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Sous Vide?


AllyB

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I don't have an official Sous Vide - but I did buy the 'dorkfood' hack one that turns a crockpot into one, but I haven't tried it yet.  I'm scared!

 

I have a lovely london broil in my freezer from my beef supplier that I want to cook using that method but I haven't taken the plunge (literally) just yet.  Maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend.

 

Question for you - can you put frozen meat in it, or is it best to defrost it first?

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Sous vides are great!  We started with a hacked up crockpot but eventually the wires wiggled loose and it stopped working.  So I bought a sous vide supreme.  It wasn't cheap, but we use it a lot with great results.

 

Given the length of time you are cooking, the temp of the meat going in doesn't matter.  I've started with room temp all the way down to deep freeze frozen and it's all come out fine.  (Although, I usually do my meat a minimum of 8 hours.)

 

One thing I've noticed is that you don't want let your vaccuum sealer suck too hard when bagging the meat.  This can result in pulling the moisture out of the meat.  You want the vaccuum seal bag to have contact with the meat, but don't get it crazy tight.

 

Good luck and have fun!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm posting here to a question someone had on a different subforum about sous vides.  They had asked if they could use a crock pot as a sous vide.

 

And the answer is 'maybe' :)

 

The purpose of a sous vide is to cook the item at a specific temperature.  For example, I cook my steaks at about 131F for hours.  Cooking at this temp, allows the meat to cook but keeps it at 'medium rare' temperature.  So you don't damage the proteins thereby making it tough.  But the extended cooking time allows the connective tissue to break down, thus tenderizing the meat.

 

In comparison to your average crockpot where the low setting is 170F and the high is 200F, the sous vide can cook at a much lower temp.  Technically you could cook your steaks in the crockpot for several hours at 170F but it would either be shoe leather, or like a roast, which is kind of a waste of a nice juicy steak.  Some very tender steaks (like lamb chops) will disintegrate when done like this.

 

Another alternative is an oven that will go down to 135F.  Most ovens only go as low as 170F because the lowest 'safe' food temperature determined by some official person in an office is 170F. I have a Dacor oven and you can set it down to 135F.  I have done an oven 'sous vide' in a big pot of water.  It worked fine.  Although having the oven on for hours probably takes more electricity than a sous vide that sits on your counter, but I wanted to try it as an experiment and it worked fine.

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