I have about 50kg of tomatoes that I am planning to cook with sous vide. I am removing the green core wedge and am blending them then adding to a sous vide bag. I would like to cook/liquify them with sous vide. Then I will add these cooked tomatoes to a onion/oil base to further flavour. Any suggestions on what temp and time would work best?
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That is a lot of tomatoes.
To answer your question 85°C for 1-2 hours based on 800 g of tomatoes in bag. If you are doing very large bags it is going to take quite a bit longer for the heat to cook everything
I am doing ~ 20kg batches at a time (~2kg /bag). I have set it to 84c based of carrots and corn. Will let it run overnight. I am wondering though what is the effect of time on the cooking? My aim is to produce a smooth “liquified” sauce.
Thanks Lto for my morning chuckle, that vision of 10 big 2 l bags bobbing around in a large tub of water with your poor little Anova churning away all night struggling to reach the high temperature tomatoes require is quite an image.
You say liquify, but don’t mention how you plan to deal with the skins and seeds to achieve smoothness. They are not going away during processing. I’ve never processed tomatoes without first peeling and seeding them.
Please share your outcome as we can all learn from you.
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I am using a 1/1 SS food container. There isn’t much water left. Mostly bags =}. I poured hot tap water to get things started (~55deg C), then added kettle boiled water to get to 84. At this temp it’s the evaporation that cools the most. I used aluminium foil at the top to cover most of the container.
At what temp and how long would it take to break down the seeds and skin?
"At what temp and how long would it take to break down the seeds and skin?"
L2o, the seeds and skin will take more time and a higher temperature than you have. Bits of skin and seeds i’ve missed are always intact after making a long-simmered tomato sauce as an example.
At first i thought you were playing a September’s Fool joke on us.
Now, i’m not so sure and becoming concerned about the wisdom of your SV Tomato Sauce technique. Did you learn your technique from a reliable source?
Fortunately the most favourable aspect of your project is that tomatoes are a fairly high acid food so you are at a lower risk of botulism than with other less acidic foods. As you likely already know botulism’s spores are common in soil and produce their toxin in low oxygen environments. Thus, in an airtight vacuum package there is always the chance, particularly if you didn’t carefully clean, blanch, and peel the tomatoes to start as most cooks do.
How are you separating the bags so there is ample water circulation all around each bag?
It might be prudent to use a thermometer near the end of your container opposite your Anova so you know what stable water temperature you have attained. I would not rely only on your Anova’s temperature display. And be careful not to puncture a bag if your thermometer has a sharp tip. This is no time to figure out how to best patch a bag of hot tomatoes.
The temperature you attain and sustain is most important because as i recall botulism toxin is destroyed above 85C for a few minutes.
Please be careful.
Thank you for the heads up. As I stated, I am still planning to actually cook these using a traditional pot/pan (simmer for 15-30min. This should be enough to kill everything?
Just an update. I actually did not see much benefit from sous vide ing the tomatoes. I had to boil off the juice anyway in a large pot. Perhaps I did not sous vide the tomatoes long enough? ( I was trying to break tomatoes right down to make the boil easier)
If the idea with sous vide was to reduce the moisture content it was never going to happen in the closed environment.