Today I saw an interesting piece of sous vide cooking equipment called Chef Touch System from KitchenAid. This concept gather a vacuum chamber sealer (a must in terms of vacuum that gives you the possibility to add liquids such as oil or a marinade in you pouch without destroying the machine) a shock freezer (very usefull and safe device if you want to keep meats in the freezer after you cooked it at low temperature) and a steam oven.

The concept of this all in one sous vide equipment gives an idea of what could look our kitchen in a close futur. The only weak point of this beautiful item is the steam oven. Why not replacing it with a PID controlled steared water bath?

Any idea of the price of the Chef Touch System and availability?

Information added October 23rd :

Thanks to N.Lavirotte, we now know the ChefTouch System is available since September in Europe. Official retail price are as follow :

-Vacuum chamber : 2,950 € incl. VAT
- Shock Freezer : 5,000 € incl. VAT
- Oven : steam ( 1,550 €) combi (1,850 € ) incl. VAT
- Kitchen high cabinet : 2,700 € incl. VAT

Total = 12,500 € (combi oven) incl. VAT (approx. 17,500 USD)

JF

I received several questions of people interested by the swid of addelice. Their main worry was to determine if the swid is for professional purposes or for home cooks. To all of them I replied and said that I am not a professional and therefore don’t know their expectations as a professional. I realized that I tried the swid in  3.5 litres and 8.5 litres pots only. The manual of the swid indicates that the stability of the temperature is optimized up to 20 litres.

I went inside my uncle cellar and found an Ikea plastic box (€ 3) that I filled with 20 litres water.

I had to face a problem with the plastic container which is very flexible. Attaching the swid with the clamp to the container was not possible as the swid was too heavy. Therefore I found a glass cutting board that was perfectly the hight of the container. I put this board between the plastic container and the clamp. This generated an excellent stability for the swid to be attached.

I set the swid at 55°C only because I am not realy trusting in the Ikea container that could melt or not resit to higher temperatures. The manual of the swid indicates the Adaptive PID controller (that assesses the amount of the water i n the pot) was optimized if the starting temperature is at least 15°C lower than the target temperature. It took 15 minutes to heat the water from 25°C to 55°C and, after 5 more minute,s the stability of the water bath was excellent.

I decided to make an addition test: immersing a bottle of cold water (3°C) simulating a cold pouch in a water bath.

It worked perfectly.

To sum up I confirm the swid thermal circulator can heat easily a 20 litres water bath.

Jean-François

Good news for sous vide enthusiast who are not comfortable with the English language. Douglas Baldwin “Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking” has been translated en French and German by Addélice. This guide is therefore available in 4 languages (incl. Portuguese).

We are also waiting for the launch of addélice immersion circulator (the Swid) that should be vailable in some days (addélice postponed several time the launch of the Swid but told me some days ago that it should be available within one week. For the record, the Swid should be at EUR 449 incl VAT and sending costs! 

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 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

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jean-François

When surfing on the excellent CookingIssues.wordpress.com site I found a very interesting post about vacuum machines affecting textures of ingredients (click on the image bellow for a direct link to the post).
To sum up this post I would say that there is no need of a powerful vacuum machine for vegetable, fish and poultry (such as chicken). CookingIssues even says that for some ingredients such as chicken, the more you increase the amount of vacuum the more you affect the texture and the flavour! On the other hand CookingIssues did not mention any drawback regarding high amount of vacuum for meat.

Just to say that sous vide cooking at home is definitely possible with a cheap vacuum machine. Remember that the issue consisting in sealing sous vide a marinate can be solved by freezing the marinate.

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