So I got my new anova for mother’s day and was so excited to try a corned beef. Little daunted by the 48 hour cook time but do believe in the benefits of slow food! However, I put the corned beef in my big 18-qt container right away and then started the process with the app, not realizing I was supposed to wait until the water was at temperature … which took 9 hours. Do I need to throw away this corned beef? And I guess I really didn’t need to fill the whole container with water - how long does it typically take to heat to temperature?
No. Corned beef is cured. You’ll be fine.
As for raw meats, probably best to wait until closer to the target water temp, or use a smaller volume of water - some of the people with wi-fi units load the cooking vessels with ice and the food and start the cook remotely in the middle of the day. Maybe someone who has done that can comment more on it.
Time to come to temperature varies based on starting temp, target temp and what additional items you have in the vessel.
Most people will fill their vessel from the hot water tap to shorten the time it takes to get to target temperature before adding what they’re cooking (as acs mentioned, others use ice baths to delay their cooking time, but keeping their food out of the danger zone for bacterial growth).
When you use ice baths, you should do some tests beforehand, so you know the time it will take to get the vessel to temperature (otherwise your time to completion could be considerably longer than planned). I’d use as small a vessel as possible when doing an ice bath, to minimize the time it would take the APC to bring it up to temperature.
I do not have a wi-fi unit but I would add another test to the one mentioned by @fischersd
I would fill my container with ice water and measure how long it stays in the “safe zone” for food storage. You do not want the water and food to sit for half a day at room temperature.
@Lilnewyorkerpizza - hope you got the answers you were looking for about your question. Also, to confirm are you saying the bath didn’t reach temps for 9 hours?
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I often let the water bath come up to cooking temperature, with the meat already in it, especially when the meat is frozen. I don’t start timing, until the bath reaches cooking temp.The meat is vacuum sealed, so it gets pasteurized, in the cooking process.
If I throw a frozen steak into a hot bath, I just add an extra hour, to the cooking time.
I am confused. Unless your corned beef was a block of ice near absolute zero on the planet Neptune I can’t understand how it would take 9 hours to get to temp. I can literally watch the temp roar up on my cooks.
9 hours seems way too long. You can work out roughly how long it should take here:
https://www.easycalculation.com/physics/thermodynamics/water-boiling-time-calculator.php
This allows you to check that you are in the right ball park at least. Enter 800 W (or 900 W for wifi), 90% efficiency to account for some heat loss, and the volume and starting and ending temperature. Heating four gallons from room temperature to 160 °F should take only a little over an hour.
If your APC takes a lot longer than this, there is probably something wrong with it.
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