I use a sous vide circulator to make chinese style “steamed” fish. The best preparation of course is a steamed whole fish. The sous vide circulator insures that the fish is never over cooked and dry. In the absence of a whole fish, my most common preparation is either halibut, ling cod or black cod at 130 degrees for about an hour. Most of the time I throw in some sliced ginger coins in the bag. Once done the fish is placed in a shallow bowl, covered with cilantro and green onions, then drizzled with shoyu, then with smoking hot peanut oil with a bit of sesame oil in it. Oh my goodness is it good.
I didn’t like fish cooked sous vide the few times I tried. Maybe I should give it another shot.
I like it as you can tailor make it to the consistency you prefer. I love my fish rare, just barely flakey, and 130 is that sweet spot.
I live in Hawaii, and fish both here and Alaska, to me nothing is worse than dry, flaky, over cooked fish.
We are in the middle totally redoing the beach condo we purchased. We currently have no kitchen and are living in our master bedroom and bath. We still have the refrigerator but no appliances besides a microwave
It’s been a long while since I was cooking via SV but have my one of my containers, my vacuum sealer and my Anova. Need to revisit this method of cooking.
There are plenty of restaurants around the beach but want to cook at home at least a fair amount of the time if I can. The reno is pretty pricey.
we went through something similar and found I could make a fairly wide range of dishes with a sous vide circulator, a ninja foodi (combination air fryer, pressure cooker and a bunch of other functions), and a bbq. Eventually, I also purchased a $65 portable induction cooktop
I have an instant pot with the sous vide function, so it’s relatively compact. That and a toaster oven and you should be off to the races.
Chicken breast two ways, Hainanese and one that was intended to be in the style of a Chaozhou / Teochow braise, but ended up a lot like soy sauce chicken.
145F for 3 hours. Nice texture.
Used some of the Hainanese chicken to make chicken salad. Perfect texture for the salad, perhaps the best I’ve made at home.
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I have sous vide going with corned beef right now. I set it at 180, with the plan to do it for 10 hours, which came at the recommendation of a few sites online, one of them being Serious Eats. I usually prefer lower temps in sous vide, but this wasn’t a big enough hunk of meat that I wanted to babysit for 2 days. I actually started last night and got in about 3 hours of cooking. Finishing it up today (meat was safely in the fridge overnight). I’ve never stopped and restarted before, so we’ll see how that turns out. The rest of the meal will be roasted, and not boiled, for tonight. I might sous vide some carrots though when the beef is done.
I also sous-vide chicken breast to 145F. I kind of cringe at recipes that say to take it to 165 (but the recent posts about thighs at 190F are interesting).
I’ve been doing thighs at 150-155 and like the texture there
My son in law does spectacular smoked briskets and swears by SV to hold them.
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What temp?
I sliced some off a bit past midway and much preferred the end texture.
They suggested 180F. I usually have cooked meats in the 130 to 160 range, but for longer periods. Ribs, as an example, I like at 155-160F over 12 hrs (I run overnight), but they do get extra cooking in the oven.
Ah yes, I saw the recipes for high temp / less time. Do post a pic and how you liked it when it’s done. Think I might get another brisket while they’re available.
I tried a two-day sous vide of corned beef last year and a 70-minute pressure cook this year. It seems like everyone preferred the pressure-cooked version. Clearly a small sample size (though I did pressure cook three at the same time this year), for whatever reason, I thought pressure cooking somehow resulted in a meatier flavor. And it was nice to have the whole thing done so quickly.
best,
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I recently did a beef birria in a PC, and agree that it produced a “beefier” flavor in the short (1:45) cook.
I have sous vide dishes in some of the finest restaurants in the world. While the dishes were a “success” by any measure, I have never been blown away by any of them or by the cooking method itself. Nothing I’ve had was just miles better. Big yawn for me. Gear hounds will gush over it. I wouldn’t bother with it if I were you.
I love the pressure cooker for the same cuts of meat that SV is most praised for.
Still, the hands-off element and the long cook do yield different outcomes for a few things (chuck roast, gristle on short ribs become melt in your mouth, silly texture of chicken, and so on).
I picked up a couple of those 1.99 / lb packages, will pressure cook one of them and wait to SV the other.
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I have two old school pressure cooker that I used to use all the time but I use the SV circulator more now because of the hands off factor, less mess and you rarely burn or ruin anything.
Before I read all the varying temp and times for corned beef, pressure cooked had a better texture…and a pressure cooker is of course way faster. But you can get similar texture with SV. Now I go for less mess and SV.
The only thing I will pressure cook is beef stew…esp after I saw Kenji’s fast sear method. I don’t miss the noise however. That said, chuck roast or steak 132f for 48 hrs is excellent.
my sense from playing around with it in the past is that freezing the uncooked package of meat yields better results than freezing cooked corned beef.
