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

I saw so many posts on the net speaking highly about the precise temperature and time to cook a “perfect” soft boiled egg. The range of temperature for a soft egg varies from 57°C (basically raw) to 70°C (hard-boiled, right before it gets that green ring around the yolk).

After reading the Cookingissues article about soft eggs I decided to try the 63°C soft boiled egg cooked for 1 hours with my Julabo immersion circulator. In this article they say my “ favorite 63°C “custard egg”—so named because of the creamy consistency of the yolk, which cannot be achieved with conventional cooking”.

My 63°C soft boiled egg has not reached my expectations. The yolk was not as creamy as mentioned in the Cookingissues article. The egg was good but nothing special in my opinion. Next time I’ll raise the temperature of 1°C (64°C) and see what happens.

By the way I’ll also read carefully this fantastic article from Khymos.

Jean-François

Addélice postponed for 2 weeks the launch of its thermal circulator dedicated to sous vide.

The so called “swid” will be at € 489 incl. VAT and shipping costs. Addélice mentioned on Twitter the introductory price will be at € 449 incl. VAT and shipping! Therefore the swid becomes the most competitive  immersion circulator available on the market (click here for a price comparison of immersion circulators). For the record the swid includes a metal protective shield usually provided as an option by other manufacturer. I had the confirmation that the swid is available on 240 V (European standard) but will be manufactured for the North American market (120 V) soon.

The swid features disclosed by addélice are:

- 2,000 Watt heating power
- Circulation pump
- Built-in cooking timer
- Acoustic and optical alarms
- Adaptive PID algorithm
- Microprocessor-controlled
- Protective grid, low water level protection, overheating protection, max. cooking time limiter

Jean-François

Addélice launched a short video about its new immersion circulator dedicated to sous vide cooking.
This sous vide equipment is named SWID and benefits from two displays: one for the temperature and the other one probably for the timer. The Youtube video doesn’t show much but you can guess Addélice thermal circulator includes a protection cage. We still don’t know what would be the price of this appliance. I’ll try to contact Addélice to obtain futher information and will inform you if I have some fresh news.

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