Sous Vide Cooking...who does it, what do you cook, how do you do it?

Before I bet, I need to know what kind of bags, and how you sealed. Is it a Ziploc displacement seal? I have also noticed the cut and seal your own bags I got at my local Lucky market aren’t as reliable as some others. It doesn’t take long to know if if the seal isn’t great, but it is often too late.

Both the sealer and bags are FoodSaver brand.

I usually seal each bag end 3 times, wipe and dry the sealing area, and dry things like these riblets.

Okay; Can I Betcha by golly wow?

Okay, that was dumb. :blush:

But it’s a pain in the neck when the bag floats, or the seal fails, and for me, it seams to depend on the bags. And the technique. Edges can’t be wet or messy, and there can’t be much moisture, although there are techniques to minimize that.

I always double bag

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I haven’t done that, but lately, when it looks like there may be a bit of air after the first seal, I might add a second seal. Not sure how that helps. :woman_shrugging:t5:

Yep - double bag and so far never any leaks

Indubitably. For what it’s worth, IME there’s about an 80% chance one or the other will happen. Bags will float even when the seals don’t fail–what little air there is trapped in the bags expands under heat. I have an accordion-style SS rack I found that looks like it will, when inverted, weigh down bags. Not really so, because floaters will wriggle free with an assist from the circulator’s currents. It works to internally weight the bags with a good sized rock. For this riblets cook, I weighted down the bag with a sad iron I normally use as a steak/bacon press.

When the seal fails, you’re running food through the circulator.

Then there’re the questionable health ramifications of cooking food–especially for long periods–in plastic…

My Foodsaver device has a sous-vide setting that’s worked on very moist ingredients.

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What does this SV setting cause the FoodSaver to do differently?

Interesting that you like ribeye a bit cooler. I like the leaner steaks like skirt and bavette cooler and ribeye (but no other) at MR.

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I’m not sure. It pulses, instead of a continuous suction. The air is gone from the packet, in any case.

IIRC the high(er) amount of fat in a ribeye (or rib roast) requires a slightly higher internal temperature to ensure you get flavor and mouthfeel and not just the sensation that you’re gnawing on a stick of cold fat.

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Yes; I have a pulse setting on mine that helps slow down the suction action when I see liquid approaching the sealing part.

I have yet to have a sous vide meal that I thought was better than what I could cook myself using traditional methods. I will admit it is a nice way to make vegetables, but a quick sautéing of carrots with butter followed by a splash of Fever Tree ginger beer is quite good, too.

For me, I have better results with sous vide than with grilling or sauteing proteins. The lamb chops I made this week, 132F for 2 hours, very hot sear with Montreal seasoning, were perfect, but if I’d broiled them I’d never be able to get the right level of cooking. BLSL chicken breasts always came out too dry in the broiler or on the stove top, but 142F in the sous vide yields great texture and juiciness.

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I’m sv-ing a 4# boneless rib roast overnight. 137° for 24 hours is what it says. I seasoned it last night and left it to dry out in the refer overinight. We shall see how it comes out tomorrow. No biggie, it isn’t a centerpiece item for a special dinner.

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Agreed on the chicken breast or pork tenderloin - using lower temperature with SV you have less contraction of the fibers (and cell rapture) and thereby less moisture loss. Duck confit is also very simple with SV (and requires much less oil) and it allows you to add flavor components to the oil. SV gives you also the possibility to braise chuck, short ribs etc. to a consistency which is very different than a regular braise (much more high-end steak-like) - not automatically better but a different dish otherwise not possible

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What’s your technique for the chuck?

Update on my sous vide roast from the other night! Sucess! It was so tender and delicious and cut with just a dinner knife! The 4# roast cost $6.99/ lb and a repeat meal for sure!

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I like everything about medium. I like the flavor of a well browned exterior and the center to be red, not pink. Sometimes I’m ok with filet with a pink cool center.

Flap meat, flank, skirt, and hanger taste better to me when cooked medium, so they get a really nice brown exterior that’s still hot when I eat it off the grill/pan. But next time I get my hands on these I’ll try them cooler to see what I’ve been missing.

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