Comments on: Hey Mr Manager! Do you call this medium rare?

By: Help needed on “natural sous vide” » Khymos

Help needed on “natural sous vide” » Khymos — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:01:08 +0000

[...] the use of a temperature controlled water bath. It could be in a hot spring, near volcanoes, in steam baths or even in saunas (in a previous post on eggs I mentioned Finnish sauna eggs and Korean Maekbanseok [...]

By: Cooking in a Sauna? | Everyday Biology

Cooking in a Sauna? | Everyday Biology — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:29:36 +0000

[...] 8/14: My husband pointed out that I should have included a link to this post at Sous Vide Cooking, in which a scientifically minded sous vide enthusiast brought a vacuum-sealed steak to a Swiss [...]

By: Jean-François

Jean-François — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:58:22 +0000

Thanks KS.

It was a lots of fun doing this. Don’t worry I will not try again and I think the readers of this post have understood that it is useless to experiment this “way of cooking”.

By: KS

KS — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:12:58 +0000

Hi Jean-François,
I was just looking for a sous-vide cuisson recipes and found your article.
haha, funny!
By chance, I live in Switzerland that I really enjoyed reading it!

Nice try!
Next time when I go to a spa I will look around whether there isn’t a piece of meat hidden somewhere…

By: Jean-François

Jean-François — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:47:00 +0000

Come one Steve, this was just a funny post!

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:33:59 +0000

comparing apples to apples, the steam bath didn’t have 100% humidity. It had 100% RELATIVE humidity. Atmospheric humidity is a comparison of the water content of a given volume of air vs the average water content at that same altitude. these measurements are in g/Kg (grams water/Kg air)

The SPECIFIC humidity of the sous vide steam bath would be calculated using the specific humidity formulae and would be measured in Kg/Kg. The difference is the order of magnitude of the measurement. 100′s to 1000′s of times the density= greater thermal density=greater thermal transfer.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:17:04 +0000

The isssue the it relative coefficient of thermal conductivity. Water has a coefficient of .58 vs steam which has a cofficient of 0.016. a water bath is 36.25 times more efficient in transferring the thermal energy. Theoretically, you would have needed to keep the bag in the steam shower for 27 hrs to reach rare. However, taking in to account the conductivity of the tile it was resting on the time would be decreased but the heating would be uneven…

By: Jean-François

Jean-François — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:36:54 +0000

Rick,

I remember what told me once a technician when I had to repair my fridge : for an accuracy temps you should always put in your fridge a thermometer in a glass of water, the temperature readable directly on a thermometer (without the glass of water) is not so accurate due to temperature variations.

You are right, we should have also taken a thermometer…next time, maybe.

Jean-François

By: Rick

Rick — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:57:49 +0000

Could be water @55c at heat source and not pool temp, next time take your thermometer with you too…funny experiment

By: Jean-François

Jean-François — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:22:14 +0000

Gary,

I agree with you, water will always have a better heat transfer than steam. Nevertheless this public steam-bath was annouced to be 100% humidity rate (I don’t think you’ll have such humidity rate in your convection oven) and we left our thin beef filet (2 cm thick) 1 hour longuer than what was recommanded with a waterbath. Not so many people came in and out of this steam-bath, so that we can say the temperature and humidity was relatively constant.

Jean-François