New Anova & Sous Vider here!
So I’m getting to grips with some of the basics and have cooked my first steak and so far the results are awesome. However one thing I’m struggling to get to grips with is cooking temperatures/times for different sizes/cuts of meat. Is there any general “rule of thumb” for working these out, or a guide (or even some kind of online cook time calculator)?
I’m planning on trying some bigger meat cuts but don’t want to under/over cook!
Thanks!
Welcome to a wonderful new world. With sous vide overcooking is different to how things over cook in traditional cooking. The longer you cook with sous vide, the more tender things become as the collagen contained in the muscle is converted to gelatin. This process happens very slowly at low temperature, but increases in speed with higher temperatures.
When cooking something, the best option is really to observe it. Pull it out of the tub every now and then and give it a pinch test to check on progress. See if it’s becoming tender as you would like.
The very best teacher with sous vide is experience. The only way to get that is experimentation. But do it safely.
One of the best things to do is read Baldwin’s work. A Practical Guide to Sous Vide
Here is a site that I use as reference. He does not give just recipes but Kenji also goes through how variations in time and temperature change your results. Time and temperature variations can alter the texture and moisture retention of your product and I like knowing ahead of time what the expected result is. This is why you see such drastic fluctuations in time and temperature in different recipes.
Hello! There are a lot of timer apps for every platform, you can try them out. Also it depends on a grill you use, some of them have a built-in timer. You can take a look here [url=https://mcdonaldpaper.com/griddles-grills]https://mcdonaldpaper.com/griddles-grills[/url], that’s where I bought mine. Works perfectly.