Deleted.
Chris, this is intriguing. I can see the logic. I’d be curious about the actual science of what’s going on there. For example, I can see that because the meat is so cold, it may not be possible to crank the heat on the sous vide enough to actually get the temp needed at the surface to kill exterior nasties. I suppose same would be true for reverse sear.
That said, I’ve done sous vide cooking now for 12 years (where does the time go?!?!?!?) and have yet to have a food safety issue. Cleanliness in prep, understanding (and generally following) pasteurization tables, and of course searing meat at the end goes a long ways there (as I’m sure you all know). Though I have done plenty of sous vide seafood dishes that were way below pasteurization point and with no sear, no issues there either (though, as I grow older and less risk-averse, I’m much less inclined to do those sorts of things for anyone other than my wife and I).
Kevin, can you point me to a recipe? I’m intrigued by this one.
@Jason - Don’t read too much into my methods. It’s more of a, ‘hey, why not’ situation of killing several birds (that may not exist) with one maneuver as opposed to a serious food safety thought. Like you, I’ve been SV’ing for a dozen or more years and plenty of lower temp cooks and never a hint of food safety problems. So, this is at best another level of insurance that is likely not needed for food safety. Here’s my typical situation:
Double cut 2" bones in pork rib chops that were seasoned (which included salt of course), chamber vacuum sealed and frozen. I want a decent amount of time at 140’ish for the full thickness. So, I drop it in frozen around say 155 for 15-20 minutes to start with the thought of getting the heat moving as fast as possible and the side thought that just a minute or so of the surface being at 145 will kill any remaining badness. After that, I drop it down to 140 and let it coast to that point for a couple of hours or more. After reading on here now, I could probably start at an even higher temp and I’m not sure my surface ever achieves that 145 killing temp anyway.
BTW - It looks like the old Joule app will migrate over to the new one soon based on it being greyed out in the app store and comments by the developers. Many of the new features will be available it appears.
1 Like
Deleted.
2 Likes
For those unfamiliar, Baldwin’s guide is a wonderful reference and should be required reading for anyone using sous vide.
2 Likes
Complete tangent, but you never know….
Bro in law with a heart transplant can Sous vide pasteurize foods and still enjoy things not cooked to death.
There are online pasteurization protocols for this!
Winning!
4 Likes
Deleted.
You’ve done bacterial analysis before-and-after and seen what the actual bacterial kill rate was?
Deleted.
1 Like
Yes, of course. 
Same as he did his own tissue matching for his heart and chemically verifying each of his meds are what they claim to be.
1 Like
Deleted.
Not wasting agar is a virtue! 
1 Like
Tried sous vide steak tonight with Flannery (chuckeye first cut and filet tail) and meh, not impressed. Super tender, fully consistent throughout, of course, but lacking any pizazz, any real distinctive flavor. I put the steaks in the fridge for 4 hours beforehand to dry out a bit, put the chuckeyes in one bag, the filet tail in the other, 130 degrees for 2 hours (for the chuckeyes - 1.5 hours for the filet tail as it is thinner), then seared on the pan. The chuckeyes were insanely tender, could barely pick them up, when attempting to put them in the pan.
They were ‘fine’, I guess, but not as much character/flavor as reverse sear, which is basically the same method, in theory, though less controlled.
Perhaps searing on the grill might produce better results.
I don’t know how thick they were, but that’s a long time to sous vide a steak. Like a lot of people, I don’t see a benefit and the texture can be an issue. Not hard to cook a steak by conventional methods (as you know), it’s faster, and I would agree it yields better results.
-Al
It was an experiment, using relatively thin steaks. I used Serious Eats as my guideline on timing, going directly from refrigerator to sous vide bath.
I’ll stick with reverse sear, my favorite. Perhaps try sous vide with the super tough cuts, and definitely want to try chicken breast via sous vide, I hear that’s pretty fantastic for tenderness
I experimented with cooking steaks by sous vide, probably less carefully than you did. I also decided it was not my preferred method. I don’t cook pot roast, etc., where it’s a method better suited to break down the connective tissue.
-Al
1 Like
Cool to experiment, but that seems a waste of the technique and of thin steaks. I’m a fan of sous vide, but as has been discussed in this thread before, there’s no real benefit to doing steaks that way. And a major detractor - the texture can be weird.
Thick steaks - reverse sear, or just cook in pan or on grill traditionally. If you really want to do sous vide (maybe the oven is full with other stuff), then go for it, but the results won’t be any better than reverse sear, and may be worse.
Thin steaks? Cook in pan or on grill. Not a candidate for sous vide.
Yes these are great candidates for sous vide. Tough cuts such as short ribs can be totally transformed. I posted recently about lamb neck sous vide, it was a revelation. Lamb neck is a very tough cut; I did sous vide at 135f for 24 hours. It had that wonderful lamb flavor but a texture just slightly firmer than beef filet, it was really wonderful (though next time I will try it at 130f).
Chicken breast is wonderful, as it’s way more juicy and the texture is totally different. I forgot the time but temp I do 140f and then a quick sear at the end, which brings the internal temp pretty close to 150f.
You’ll want to err on the side of over-cooking, not under-cooking chicken breast the first time you do sous vide. I would not go under 140f, and I would consider 145f for my first cook. Because if you don’t sear long enough, the resulting texture can be really weird. Which shouldn’t discourage you - it’s not hard to get right, and again the results are wonderful.
1 Like
Sous vide chicken is only way to do it in my opinion.
1 Like