Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Mr B
I always cook with red wine.
Sometimes I add it to the food.

A very fine policy indeed.

Red wine is an antioxidant!

Hi
The pinnacle of sous vide cooking is the poached egg.
I forget the exact temperature....but...
You should be able to drop an egg into the SV water and the white will be cooked whilst when you crack it the yolk is still runny

I tried it a few times at the temperatures they use in Japanese hot springs, but it didn't work too well for me.

One problem was accuracy of temperature. I dont think my meat thermometers are very good.

I used this site for my info, and they say 62.8°C (145°F)...

http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/sous ... -eggs.html

So, as is often the case, I was inspired by Bully's meanderings. We had steak last night so I had to try the Sous Vide method. I was gonna take a picture but my phone camera is broken and I couldn't find my wife's camera because it was right where I was looking.

Actually my phone camera does work, but my phone was stolen yesterday so I reactivated an older phone with a broken camera. No idea how this relates to Sous Vide, so let's move on.

I connected an old crock pot (slow cooker) on high setting to a thermostat set at 160°F (beef, medium). I filled it with hot water, then I microwaved some of the water a little at a time to get the starting temp up to 150 - it was late afternoon and we wanted to eat the same evening, so I had to speed things along. I put in 4 sirloin steaks, thick cut, 2 sealed in zip locks and 2 in vacuum bags, and let them cook for about 2-1/2 hours.

The temp control worked very well and after the crockpot warmed, the temp slowly climbed to 160 and stayed between 156 and 160 the entire time. I took out the steaks and browned them on the grill. I must say overall this worked very well. The steaks were closer to well, and almost dry but not quite. The thickest one was the best. They were tender and delicious. When I do this again I think a lower temp. will be better. We like our steak medium, so I used 160 as a start. But I think med-rare is better for the long slow cook, so next time maybe 145? This is the thermostat I used:


Thanks for another great idea BullwinkleII.

I love how well they brown in just a few seconds.

I think for a steak without lots of sinue, the longer time wouldn't be required.

Serious eats might be a good guide.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/06/food ... tempchart1

One of the problems with the system I use is that I have no idea what temperature I'm actually using. I have a few different thermometers, one from my old darkroom is probably the best quality, but they all show different temperatures.

You can calibrate a thermometer using boiling or ice water. Apparently boiling water doesnt get any hotter than 100c, and an ice water slurry doesnt get any colder than 0c. But even then you have to adjust for height above sea level.
According to wikipedia, even at only 600m above sea level, water boils at only 98c

That's a huge difference.

So to get a rough idea of how accurate a device is, you might need to go to google earth to find your height above sea level, then test the temp in an ice bath and at a boil, then take a guess as to what the error is at cooking temperatures. Unfortunately it isn't necessarily going to be some nice linear deviation.

But your device may well be accurate.

The cool thing about the real sous vide devices are that they seem like they might actually tell the temperature within .1 of a degree.

But another way to work it out is just to experiment.

My prefered method

Like leaving a coffee mug loaf of bread for one to rise on the waste heat of your router

I had some success with the eggs.

Wow!

The most amazing texture for egg whites I've ever had.

I bought a portable 2000w induction hotplate a few months ago. I found very good temperature control by using a double boiler.

The setup I used in the end was to set the induction device to 200w (it's lowest setting unfortunately) and put a wide shallow pan of hot water (ie hot from the tap) on for a few minutes until it's temperature remained consistent (I wont bother mentioning the temperature because my thermometers are all over the shop but I used this as a guide)

I then dropped an upturned ceramic bowl into the pan of water, and sat another pan of hot water on that so that it was just touching the water.

I found I could get perfect temperature control by adjusting the depth of water in the pan on the bottom pan. So the further up the outside of the top pan the water was, the hotter the water inside the top was.


The result after leaving an egg sitting in the top vessel for an hour was like the egg described as being cooked to 62.8c on that guide

It took an hour, but apparently you can precook them, and put them in the fridge to reheat a few days later and still get the same result.

I haven't tried that yet.

An hour seems like a long time to wait for an egg, but it really was worth it. Although I tried one on toast and it was a little pointless.

It's best enjoyed when you get to sample that amazing texture. The white sets to almost a custard or something. Silky and totally worth trying. It's no wonder it became so popular in restaurants a while back. And of course in Japan for ages.

Best enjoyed either by themselves, or search for any of the Japanese slow cooked egg dishes.

Boneless pork chops last night. They went in frozen at ~80°F and came out delicious at 144°F about an hour and a half later. Browned them up and enjoy! No burned / dry outer edges or raw center. Perfect all the way through.

Awesome!

Apparently carrots are amazing.

I hadn't even thought of cooking veggies sous vide.

A bit of reading
http://www.amazingfoodmadeeasy.com/info ... uide#times

I don't think it helps most veggies but I haven't tried anything but carrots. Carrots are great, they come out sweeter tasting . Had sous vide top sirloin that was melt in your mouth a couple of days ago. Cooked at 136F for two hours and then seared for a couple of minutes total.

I haven't tried it yet but if you can keep the temp low enough, the sous vide cooker can be used to bottle honey or reliquify (90 to 110F is probably OK) it and could be used for some of the stages in cheesemaking. If the temps too high the honey will darken and you'll destroy some of the enzymes (I've read 125F destroys the enzymes).

Here's a recipe for you Milne - https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/2-hour-sous-vide-limoncello

Interesting recipe
I don't think the amount I make I would get a sous vide big enough
Last batch was 60 lemons only do it once every 2 years

Yeah might be a stretch size wise but only 2 hours and you could probably get away with cutting your size of recipe in thirds . Probably not as good as yours, I'm not certain with this recipe but sometimes with rushing things along you lose some of the complexity

Cheers

I soak the rind for 2 months in 94% neutral
End up with 4.5 litres of syrup add 4.5 litres sugar mix
= 9 litres of lemenchello mix that with 9 litres jin
Now you know why I am always smiling

Yep that would work Milne