I’ve been experimenting with sous vide cooking recently and noticed that small changes in temperature or cooking time can really change the final texture of the food.
Sometimes recipes suggest different times for the same cut of meat, so I’m curious — do you usually follow exact recipes, or adjust based on your own experience?
For example, do you prefer longer cooks at lower temperatures or shorter cooks at slightly higher temperatures?
Would love to hear what has worked best for you and any tips you’ve learned along the way.
It depends, chicken and fish textures are personal taste or feel. I like my fish just cooked but chicken I use a bit higher temperature for a more traditional texture. For tough meat I go for long cooks.
I recommend to you Douglas Baldwin’s A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking. A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking Dr. Baldwin is first a mathematician and that is evident in his description of the principles of SV cooking.
My take away from Practical Guide is that temperature is doneness, indeed a personal taste, and that time is tenderness, an objective empirical observation the principles of which he well explains.
I prefer in general lower temperatures and adjust time as needed, usually longer. For beef I cook at 131ºF and ‘all day’. Baldwins ‘perfect egg’ is quite illustrative. I am quite happy with sashimi fish. I regard factory chicken as the foulest fowl and tend hotter and longer.
My clear objective in learning SV was to make cheap beef as good as it can be.
Coincidentally I just came across J. Kenji-Alt’s Food Lab and noticed similar correspondences of temperatures to doneness as described in ‘A Practical Guide’.
I rely on the experience and guidance of Serious Eats website. They have done extensive testing and can provide the precise time and temperature for the texture and level of doneness you prefer. It’s really helped me get good results with chicken.
Great question this is exactly where sous vide gets interesting, because you move from “following recipes” to actually dialing in texture the way you like it.
Personally, strict recipes are a good starting point, but they’re not something I stick to long-term. Once you understand what temperature does vs. what time does, you can tweak things pretty confidently.
Here’s how I think about it:
Temperature = final texture (most important)
Lower temp → softer, more tender, sometimes “silky”
Higher temp → firmer, more traditional “cooked” texture
Time = how evenly that texture develops + tenderness (especially for tough cuts)