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

Down to my home is a fantastic fish shop. I could not resist when seeing this huge and beautiful 2 Kg Atlantic salmon. This was a great opportunity for me to try my new toy…the Julabo EC immersion circulator.

Recipe: I just put some lemon slices inside the salmon, put the salmon in pouch and vacuumed it. Temperature 56°C (138.2°F)  for 12 minutes.

This Julabo is a war machine. The  56°C (138.2°F) target temperature was reached so fast (even with my 20 litres water bath) and was very steady thanks to the water pump. Haaaaaaa! The time when I was using a gas or an halogen stove to cook sous vide is now so far to my memory. What a pleasure to switch on a machine, fix the temperature and that’s all!

The result was fantastic…juicy, looking like row but in reality cooked. I invited my neighbour who heard about my experiments and where very curious to see what is cooking sous vide with an immersion circulator.

Jean-Francois

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).

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.

Jean-François

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

SousVideMagic 1500B is definitely not an aesthetic cooking equipment but the finishings are ok and everybody who buys such machine knows that your kitchen will look a bit messy with all these cables…

My first problem was to read the 25 pages manual (available on Fresh Meal Solutions’ internet site)! If your are not comfortable with English and usually not enjoying reading manual then…back luck for you! Sousvidemagic’s manual is only available in English and gives you headache since you start looking at PID tuning!
It took me some minutes to understand how to shift the SousVideMagic from °F to °C. Trust me this was not a ”push one button” function key.
The major issues I had to face with were contained in the Fresh Meals Solutions’ manual warnings:

• “Use listed cookers with heaters rated accurately for their power wattage and with their own thermal cut off protection (thermostatic or thermal fuse) in case of any SVM failures. Do not use it with electric cook tops or hot plates. SVM is designed to control the cookers recommended by Fresh Meals Solutions only. Using it to control cookers not on the recommended list can be dangerous and cause fire hazards. Fresh Meals Solutions is not liable for damages caused by misuses of SVM”.
• “Always place the SVM sensor in the cooker’s water bath before turning it on. Leaving the SVM temperature sensor outside of the water bath while cooking will form an open loop operation. This way the sensor is measuring ambient temperature and not the actual bath temperature, as a result SVM will allow the cooker to heat at full power indefinitely. It will not only overheat the controller, but also damage your cooker, and may even cause a fire”.

After reading the manual it was not clear for me if my rice cooker was “listed” by Fresh Meal Solutions as a recommended cooker. Nevertheless I went further and wired the one I purchased in China Town for EUR 45.

The second warning (“don’t take the temperature probe off the rice cooker”) is easy to manage nevertheless I consider this to be a major failure in terms of excess temperature protection. No excess temperature protection switch is provided in this case. This machine will burn, that’s all! In otherwords no kids should go around the SousVideMagic pulling on wires and no scatterbrained people dealing with this machine. 

Fresh Meal Solutions also recommend using hot water to fill cooker’s water bath or pre-heat the water close to set temperature first, before hooking Sousvidemagic to the cooker.

I took for you some nice pictures to show the rear view of the SousVideMagic 1500B (I like taking pictures). As you’ll see this is a very simple appliance. You’ll also see the kind of socket adaptor you’ll need to purchase for European users. 

I also verified if Fresh Meal Solutions’ temperature probe was as precise as mentioned on their site. I took a glass of water and immersed the SousVideMagic probe and the Mastrad one together. I made the test in °F and the result was excellent: 1°F of difference! The response time of the 2 probes is also very good.

Now lets talk about my first experiment cooking sous vide with SousVideMagic: a beef fillet at 59°C for almost 2 hours.

I verified during the 2 hours cooking period if the temperature mentioned by the SousVideMagic 1500B was actual (you’ll see on the picture that I switched to °C). In fact I think I would have never trust the SousVideMagic would be so steady and accurate if I would not have made this test. I confirm this sous vide cooking equipment is precise and steady! 

Here the result: a fantastic colour for that beef fillet, very tender and juicy. I loved it!
For food safety please visit this link.

Jean-François

I am now having a lot of fun experimenting sous vide cooking with my Bartscher water bath (EUR 100 basic equipment purchased brand new on ebay). I still think the halogen stove was the more precise equipment I used so far.

The water bath takes really long to reach the target temperature and the range of temperature variation is significant (approx. 4°C – 39.2°F).  Nevertheless I cooked yesterday 400g Monkfish fillet sous vide with some pieces of leek, chillies and lemons. I took the temperature and time of ICC’s Roner Compact manual that indicates 60°C (140°F) and 12 minutes cooking time. I presumed the time indicated is the core temperature cooking time and therefore cooked the Monkfish for 30 minutes instead of 12 (I should have a look to these hypodermic probes…). Please watch out sous vide cooking food safety and read this information.

I served the Monkfish immediately with orange chilli sauce and wild rice. That was fantastic!

Jean-François

ICC Roner’s information about core temperature and time while sous vide cooking

I have now the feeling that I have to take an interest in waterproof hypodermic probes…

Anyway, thank to Karl who was right. Roner compact water bath does not contain any PID temperature controller. Therefore the main differences between my basic water bath and a Roner Compact water bath are: a water pump, the heating element of Roner Compact is located in the water, a security water sensor, a temperature probe located directly in the water.

Jean-François

As you can see the control panel of my water bath is basic with a drainage valve, a switch on/off and a thermostat.

Contrary to an expensive water bath such as Roner Compact that costs at least EUR 2,000 my water bath doesn’t have a pump, the heating element is located under the container and is therefore not in direct contact with water. Above all my water bath do not benefit from a temperature controller.

I definitely don’t have the perfect cooker for cooking sous vide but let’s try anyway!

For my first try I took a 500g piece of beef I cooked at 58°C (136.4°F) for 1:30 . Please watch out to food safety and read this information.

It took really long before the water of the water bath reached 58°C (136.4°F), approx. 40 minutes, although I started with warm water. The temperature range was similarly to the one achieved with a halogen stove.

For food safety and flavor purposes (Maillard reaction) I seared the meat some minutes and ate the meat immediately.

The texture of the meat was amazing but a bit to raw for my liking. I think next time I’ll put it a little bit longer, 2 hours for example.

To sum up I would say my first try was a success and I really enjoyed this meat. I think I’ll try a couple of timeS cooking sous vide with this water bath before trying another kind of cooker.

Jean-François