Sous Vide Cooking

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

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