I was reading an old post and came across this quote:
" [Chicken Breasts] I buy them 6 to 8 in a package when they go on sale every few weeks, and cook them all, two breasts per quart bag. After sous vide cooking, and chilling in ice water, they’re fine for up to 3 weeks in the refrigerator, so long as the seal hasn’t been broken."
Is that correct?
Under certain circumstances the lifespan is safely extended. However it does require:
Full information is available in Baldwin’s Practical Guide to Sous Vide.
Ember’s correct. I sense that some SV users aren’t as diligent as necessary in the chilling step to ensure safe long refrigerated holding times.
You need to start with equal amounts of ice and water. Thorough chilling requires longer than you’d expect. Refer to Baldwin’s Table 1.1.
It’s been my practice to never chill-hold any product more than 2-inches/55 mm thick. Why? That’s because the product can potentially be in the temperature Danger Zone too long Pasteurized or not.
I too like to buy chicken and some other items in bulk. My process is different and I think a lot safer.
When I get home from the store I immediately divide and vacuum seal the chicken. Using blue tape on the bag I date and list what is in it. I then freeze what I am not going to use within the next couple of days. The small time saved is not worth it for me. If I want to take a piece of chicken for lunch I will cook it the night before and keep it cold until I am ready to eat it the next day.
I am a big proponent of marking items that are stored in the refrigerator or freezer. As different things go in it becomes increasingly difficult to remember how old something is.
John, your labeling procedure is an excellent practice. Dates are as important as product names.
If you want to conserve energy batch cooking on the day of purchase followed by ice-bath chilling is more effective and enhances the quality of tender meat and poultry.
I have read Baldwins times for heating, cooling and storing.
@Ember I understand the circumstances which have to be met, thank you for those, because I do not have a readout from my fridge, for example, I was interested in Baldwin’s time/temp chart:
below 36.5°F (2.5°C) for up to 90 days,
below 38°F (3.3°C) for less than 31 days,
below 41°F (5°C) for less than 10 days, or
below 44.5°F (7°C) for less than 5 days
@chatnoir The chart on cooling times makes interesting reading and I take your point on thickness.
Thanks also to @john.jcb I will go out and buy a sharpie 
I indulge in some unhealthy molar grinding whenever Baldwin’s refrigerated product retention schedule appears here because those first two lines are very difficult to maintain on a consistent basis in a domestic refrigerator.
There is one way to monitor your refrigerator’s temperature without a readout for long duration holding. If your lettuce stays frozen then you are down to about 2.0°C and just about safe enough.
If you ever suffer an interruption in electricity supply don’t open the refrigerator door if you are storing any long term products.
So I personally don’t like the way chicken tastes when cooked and heated back up. I buy from Costco then divide and marinate, put in to vacuum sealed bags, label, and toss in freezer. I also find bone in chicken works best and can cook at a longer time. I left 2 bone in chicken breasts in the SV all day and was amazing .150 degrees (F) seems to be perfect. Unless eating cold chicken is your thing or to be used i for chicken salad or some other cold chicken recipe, why cook it twice.
Personally, chicken is one thing I think is better roasted in the oven, that said, there is relevance I think here. I roast in mass, 3 chickens at a time, quarter them, vacuum pack them and freeze them, then reheat at 140F for an hour, from frozen. Comes out perfect every time, like it just came out of the oven, well a little less hot 140F vs about 160F for a rested roasted chicken. I’m not sure the use case here, if this is for something like cold chicken salads, then it’s not really relevant, but if it’s for reheating, just freeze it and sous vide from frozen, works fantastic.
I mass cook all kinds of things this way, leg of lamb, strip loins, smoked pork loins, short ribs, if you have a chamber vacuum you can even force infuse things before packing and sealing, and this will mostly keep what ever sauce, broth or au jus from boiling in the vacuum. Just throw whatever it is into a baking dish with whatever you want to infuse, with seal time at 0, and let it run through the vacuum cycle, it’ll boil a little from the lowered pressure but when the vacuum releases a surprising amount of that liquid will just get sucked into the product that has been made significantly more porus under vacuum.
Anyway, just my 2 cents, I personally would never do long term storage of a month or more of poultry at refrigerated temperatures, poultry, even cooked poultry I’ve just found to be about the least fridge stable non-seafood protine, and I keep my fridge around 33F or just barely above freezing in the coldest spots, and actually things even tend to soft freeze at that temperature, that means about 36-37 in the warmest spots and in the less circulated vegitable drawer. At that temp I trust raw poultry for about a week, and cooked for maybe 2 or 3 tops.
Ken is using excellent judgement in his safe refrigerated storage method. Those frozen leafy greens are the best (worst) indicator of a cold-enough refrigerator.
When are we going to get a new forum manager?
Alyssa has been gone for a while, and we need someone from Anova who can remove phishing/advertisement posts like the one above from sherrytyler.
I’ve seen forum posts linking to “dausel.co” here before and imo they are definitely something that needs to be removed.
I try and keep up with removing these.
Thanks! Always nice to see them removed asap. I hate the idea of any of us getting suckered into things like that!
You can flag posts for attention using the flag icon at the bottom of the post. I’ve flagged a number of them including the one on this thread that you referred to, and John is usually quite quick at getting them removed.
What would be really nice, though, is if the forum could restrict new user accounts from including links in their posts perhaps until after they’ve made a few text posts and been around for a little while. I know it’s not a perfect solution but it might discourage less dedicated phishers.
Some measures have been implemented behind the scenes to reduce Spam and Phishing.
For those of you that have been here a while do you remember the Korean gambling sites that posted a few hundred times a day?
Great to hear.
Thanks John!
It would be nice to see a presence by Anova again.
Anova is putting its efforts at stoking the Show-And-Tellers on FB.
Had mentioned the lack of forum presence and got told that they post to the forum constantly. Of course, then I had to explain that the blog is not the same as the forum.
It appears this Community has become the Anova orphans.