New Sous Vide User? What Are Your Burning Qs?

[michihenning]

Not ideal. Having the food sitting there at room temperature all day isn't great with respect to bacteria growth. The ice bath feature my work for you, assuming you can reliably talk to the Anova remotely.

[fischersd]

Sorry, but @michihenning isn't quite using strong enough language. If you want food poisoning, that's how you do it.

The rule of thumb is if you leave meat at room temperature for two hours, it should be tossed to ensure no-one gets sick.

As he notes, the ice bath feature is what people are using to do this safely. There's such a wide variance in what people are using for vessels, so you should do some tests to determine how long it will take your APC to melt the amount of ice you're planning on using and bringing the vessel up to temperature (as once up to temperature would be the start of your cooking time).

[michihenning]

Sorry, but @michihenning isn't quite using strong enough language. If you want food poisoning, that's how you do it.

The rule of thumb is if you leave meat at room temperature for two hours, it should be tossed to ensure no-one gets sick.

Weeellll… When I was young and foolish, I ate all sorts of things while I was camping that, today, I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole

But, yes, I agree. Eating meat that's been at room temperature all day is not such a crash-hot idea. I suspect it won't kill you, but you might end up with a nasty bout of diarrhoea. (Or not, but why risk it? Unless you are camping, of course… )

[fischersd]

Heh. Reminds me of the Walkerton water crisis, where so many people were seriously injured / died of e-coli poisoning. In truth, our water standards weren't as stringent as they should have been in Ontario before that....they figure that most of us (especially those that grew up in rural areas) had built up a healthy tolerance/immunity to e-coli over the years.

I suspect this is the reason that most prepared meats are SO full of preservatives....that they could survive these conditions without people getting sick. Do kids even brown bag it in the cities anymore??

But, there was this one time that we cooked a turkey in the ground (you know, where you put a layer of hot coals from the camp fire down, then an inch or two of dirt, then the turkey wrapped layers of foil, then more dirt to hold the heat in? Yeah....someone didn't do the math on that one...we all got really sick.

[kl005]

Just very very hypothetically, what if you vacuum sealed the meat, then froze the whole vacuum bag in a block of ice for use in ice bath mode? My feeling is that this method might make the ice bath last longer (and the meat spend less time at room temperature), but I'm not sure.

[Snowy_Son]

Thanks for all the info. So ice bath it is. Just have to figure out how much ice i need!!!

[AlyssaWOAH]

Lots of it!

[Snowy_Son]

Did this a while ago. Chicken still raw. Cooked it at 154.4 °F for 3 hrs. Then deep fried it for 7 minutes. Do i need to cook it longer with APC or raise the temp?

Thanks.

[Ember]

Firstly it's not raw. It couldn't possibly be after being cooked for 3 hours at 154.4F.

I assume you're referring to the red that is often seen along the chicken bones in sous vide pieces. This is apparently caused by treatment (bruising) and youthfulness of bird at dispatch. It doesn't happen in all cases, only some. Modern commercially raised chickens have an extremely short life cycle.

[TDHawk]

I'm about to make my maiden voyage and will be attempting to cook a cowboy steak that is 2.5 inches thick. How do I account for the cooking time since most of the steak recipes I see are for 1-inch cuts? Thanks.

[Ember]

Not sure which particular cut your 'cowboy steak' is, but sous vide cooking (like all cooking) is about heat penetration. The minimum time for your steak will be the time that it takes for the core temperature to be the same temperature as your water bath. This can be estimated as 30 minutes per half inch. Using this your 2.5" steak will come to temperature equilibrium in 2.5 hours.

From there it's up to you if you wish to extended the cooking time for any tenderisation of the meat. With many steaks this is not required, but it can be beneficial. Providing you're cooking over 126F you can extend your cook out to 4 hours. If you're looking to extend your cook beyond the 4 hour mark it is not recemmended to cook below 130F, which is medium rare.

[suthers]

I have 2 Q’s
1. Once I cook my meat if I want to cook it to cook later what’s the best way? Ice bath or leave to cool to room temp and then fridge?
2. When I want to reheat/sear meat what’s the best practice? Do I need to bring it back to temp via bath or can I straight sear? Most info says 90 second sear on meat that’s straight from the bath but my Q is for meat I cooked in advance...... TIA

[Ember]

1) Ice bath and then refrigerate.
2) There is a thread dedicated to searing technique: Searing for beginners however, it seems to have gone a little off piste.

[TerryLewis]

Hi All

My unit arrives today and I just wondered if there is a comparison chart of the different cuts of meat between the US cuts and Australian cuts?

Cheers
Terry
Broome, Western Australia

[Ember]

Hi @TerryLewis. Google is probably the best option if there is a particular American cut that you're looking to find the Aussie equivalent. On the whole, we use English style cuts, although I've noticed Woolworths and Coles are starting to label some of the beef with American names. The first one I noticed was NY Strip or Sirloin Strip instead of Aussie Porterhouse (not to be confused with American Porterhouse). Life really can get confusing at times.

[TerryLewis]

Thanks Ember, I'll give Google a go!

[Mirozen]

I found a document detailing international beef nomenclature and used Photoshop to make the above xref of US to Australian cuts for quick reference.

Here's a link to the original. Hope this helps.

1064.GUIDE_beef-cuts_ingl%C3%A9s_09oct13.pdf

[TerryLewis]

Wow! So good and very useful. Thank you

[Ember]

There are plenty of names on that chart that you'll never see in the supermarket meat department. I really don't know why they bothered with an 'Aussie' list because much of it is empty and the English list is correct for us.

There are not always direct substitutes because the primals are divided differently. It tends to be more obvious in pork than in beef though.

[Anita_Curtis_Ray]

I have 2 T-Bone steaks I want to cook for tonight. One medium rare and one medium. Which should I cook first and how do I keep them until readynto sear and eat?