Cooking Salmon and asparagus sous vide (Viktor Stampfer recipe + SousVideMagic 1500B of Fresh Meal Solutions)

by jean-francois on Jun.19, 2009, under Equipments & Accessories, Recipes

I tried a recipe of Victor Stampfer (and also simplified it ) called “Sockey salmon with asparagus salad and black morels”.
I didn’t have morels therefore I just cooked salmon and asparagus.

Viktor’s Stampfer’s book indicates:

for the salmon: 54°C core temperature (129.2°F) for 10 minutes with a water bath at 56°C (138.2F). I don’t have a digital internal probe to take the core temperature of the salmon. Therefore I raised the global cooking time at 14 minutes.
for asparagus: 82°C (179.6F) for 45 minutes.

I cooked sous vide these 2 ingredients with my new equipment: the SousVideMagic 1500B of Fresh Meal Solution. So far I am very happy with this equipment which works very very well.

The salmon was fantastic! It was looking a bit raw but in fact it was cooked. The salmon kept all its juicy texture. I loved it. I only regret that I didn’t take the time to put the salmon 2 minutes in the oven so that the appearance would not look white on the outside of the salmon (see the picture below).

sous-vide-cooking-org-cookery-equipment-sousvidemagic-fresh-meal-solutions-salmon-1

I had more problem with the asparagus that I didn’t succeed to cook sous vide at the temperatures recommended by Viktor Stampfer.
45 minutes was not enough to cook the asparagus. I had to wait approx 1:20 to get them cooked at 82°C (179.6F). I really don’t know what happened. Could anybody give me a hint? Anyway, after 1:20 the asparagus was good but I can’t say that I ate something unusual.

sous-vide-cooking-org-cookery-equipment-sousvidemagic-fresh-meal-solutions-asparagus-1

Jean-François

:Asparagus, core temperature, Equipment, Fish, Fresh Meal Solutions, recipe, Salmon, Sous vide Cooker, Sous Vide Cookery, sous vide cooking, SousVideMagic 1500B, Viktor Stampfer

8 Comments for this entry

Robert Jueneman
June 25th, 2009 on 3:50 AM
I don’t have Stampfer’s book, but it appears that he follows the more commercial approach to sous vide (as does Joan Roca) of cooking the meat or fish in a water bath that is set to a higher temperature than the desired core temperature.

I don’t like that approach, because it is hard to control and leads to a gradation of temperature from the edge to the core.

Next time, set the controller temperature to the desired degree of doneness, and leave it in the water bath for the amount of time suggested by Douglas Baldwin (http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html), as a function of thickness. I can’t tell from the photo, but the salmon would appear to be about 40 mm thick, in which case 2 hours at 121F/49.5C would be recommended, or 1:08 if only 30 mm thick. (The time increases by a factor of four every time the thickness doubles, so a 20 mm piece only requires 30 minutes.

You can avoid the whiteness caused by albumin by brining the salmon for 10 minutes in a 5% salt solution (50 g of salt in 1 liter of water), then patting it dry with a paper towel.

I would add a little dill, and a little smoked olive olive oil as well, before sealing it. If desired, you can sear it briefly with a butane torch, rather than using an oven.

As to the asparagus, Thomas Keller recommends plunging the asparagus in a pot of boiling salter water, and then shocking in in an ice bath, rather than trying to cook it sous vide (except for white asparagus). So far, I haven’t found ANY vegetable recipe that is worth the bother of setting up a second bath, even though I have three Sous Vide magic controllers and three rice cookers of varying sizes.

One last thing. You said that you were using the 1500B. Why then does the temperature in the photo only display two digits? If you are using the older 1500A, or the newer and more linear 1500C, I would recommend using Fahrenheit instead of the whole-degree Celsius.
Levi
June 26th, 2009 on 6:53 PM
Next time, try peeling the asparagus. It’ll cook faster. Also, don’t hesitate to try green asparagus. You have to cook it (in the bag of course) in boiling water, but the flavor difference is huge compared to traditional blanching. It takes the same amount of time, about five minutes.
jean-francois
June 26th, 2009 on 11:28 PM
Thanks to both of you for your very precious advise!
I’ll also try next time temperatures and cooking time suggested by Baldwind.

jean-françois
bbobbo
November 15th, 2009 on 4:01 AM
asparagus: 25 minutes @ 90 degrees C seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper. it is worth it–perfectly cooked, flavors are much more intense than from boiling or steaming.
Nick Reynolds
November 21st, 2009 on 11:13 PM
Not sure if this contributed but it looks from your pictures of the asparagus that they bunched up. It is important to have equal and maximal exposure of the items being cooked to the water bath. Did you vacuum pack them in a single layer?
Jean-François
November 21st, 2009 on 11:22 PM
Nick,

You are absolutely right. This experiment was one of my first tries and I didn’t pay attention to that. Some days ago I also made the same mistake cooking sous vide pumpkins. The result was air stuck between the pieces that was released after a while, making my pouch floating…

Jean-François
Eladia Loehrs
February 6th, 2010 on 2:38 AM
This recipe is sooo perfect. Me and my mum just finished making them. Thanks.
list of spices
July 26th, 2010 on 2:56 PM
Since we appear to be in a Cooking Salmon and asparagus sous vide (Viktor Stampfer recipe + SousVideMagic 1500B of Fresh Meal Solutions) | Sous Vide Cooking state of mind, When using dried herbs use less than you would when using fresh herbs. As the flavor is more concentrated in dried herbs, they keep their flavors well, even when used in high temperature cooking. Use a little less than a teaspoon to start with, until you have done the taste test.