So Elena, your mystery continues.
Can you taste plastic if you pinch your nostrils closed?
Are you near the container with the plastic smell when you taste the chicken? Was you husband nearby?
Are you only using new bags, not washing and reusing them? Detergents are petroleum-based and can leave a residual odour.
Do you wash your chicken before packaging and cooking. Some people do.
Thank you for following up with my challenge Chatnoir! Yes, still a mystery.
I’ll try with the pinched nose.
No, I wasn’t near the container, and this time I cooked in stainless still pot.
Yes my husband was nearby, but he doesn’t taste the plastic
I always use new bags
I don’t wash the chicken before packaging, should I?
Whoa Thar Elena!
Never wash chicken.
Ever.
Get rid of the chicken wrapping material ASAP and wash your hands very well after handling. That goes for turkey too. You never want poultry germs in your sink on on your counter.
I was thinking maybe you were using a detergent to wash the bags or the chicken. So glad you weren’t.
Chicken is to cooks as canvas is to artists. Let’s get ready to paint.
Next time break out your favourite herbal seasoning and cook the chicken with a couple pinches of it in the bag. After cooking the chicken season it more liberally. Herbs will perfume your chicken and even better, make it taste good. A little squeeze of fresh lemon juice will brighten the chicken’s flavour too, just a little now. These suggestions should rid you of the plastic odour.
What i am suggesting is to combat that objection plastic odour with ingredients you will enjoy as they cover anything you don’t like.
Do you like garlic, use some.
I hope this fixes Elena’s Great Chicken Mystery.
Oh, and please don’t cook your chicken for 8 hours. It’s far too tender to need more than a couple of hours.
If you are still struggling with plastic taste you can also try the reusable silicon bags. The Stasher branded ones that Anova recommend are great for chicken bits.
Thank you, but it’s not the tase itself that worries me it’s the safety of consuming plastic.
Elena, i see in American Test Kitchen’s new book on Sous Vide that they subjected recommended SV plastic materials to scientific testing. They found them safe for the intended use and that the Zip-Loc brand performed best.
The only other idea i have is that your Foodsaver bags may be degrading from something like age or radiation. Have they been left in direct sunlight for an extended period of time?
Or do you live near Roswell or Corona, New Mexico?
I live in Beautiful British Columbia Canada, should’t be any radiation as much as I know. I store my food saver bugs in a closed kitchen cabinet. So, Zip-Loc is the best?
Granite benchtops? 
Oh my! All that radiation… 
@chatnoir @elenak
Maybe it is just a ‘bad’ batch of bags! Residual chem from the manufacturing process that did not wash away, or bad storage next to floor cleaners at the retailer, something unusual.
Try cooking the breast at 145F for 2-3 hours using a good quality zip-lock bag & the water displacement method. This is a cheap way of checking your bags & method. Definitely do not use the cheapies from the Dollar Store.
I use the heavy-duty freezer bags from President’s Choice for the water displacement method of cooking,and the Ziplock brand vacuum-saver bag rolls for freezing and vacuum sealed sous-vide.
Hope this help the great BC Chicken Mystery!
@elenak
A good rule of thumb is:
If you can see, smell, or taste it then it is in high enough concentration to affect you.
The other thing is sampling. Try to have 4-5 people sample the chicken at the same time.
Take 2 chicken breasts, cook one in the oven with a little water in the pan, and sous-vide the other. Sear both in the same frypan at the same time. Cut into portions and serve blindly. Just say, “…try these& tell me about them.”.
If only your daughter tastes plastic, well there is an answer.
Just believing that things will taste of plastic because they were cooked in plastic can be enough to make them taste like plastic.
There are studies that have shown that the same wine tastes better when people are told that it is expensive, and that placebos work better when people are told that they are getting an expensive treatment than they do when people are told that they are getting a cheap over-the-counter drug.
The mind is a weird and wonderful thing…
Similar to the wine results, the same person can receive different ‘flavour’ from Parmesan cheese when blind taste testing depending on environmental triggers, either good or bad.
So much taste is down to perception and interpretation.
I agree with both of you.
You know the old saying, “You are what you eat!”
Similar to that, the world is (somewhat) how you perceive it; including taste.
If you believe something wonderful before you try it, then it will be wonderful;
on the flip side, if you believe it will taste blah, plastic, not likeable, etc., then it will.