Recent Modernist Blog Posts Page 2

In this episode of Ask Jason, Paul asked:"Schnitzel and sous vide, how does this work when you pound thin, sous vide, then fry. Is it worth sous viding it?" - Paul McLester

It definitely works. Cole Wagoner did one a few weeks ago and said it was brilliantly crispy. I've done both sous vide chicken parmesan and chicken piccata, but not schnitzel.

The first thing I would do is not pound it too thin for a sous vide cook.

In a recent Live Q & A session, Chris Asked Jason "Can I have a little bit of help about cooking a whole turkey?" See how Jason responded:

There's a good Facebook thread in the group talking about different methods of cooking a whole turkey. I personally never cook sous vide whole turkeys.

Normally I break them apart because I prefer the white meat sous vided at 140°F (60°C) and the dark meat at 148°F (64.4°C). It's also a little bit easier to handle the individual parts than an entire turkey. The same goes for chicken as well.

Christopher asked Jason: "What are your recommended times and temperatures for smoking and then sous viding a prime rib.

There's been a lot of talk lately about sous viding and smoking.Darrin Wilson runs a great Facebook group called Fire and Water Cooking which covers both smoking and sous vide. I recommend you check out his group if you're looking for some good tips about stuff like this.

But in general, you're trying to combine smoke and sous vide. You're adding flavor through the smoking process and you're tenderizing through the sous vide process. You can either smoke before or after the sous vide cooking; they both have their benefits. I think the pre-smoke infuses it with a little bit more flavor. Where the post-smoke doesn't go quite as deep, but you do have the new smoke on it as you're pulling it out and your finishing it on the grill.

Owen asked Jason: Why Does My Sous Vide Chicken Roulade Come Out Stringy?

I haven't done any chicken roulade, but I've made a decent amount of turkey roulade which is pretty similar and I've cooked a whole lot of chicken breasts. I'm not sure if you were using white meat or dark meat in the roulade or what sous vide temperature you used.

I've had really good results using turkey breast and cooking the roulade at a 140°F (60°C), which is generally what I like to sous vide turkey breast at. We normally think of turkey breast as being a real tender meat, but it's actually a pretty tough cut. It can benefit from longer cooking times, so I sous vide my turkey breast for about 10 to 12 hours.

Cheryl asked Jason: "Your article talks about calculating pasteurization times for slabs, but what about ground meat? Can you go over how to read your timing ruler? I want to understand pasteurization better. Sometimes I just need to pasteurize the meat and not tenderize it, other times I want to do both. Is the pasteurization only without factoring in time for tenderizing that I don't understand?"

It's a very good question. With the ground beef it's considered a slab. If you're doing meatballs, it's a sphere, and if you're doing a meatloaf, it's a cylinder. So you use the same pasteurization and timing like you would for whole pieces of meat. In general, they heat up at close enough to the same speed, that it should work fine.

Gary Huang asked Jason, my challenge is making ramen eggs that peel without making a total mess. I tried following Joule's recipe at 194°F (90°C) for 9 minutes and then soaking in an ice water bath but the shell sticks like glue destroying the eggs. I cracked the shells and tried peeling underwater as well but no dice. I'm curious if you have any advice to help?

I don't have a lot of experience with eggs. I find sous vide eggs to be a pain in the butt. When they work well, they work really well but they are unpredictably cantankerous. I know some people have and they have really good results with it. But I feel like it's one of those things that I need to experiment with a whole lot more before I am confident with what I'm doing. I know how to boil eggs in a pan on the stove and how to make poached eggs traditionally, so I tend to just do that instead of sous viding them.

Buying a sous vide circulator is the first step in the sous vide process. You can use your circulator in any pot, and if you are just getting started it's a great way to go, but for maximum sous vide efficiency you may want to turn to a dedicated sous vide water bath. There are several ones that we recommend, and each one has its own lids, racks, and insulators that can make it even better.

Here are my top three picks for sous vide water bath systems. Two of them are 12 quart systems that work great for small to medium sized families, and one is a 26 Quart system that is best for large families or cooking for parties.

Mike Asked Jason: Another challenge for me has been getting creative with vegetables. I love your sweet and spicy carrots recipe, especially the convenience of dumping everything into the bag to cook and then you just put it straight on the plate and you don't do anything else with it.

There are a lot of vegetable recipes you can do that with as long as you don't mind them being a little watery.

Remember my 80% good enough mantra? When I'm cooking for a basic weeknight meal, I don't want to spend extra time and dirty more pots. I'll throw some vegetables in a sous vide bag with a little bit of olive oil or butter and a few herbs and spices. I'll cook them through until they're tender, put them on the plate and serve. I find besides being really flavorful, they're healthy to eat and the vegetables are perfectly cooked. It's a good way to kind of maximize my "golden rule".

Janel Asked Jason: I bought the sous vide to tackle my archenemy, chicken breast. I always overcook it and I'm hoping sous vide would help. I've yet to make one that turns out though. Maybe I'm just used to dry chicken and the sous vide ones have such a different texture.

I think chicken breast is something that some people cook with sous vide the first time and they love it. It changes their appreciation of sous vide and chicken breasts forever. Other people really struggle with chicken breasts for years. It's an interesting phenomenon to me.

I like to sous vide chicken breasts at 140°F (60°C). I feel like the texture is the most traditional-like that you can get from sous vide without it being overcooked. In addition, it still retains a lot of moisture.

Adam asks what's your favorite knockout of 2018 so far?

I assume he's talking about dishes and not MMA or boxing. And in that case, I really liked 2 things.

One was the Snake River Farms gold wagyu they sent me. They hired me to make a video on how to sous vide prime rib, and sent me one of their bone-in wag American wagyu prime rib roasts. Not only did it taste amazing but it was also really fun to experiment with it. I cook it using a few different preparations and had my friend over to help me eat the $400, 11-pound prime rib. So that experience was all round exciting and something I generally don't do on a day-to-day basis.

The other one was from my sous vide Thanksgiving course. I hadn't really made a turkey or chicken roulade before. And since a lot of people were encouraging me to include it as part of the course, I wanted to make sure I had a recipe or two for it.

This is always a big question people have. Once you're done sous viding, if you cook it through to pasteurization and you chill it efficiently and then put it in a refrigerator, the food will last for a long time, a lot longer than normal leftovers do.

If you follow that routine, cooked food in unopened sealed bags will last for at least a week, if not longer. I know some people, I think Douglas Baldwin is one who talks about food lasting for 2, 3 or even 4 weeks, depending on if your refrigerator's cold enough and you've chilled it properly. So sous vide leftovers do last for a long time.

My local stores and butchers don't carry much tri-tip meat, so I've only cooked it a few times. I turn to sirloin steak and strip steak a lot. Unfortunately, I don't have many personal good tips for tri-tip, but I know a lot of people who love it.

It's my understanding that you want to sous vide tri-tip to a steak-like temperature. You could select 131°F (55°C) if you like a medium rare steak. Some people enjoy tri-tip just heated through for 2 or 3 hours but others like to cook it a little bit longer to tenderize it. Mike says tri-tip is one of his favorite cooks. He does 134°F (56.6°C) for 12 hours and it comes out great.

The short answer is, I don't think so. If it works for you, then great. Circulators are really nice to have though.

My Crock-Pot was an old model that didn't work very well anymore. After trying to do some ribs, I gave up on it; never used it again. I wanted to sous vide the ribs at 176 degrees and it took about 4 1/2 hours for the Crock-Pot to get the hot tap water up to that temperature. The people who say that it doesn't matter how powerful it is because you can use hot tap water, have never waited 4 1/2 hours to get up to temperature; it was ridiculous.

To make matters worse, it didn't even hold the temperature very well, and so I really struggled with those ribs. But if it's working for you and meets your needs, then stick with it. There's nothing wrong with a basic setup.

Timm Kuster says "We need more pickled vegetables on our plates!" That's a good comment because I also think pickled vegetables are great.

I didn't do much pickling until my last cookbook Amazing Food Made Easy: Healthy Sous Vide. In that one I did 2 different pickled vegetable recipes and it showed me just how easy it is to use sous vide for pickling.

This is a really great question! We get in this kind of echo chamber when discussing the use of sous vide cooking. I feel there's two opposite groups of people. There's the one side who thinks sous vide is completely overrated; it can't do anything that you can't do with traditional cooking. Then there's the camp who thinks you should sous vide everything. You've probably seen the extreme of that in the once or twice a year joke post about "my popcorn is going in the sous vide machine".

Despite the fact I make a living from writing and talking about sous vide, I believe that not everything is better with sous vide. I really feel sous vide is another tool and depending on what you're trying to accomplish, it might be the best tool.