Recipes on Rails – Sous Vide
Seems to be populated by a good crew of very skilled posters
Practical Sous Vide
Amazing page of information
WSJ: Trying Sous Vide at Home
Good article and even better as this one actually includes recipes! I already had the Keller book on pre-order and can’t wait to actually see it.
My first attempt at a vegetable!
As an experiment, I tried making some red potatoes at 183F (2 hours). I did part of the potato cubed and part sliced tossed in olive oil with a hint of salt and pepper. R
Results: the potatoes are solid but have the texture somewhere between baked and mashed potatoes. The slices seem to have done better than the cubes. While there is nothing extraordinary from the SV method, I can’t complain either. Thoughts for next time – add some animal fat to the party and cook at a slightly higher temperature.
I guess it isn’t really a total failure as I ended up eating the trip tip anyway but I made a crucial mistake. Tri tip by itself isn’t incredibly flavorful – it seems to get its flavor from marinades or smoky flavors from the grill. I just tossed the meat in and let it sit in the sv at 133 for 24 hours (ok, so salt and pepper.)
As I had heard, the meat was a weird greenish color when it came out – a little blast from the torch fixed that. While the tri tip was perfectly mid-rare edge to edge, the meat was bland and lacked flavor. I ended up tossing it in the fridge and slicing thin pieces off as a roast beef substitute. To be honest, it was not too shabby in a quesadilla and was even good as an addition to an omlette.
Two successful attempts at salmon
1. Medium Salmon
Awesome! I had written off salmon because the traditional grilled/roasted salmon tends to be dryer. Texture was amazing although I did over brine this one because of a distraction. Should have let it brine for 10 mins and then 45 mins at 130. Added a tiny frozen piece of olive oil to the bag.
2. Medium Rare
Unreal! Brined for 10 minutes and then 45 minutes at 125 with a little pepper and a frozen chunk of olive oil. Final blast with the torch seems to have helped a tiny bit as well but to be honest it wasn’t necessary. Nice cooked appearance throughout with beautiful flavors and a texture that can rival tuna any day. The only thought in terms of improvement would be to add a bit of herbs in the bag and perhaps use less olive oil.
My Sous Vide set up is complete!
Equipment:
Auber Instruments 1440 PID Controller
Auber instruments picture of the controller
They shipped pretty quickly and the price is right. Looking at the break down of buy pre-built vs ebay and assemble – $30 for PID, $10-$20 for project box, $20 for relay, $10-$20 (?) for thermocouple and in the and it’s almost the same price with the risk of messing things up and having a cruddy looking broken box.
So far so good. Auto-tune works well but overshoots temps by 1-2 degrees at times. Might be good to retune it soon.
Rice cooker:
Black and Decker 28 cup Rice Cooker
Read that this bad boy works well for SV and the local stores only had 10 cup rice cookers. To be honest, I’m a little confused as the box says 28 cup but the inner bowl only measures to 16. Hrmf… either way, it works and has plenty of space for your average meal.
Food Saver 3825 a.k.a. the costco special
I still have my original series 1 old Foodsaver and this new one is pretty awesome!
Suction is more powerful, sealing area is wider, footprint decreased – just don’t love the “hands free” feature – instead of lifting the clamp and lining up bag there is a slot where you insert the bag and a mechanical arm folds it into the channel.
Misc: Blow torch from the hardware store
