Sous Vide Cooking

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

Here are some of Thomas Keller information about cooking times and temperature.

Contrary to Viktor Stampfer’s book that indicates a temperature of the waterbath slightly higher to the core temperature of the ingredient contained in the pouch, Thomas Keller indicates the starting temperature (3.3°C) of the food, the time and the temperature of the bath only. This is definitely less confusing.

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

I thought it would be interesting to update the information available to me about cooking fish sous vide, especially since I had the opportunity to have a look to Heiko Antoniewicz’s book called “Werwegen Kochen” which means “Daring Cooking” in German.

The first table is a compilation of Viktor Stampfer’s recipes about cooking fish and ICC Roner Compact manual cooking information. The tables indicate both the core temperature of the fish and the cooking time at this temperature.

The second table illustrates the different core temperatures (not available for Heiko Antoniewicz) and cooking times chosen for the same fish by different cooks.

Table 1

(*) If core temp. available otherwise cooking time at water bath temp.

Table 2

(*) If core temp. available otherwise cooking time at water bath temp.

Jean-François

Core temperature and cooking time is key for cooking sous vide. Find bellow what is advised by Viktor Stampfer especially for fish products.

Jean-François