• 140g rhubarb
• 30g sugar
• 30g water
• 1 vanilla pod

Madalena recommends a hard vacuum for this recipe. I was happy to test my MiniVac (a very compact vacuum chamber sealer) at this occasion. I am almost sure you can obtain a similar final result with a good clamp vacuum sealer.

With a storng vacuum, color of fruits and vegetables appear more intense as usual. It is also amazing to observe the sudden transparency of the food stuff.
Contrary to what was recommended by The British Larder (61°C during 20 minutes) I cooked the rhubarb 61°C during 45 minutes with my immersion circulator. I had the strange intuition that rhubarb can’t be cooked at 61°C during 20 minutes.

The result was excellent, not too soft, not too hard. The vanilla syrup was very tasty. The texture of the rhubarb was also surprising. As you will see on the picture bellow the rhubarb cooked sous vide at 61°C is not becoming mushy at all. The rhubarb remains in one piece.

Here is the final result, a rhubarb tart I let probably a little bit too long in the oven. Anyway, it was delicious.

Jean-François

Today I wanted to experiment confit duck legs. The idea came to my mind while reading Casqu8′s blog who cooked some weeks ago a couple of confit duck legs.

I copied Casqu8 recipe consisting in curing the meat with salt, thyme and bay leaf. I vaccum sealed the pouch and stored it in the fridge for 24 hours.

I rinced the legs with clear water and took care taking off the thyme and bay leaves. No need to leave them in the pouch, otherwise the final flavour of these aromats will be too strong!

Then I vaccumed sealed the duck leg with some duck fat (3 tablespoons) I purchased in a supermark (300 gr cost EUR 4).

In my first try I cooked sous vide the duck leg at 80°C during 9 hours with my immersion circulator.

I have not be satisfied with the final result. The confit duck legs were to dry in my opinion. Casque8 recommended me setting my immersion circulator at 75°C instead of 80, raising the cooking time to 20 hours and adding more duck fat (I have added 150 g per leg). The result was much better and I liked that confit duck leg very much.
I also tried 75°C during 24 hours with the same amount of duck fat. I had the feeling the additional 4 hours have not improved the texture of the meat. In my opinion the 20 hours duck legs cooked sous vide were far better.

Don’t forget to sear the legs both sides in a hot pan in order to obtain a crispy appearance, 20 to 30 secondes are enough.

Bon appétit!

Jean-François

• 1 pear
• 30 g chocolate
• 20 g vanilla sugar (vanilla extract plus sugar)

The recipes mentions puting the pear sous vide and immerse the pouch in a water bath set at a temperature of  8O°C  until the pear is “done”.

Their is no mention of the cooking time. I checked several times the pear before it becomes too soft and therefore decided to stop cooking the pear after 30 minutes. I chilled the pear and kept it in the fridge one day before serving it.

The result is a very nicely cooked pear but I can’t say this pear was something special. It was good but nothing amasing. I think the main advantage of this way of cooking pears is the possibility to keep them 15 to 25 days in the fridge (at the condition to keep them in the pouch). This is definitely a very good point for professionnals.

Jean-François

In France, during Christmas time, eating foie gras is very popular. Remember that the sous vide method was developed by Georges Pralus in the 70s  in order to cook foie gras in an optimal way.
For the first time I tried to cook myself a duck foie gras sous vide.
First issue is to choose a good raw foie gras of quality…The South Ouest of France is the region where the foie gras is originally produced. If you choose one of those, there is a small risk to make mistakes.

Then, you must take off the veins of the foie gras (sometimes you can purchase the foie gras without the veins). This is where the problem started…This is not an easy part of work. I looked on internet some videos illustrated the key points and technique to take off veins of a foie gras and then I tried myself. The difficult thing is to find the veins, take them off without destroying the whole structure of the foie gras.

It was very hard to do. On the right you can see the pieces of foie gras containing the veins and on the left the foie gras I almost totally destroyed!

Then I added 13g salt per kilo and 3g of pepper per kilo of foie gras. Some people recommend seasoning the foie gras with Armagnac or Porto. I put no alcohol at all.
Next step is to create a “ballotine”.

The “ballotine” was also not easy to form. I took a food grade plastic wrap, put the foie gras pieces inside and compressed them, first to take off the air but also to create a cylinder. Several plastics wrap pieces were necessary to fulfill this step.

Next step was to vacuum the foie gras in a pouch. I read on internet that the best way to keep a frame while cooking was to use a “shrink” bag. I didn’t have any so I did it with a regular cuisson sous vide bag.

Cooking the foie gras ballotine: my foie gras cylinder was approx. 17 cm long and 6 cm of diameter. The more an ingredient is fat the best it conducts heat. I cooked my ballotine at 58°C during 47 minutes with immersion circulator.
During the cooking process air appeared in the ballotine and my pouche started to float on the surface. I have probably not compressed enough the foie gras and not vacuumed enough the pouch. Therefore I fixed the pouch with a heavy tool down in my cooking pot.

Next step was to chill the ballotine. As you can see I took this task very seriously.

My foie gras became slightly brown and a significant amount of yellow fat appeared on one side of the pouch (unfortunately you can’t see it on the picture). I was surprised to see that by ballotine kept its cylinder frame. My worry was to maintain this frame until the total cool down of the foie gras. For this purpose I took a piece of carton I curved like a half-cylinder and place the ballotine inside. After I left the ballotine in the fridge for a night with the carton, the whole ballotine kept its perfect frame of a cylinder.

The result was really not so bad! With a little bit of fig, the taste was marvelous and the texture fantastic.

In addition, a little bit of Sauterne Château de Rolland (Barsac) 2004…Très, très bon!

Jean-François

This is my first try with cooking shellfish sous vide : a lobster tail.

I looked at Thomas Keller’s time and temperature table which mentioned a cooking temperature at 60°C during 15 minutes for a lobster tail. I am realizing more and more that Baldwin’s Sous Vide Guide is very practical. The information about the thickness is key. Douglas Baldwin indicates a 20 mm shellfish is pasteurized at 60.5°C at the condition being cooked during 41 minutes. I have decided to follow Douglas’ recommendations.

I took off the shell and seasoned the lobster tail with salt, pepper and a frozen teaspoon of  “extra vierge” olive oil. After cooking I seared the lobster tail some seconds in a skillet with some olive oil.

The result was very good. The flesh of the lobster was moist and had a very pleasant flavour of olive oil.

Another successful try!

Jean-François

I am just coming back from summer holidays and unfortunatly I’ll have to give back my Jubalo EC immersion circulator next week! Sniff!
In the meantime here is the result of my first try of cooking sous vide chicken legs.

I saw on Twitter a post from 3beanespresso who was asking himself why his try of sous vide chicken legs at 66°C for 38 minutes was leading to a gory result http://twitpic.com/fo3tl.
There was a long time that I have not looked at Douglas Baldwin “A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking”. I realized 3beanespresso used Douglas table. I therfore decided to try myself 64°C during 60 minutes (on chicken leg was 30 mm thick and the other one 35 mm).

I found on the net a recipe for the marinade :

• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 minced garlic clove
• 3 tablespoons Hoisinsauce
• 1 tablespoon hot chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon honey  
• 1 tablespoon water

I took the chicken skin off and immersed the chicken legs 3 hours in the marinade. Then I took off most of the marinade surrounding the chicken before vacuum sealing the chicken legs. This way I have avoided leakage of marinade inside my non profesional vacuum sealer machine. I think next time I’ll freeze the marinade.

After cooking I seared the poultry some secondes with my blowtorch and a little bit of oil, just to make the chicken looking more appetizing.

The result was fantastic! I could realy feel the marinade and the chicken was moist and perfectly tender.
The 30 mm chicken leg was not bloody except some little red parts located close to the bones.
The 35 mm chicken leg was globaly a little bit more bloody than the 30 mm one (see the picture bellow) but the texture and the flavor were still fantastic!

I will definitly try again this recipe and next time add 10 minutes more to the time indicated in Douglas Baldwin’s table.

Jean-François

I saw so many posts on the net speaking highly about the precise temperature and time to cook a “perfect” soft boiled egg. The range of temperature for a soft egg varies from 57°C (basically raw) to 70°C (hard-boiled, right before it gets that green ring around the yolk).

After reading the Cookingissues article about soft eggs I decided to try the 63°C soft boiled egg cooked for 1 hours with my Julabo immersion circulator. In this article they say my “ favorite 63°C “custard egg”—so named because of the creamy consistency of the yolk, which cannot be achieved with conventional cooking”.

My 63°C soft boiled egg has not reached my expectations. The yolk was not as creamy as mentioned in the Cookingissues article. The egg was good but nothing special in my opinion. Next time I’ll raise the temperature of 1°C (64°C) and see what happens.

By the way I’ll also read carefully this fantastic article from Khymos.

Jean-François

I was not really convinced after my first 42 hours sous vide pork ribs trial. The meat was tender but the texture was not as extraordinary as you can read it on some internet comments made by cooks who experimented 42 hours pork ribs.

I therefore decided to cook sous vide pork ribs for 72 hours.

The result was fantastic and, this time, I have to admit the texture of the pork really changed compared to the 42 hours one!  The meat was so tender that it was almost falling apart!

I have only one thing to say…just try it!

Jean-François

Their is now a long time that I wanted to cook sous vide salmon with Turbigomme and a probe. Viktor Stampfer book indicates salmon should be cooked 54°C for 10 minutes (core temperature) with a 56°C water bath. In my former experiment I raised the time to 14 minutes, as I didn’t have any equipment to take the core temperature.

This time I purchased Turbigomme on a French site called svdiffusion.com. Turbigomme is a gum made to be glued on a pouch. The gum is supposed to be airtight if you go through with a probe. I bought it 8.85 euros (3 meters) + 10.94 euros shipping costs! I was really mad when I reallized that SVdiffusion cheated on shipping costs. Who can believe that a 110 gr parcel could be sent for 11 euros!

Anyway I have now everything: 4 cm Turbigomme piece, a 3 mm Mastrad probe (I know this is very thick but this is a cheap thermometer – less than 40 euros) , 2 rubbers to fix the Turbigomme in the case the self-adhesive would not be enough and a nice piece of salmon.

I glued the Turbigomme on the pouch, strapped it with rubbers and pierced the all with my 3 mm probe. I didn’t face any issue during this process. The pouch did not look like “loosing vacuum”.

During the cooking process I was doubting if air was not coming inside the pouch as I could see some bubbles appearing. I was feeling more comfortable when I saw the other salmon vacuum pouch I made without Turbigomme was doing the same…

To sum up I would say my experiment was successful. 8 euros Turbigomme (plus shipping costs!) and a cheap thermometer (40 euros max.) where enough compared to those very expensive 1 mm hypodermic thermocouples probes (approx. 200 euros) and thermometer.

My only issue was the cooking time. The starting temperature of the salmon was 8°C and it took 30 minutes to reach 54°C core temperature. My water bath was set at 56°C. I decided to take the salmon of the water bath as soon as the core temperature reached 54°C (instead of waiting 10 more minutes as suggested by Viktor Stampfer).

I was afraid the salmon would be overcooked. It was the case…nothing to do with a raw appearance salmon!

Next time I’ll try 72 hours pork ribs. No need of an internal probe for this kind of cooking!!!

Jean-François

Jean-François