New to Sous Vide

Anova Precision® Cooker
1

Hi
I’m new to Sous Vide, and wanted to Sous Vide 6 duck breasts at once. Can I put more than 1 breast in a bag, and what would cooking temp be. Would multiple items in 1 bag affect cooking time and quality.
It’s for a dinner party, any help please.

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Wohoo! Welcome to the wonderful world of sous vide. Yep, you can definitely cook up 6 duck breasts at once. Try to lay them side-by-side, rather than stacking them on top of each other. If organized this way, the cook time will be the same as if you were cooking on duck breast. We have a recipe online for medium rare - 134.6 F / 57 C for 2 hours. Medium Rare Sous Vide Duck Breast

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Sous vide time calculation works on thickness, ie) the time that it takes for the temperature of the water to get to the centre of the thickest section of the item cooking. So, when packed side by side there will be no difference between cooking one breast or numerous as Alyssa says. Stacking them on top of each other would result in an increase of thickness requiring more time to cook.

If you aren’t able to put all of your duck breasts into a single package, multiple packages will also cook in the same amount of time as one.

1 Like
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Hi

Why is there so much difference between cooking times. Some recipe for sous vide state, 45 minutes for duck breast, and others say 2 hrs, I’m confused by this, is it hit and miss initially.

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45 minutes seems way to short. Could it be referring to cooking using an Instant Pot instead? Cooking sous vide and using a pressure cooker is 2 totally different methods. Or could it be a recipe for smoked duck breast? It’s already cooked and the 45 minutes is for thawing/warming up the meat. I’d say 2 hours is the general time for the water bath.

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Thought it was short cooking time.
Thanks for help.

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Here’s a bit of an explanation on the time variations that you see within an individual recipe that I wrote in response to someone else.

When it comes to something like duck or steak which is frequently served rare to medium rare you are looking at cooking for short times and below temperatures required for pasteurisation. The 45 minutes quoted is enough time for the duck breast to reach temperature equilibrium with the water bath and little more than that. The longer time will be enough to get some breakdown of collagen while still remaining within the safe timeframe for below 129F/54C cooking.