anything, but lots of places implying that it is. I think those places are probably talking about when the stretch goal for it was achieved. Or maybe they are people with hacker specials. In the meantime you can still connect to it with bluetooth (on android at least)! You just can't do anything with it. (The pin is a single zero.)
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Nov 16, 2014 01:39
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With a little one in the house, the quality of our food has seriously gone on a downward spiral, there just isn't time to do the stuff I really want. So I'm planning to batch-cook a lot more, and I'm wondering what sous-vide recipes you might recommend - ones that lend themselves well to freezing or fridging after puddling and that don't require too much work to finish?
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Nov 16, 2014 22:14
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Did a thanksgiving trial-run today. I turned a turkey into a cylinder and cooked it 5h@148, then shallow fryed it to finish. My conclusion is that breast meat is really easy to do, but there is never enough skin to get the usual mutant-huge amount of breast meat rolled up. Deboning the legs and thighs is easy, detendoning is ridiculous and takes entirely too long. Easier to roll, though. I think on actual thanksgiving I'm going to braise the legs/thighs, make a turkeytube like I did today and SV the remaining breast meat for extra. I've got a mostly white meat eating family anyway.
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Nov 17, 2014 01:43
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Meat glue? Or did you tie it for the SV and then it held together on its own during the frying?
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Nov 17, 2014 01:58
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Dane posted:With a little one in the house, the quality of our food has seriously gone on a downward spiral, there just isn't time to do the stuff I really want. So I'm planning to batch-cook a lot more, and I'm wondering what sous-vide recipes you might recommend - ones that lend themselves well to freezing or fridging after puddling and that don't require too much work to finish? Most stuff you would sous vide that takes a while like chicken or a roast does fine frozen and reheated or in the fridge for a few weeks if you cooked it long enough to pasteurize. I will buy a few whole chickens, debone and split it into white and dark meat is bag it separately. Then I puddle all the dark together and then white and chill and freeze or refrigerate. I generally reheat to the lowest cook temp for all the stuff I am warming and then sear and serve. I generally do white meat at ~145F and dark at ~150F for as long as the tables say to pasteurize. For roasts I do 176F for ~9 hrs if I want them like a traditional roast or 135F for 24hr if it is a really nice cut. Anything else like a steak or fish there is no need to do it before hand as the cook time is short.
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Nov 17, 2014 02:52
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overdesigned posted:Meat glue? Or did you tie it for the SV and then it held together on its own during the frying? Yeah, meat glue. Amazing how well it worked.
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Nov 17, 2014 02:57
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Okay guys I'd like some troubleshooting here. I just tried doing some sous vide short ribs for 72 hours at 132.5* F. Thing is, I've noticed that plastic, even after double-bagging, tends to leak a little over a long period of time. Thus, I've decided to try using mason jars instead. Something happened that led to a major fuckup here: 1. I wanted to do a beef bourguinon style sauce with short ribs. Made a sauce, seared the short ribs. 2. Stuffed the seared short ribs into the mason jars. Each jar could take 2 short ribs. 3. Added the sauce (made from beef broth, red wine, tomato paste, herbs and spices). Turns out that the fluid couldn't fill up the jars entirely. D'oh. 4. Topped off the jars with some chicken stock and quickly reduced some more red wine. Added this to the jars. 5. The filling was still a bit uneven. Several jars had maybe an inch or so of air. 6. After 24 hours in the water bath, I check up on the jars. I notice that several of the jars had some bubbling action going on in the sauce itself. Got super worried. 7. Opened the jars. Three out of the four jars had a very foul odor. Hesitantly tasted the sauce. Tasted slightly off. Temperature check with a meat thermometer confirms that the temperature of the sauce was about 127-128 degrees, allowing for some cooling to occur after the jar was taken out of the water bath. 8. One of the jars however tasted like really delicious beef bourguinon. Keeping this one in the fridge. Can anyone tell me what might've gone wrong? The fourth jar that seemed to be a success (even though the cooking will be short by 48 hours) was filled up much closer to the brim than any of the other jars. The immersion circulator was crowded, but all four jars were equally submerged and I'm fairly confident that the convection was sufficient to heat the jars evenly. The previous night the water level DID dip down below the level of the lids however. I'll be repeating this experiment with a smaller batch, and this time I'm filling up the mason jars to as close to the brim as I can, increasing the temp to 140* F, and submerging the jars entirely, lids and all. Still, it'd be nice to understand what exactly went wrong. Eugh. I must've wasted upwards of 30$ on these ingredients. 
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Nov 17, 2014 10:26
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nm
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Nov 17, 2014 10:32
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Why would stick something into your mouth after it showed not one, but two signs of bacterial growth? Hopefully there was enough air in the jars that it wasn't botulism. Your slow death by paralysis and suffocation aside, you didn't say how large the jars were so it's hard to say much. Assuming a typical quart jar you've got a cylinder with a diameter of 3.5 to 4 inches depending on the style, and in 132.5 degree water it could take between 6 and 8 hours to come to temperature. That is too long to be safe IMO. The air might have made things a bit worse but I find it hard to believe things weren't up to temp after 24 hours (are you certain your thermometer is accurate?). Fake edit: I just reread your post and at the very end you seem to imply you didn't even fully submerge your jars? I guess that explains that. I don't even double bag for long cooks and I notice minimal leakage. Maybe try better bags? If you insist on using jars, 144 degrees should be safe enough with quart jars assuming you actually submerge them.
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Nov 17, 2014 14:33
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I heated the sauce to the target temperature before I filled the jars, so I don't think it's a starting temp issue.
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Nov 17, 2014 15:59
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ShadowCatboy posted:I heated the sauce to the target temperature before I filled the jars, so I don't think it's a starting temp issue. And then you put this sauce onto bacteria containers, brilliant  . As soon as you introduce air into something pasteurised it is no longer pasteurised. And then it was nice and cozy in the <Kenny Loggins>Danger Zone</Kenny Loggins>.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:20
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I checked the jars 8 hours into the sous vide though, and there was no sign of bubbling or fermentation. Definitely gonna up the temp to 144 next time just to be sure though. I don't think low-temp sous vide is for me if it's gonna lead to this crap.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:24
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Please don't be the idiot that kills himself because of sous vide and thus destroys the burgeoning IC market.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:25
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There's a reason that sous-vide is done with vacuum-sealed bags, and it's not just to keep water off the food. It's to minimize oxygen exposure and thus limit aerobic bacterial growth. What you're trying to do with the jars is a Bad Idea, and you should stop, invest $40 in a vacuum sealer (if you don't have one already or yours isn't sealing well), and use that going forward. Don't kill yourself by ignoring one of the two main factors that makes vizzling food actually safe for consumption.
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Nov 17, 2014 16:47
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Actually plenty of people have started transitioning mason jars. It just seems that starting temp or low temp cooking may be the issue. http://changingground.com/tag/sous-vide-without-plastic/
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Nov 17, 2014 17:50
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ShadowCatboy posted:Thing is, I've noticed that plastic, even after double-bagging, tends to leak a little over a long period of time. First, don't buy bargain brand plastic bags. Second, you want to leave an air gap if you vizzle in a mason jar. Otherwise, you have water expanding inside a frangible container with nothing to expand into.
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Nov 17, 2014 17:54
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Well as ShadowCatBoy pointed out plenty of people sous vide in mason jars, esp when it comes to making yogurt. I think you suffered from the combination of several variables, none of which would have caused the spoilage on their own: - glass not conducting heat as well as thin plastic bags - round shape of the mason jar is not conducive to thermal conductivity - presence of bone may have insulated food from coming up to temp quickly enough - very low temperature that is just barely above food danger zone I think changing one or two of these variables might fix it. edit: VVV true, true Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 22:11
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Well, yogurt isn't a great example since that is done at a low temp with the explicit intent of growing bacteria. Not what you want with short ribs. Filling the jars with at-temp liquid, which he apparently did, might make it safer but it does depend on the overall average temperature of the meat and liquid together. It sounds like the temperature fell over time; one can only assume heat was escaping the unsubmerged part of the jar (which presumably included the metal lid, a good heat conductor - though an air gap at the top of the jar would actually mitigate that somewhat) faster than it was penetrating the submerged part of the jar.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:33
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In summary; you should probably use vacuum bags ShadowCatBoy are you using ziplocs
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Nov 17, 2014 22:46
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Never had a problem with zip locs. And for the love of god, if a sous vide dish doesn't pass the smell taste, DON'T EAT IT.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:49
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:Never had a problem with zip locs. Something I should add... sometimes I would check up on something I was cooking and would get a whiff of aromatics and meaty smell. I was worried that my bag was leaking or maybe that even the thick foodsaver bags were not 100% impermeable after all. I think after experimenting a little bit that it must've been smudges of meat juice that got on the flaps of the bag as I put the meat into the bag. Sitting for hours in hot water caused the entire vessel to smell like meat. I started washing my bags before putting them into the sous vide rig and now I don't experience this issue anymore.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:57
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I've had better luck with the Ziplock freezer bags than with a cheapish foodsaver.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:58
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Bob_McBob posted:The display went to almost 190°F when the bath was only 180°F, and turning it off and on would result in the display temperature jumping around several degrees. I made an emergency lid modification to cover the container and it seemed to stabilize everything. I don't know about the 190°F while running regularly, but I tried shutting off and turning on the anova last night and saw it fluctuate. I think the erratic temperature fluctuation is because the thermometer is right next to the heating element, and when the propeller stops momentarily the heating element is still hot and heats up the water near the thermometer. Once the propeller starts moving again the issue is fixed. I don't think there's any danger to the food because I think this fluctuation is completely contained inside the stainless steel skirt.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:21
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:Never had a problem with zip locs. I'm perfectly fine. It's normal to get numbness and tingling in my extremities when I get this lethargic.
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Nov 18, 2014 00:20
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My 48 hour short ribs were a bit disappointing, if I'm being honest. The meat was tender and delicious but I was turned off by the fact that the fat didn't really melt and there were huge chunks of it that were a pain to cut around. I also chose not to season or pre-sear them in any way (modernist cuisine at home seemingly doesn't recommend doing so), so the flavor wasn't as concentrated as it could have been. Regarding the fattiness tho, is this just how it goes, or was there something wrong with my cook time, temp, or product? I did them at 144 for 48 hours.
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Nov 18, 2014 03:50
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Did you sear afterwards? What temperature did you cook to?
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Nov 18, 2014 04:13
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