I don’t like to throw away food and when I’m cooking I definitely don’t want to throw away any flavor. So when I brown meat, I always deglaze the pan to make a sauce out of the browned bits that have gotten stuck to the bottom of the pan.
I’ve been cooking sous-vide for over a year now, but until recently I had not figured out how to use the juices that are left in the bag after cooking something sous-vide. Especially when braising meat for two to three days, there can be a lot of juice and since it obviously has a lot of flavor it bothered me that I didn’t know how to use it.
Many sous-vide recipes simply mention “make a sauce from the bag juices”, but don’t tell you how to do this. Above is the juice that I had obtained from braising short ribs for 2 days at 57C/135F. As you can see it is quite a lot.
This is what happens when you heat the juices to make a sauce: the juice will curdle and you get a lot of nasty looking scum. What stopped me from finding the solution until recently was that I wanted to use all of the juices for a sauce. Unfortunately, that is simply not possible as the proteins in there have only been cooked to 57C/135F, so it is unavoidable that they will curdle if you heat it any further.
The solution is simple: first remove most of the scum with a slotted spoon as you usually do with scum on a stock.
Next, line a sieve with paper towels (or a cheese cloth) and filter the juices.
What is left is pure meat juice with a lot of flavor in it, perfect for adding to a sauce.
It is not a problem that the meat has cooled a little while you were doing all of the above steps, because now you can brown the meat and then take the meat out and deglaze the pan with the strained juices to make a quick sauce.
For a fancier sauce, sauté chopped garlic with a few thyme sprigs and a bay leaf for a minute in the fat left in the pan. Deglaze the pan with wine (white wine for white meat, red wine for red meat) and then add the strained juices. Let it reduce a bit over medium heat and then strain. If you like you can make it a bit thicker by whisking in some small pieces of cold butter.
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 
Excellent advice. When making a sauce for say a steak, I let the sauce thicken a little more than required, and then add the liquid which has been released in the vacuum bag with the meat and add it straight to the thickened sauce. Works like a charm!
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And then you don’t heat the sauce anymore after adding the juices from the vacuum bag?
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Well, I did this Saturday evening, but come to think of it, there should be no need, as the sauce from the bag is at the perfect ‘cooked’ temperature already right… ?
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Well, the juices from the bag (especially after cooking sous-vide for 3 days there can be quite a lot) need to be concentrated to make a proper sauce, and that’s when the heating comes in. And whereas the meat has the perfectly ‘cooked’ temperature when it has been cooked sous-vide, that temperature is not perfect for sauce as you’d like the sauce to be warmer. (The low serving temperature of meat cooked sous-vide is actually one of the down sides of sous-vide cooking, but if you post-sear the meat and/or use preheated plates, it should be OK.)
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I prefer to heat, reduce, season and then blitz with stick blender. Just more tasty and thick?
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To what extent can these strained juices be used as a complement to, or a substitute for, a beef stock?
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They can be used as both, depending on what you’d like to use the beef stock for. I would normally use it to complement, but if you are going for something elegant and delegate (like a consommé) you could also use it solo.
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Hi Stefan, if you don’t want to waste the scum and filtered out solids – they carry teriffic aromas! fry them in a little olive until all dark brown, indicating that the Grignard reaction has taken place – this is the big draw back of sous vide – then deglace and boil to dissolve with some wine, stock or verjuice. Add this to your sauce to get a quantum step in flavour
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Hi Rainer, thanks for the tip. This is something I will try! I do pre-sear and/or post-sear the meat to work around that drawback of sous-vide and get a Maillard reaction anyway (I have never heard of Grignard in releation to food before).
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Hi Stefan I am getting old! Of course its Maillard.
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I love it! I haven’t heard Grignard mentioned since O Chem…. .
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Yeah I cooked it 45 years ago in the lab!
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I’m no gourmet, just a single guy trying to eat better than frozen meals. When pan-searing meat and poultry post sous vide, I tip the juices in the pan too, then post sear I add white wine, stock, butter and a small amount of cornflour because I like my sauces thick. Apologies if that makes anyone cringe. If anyone has better ideas I will be happy to see them.
Also, sometimes instead I tip the bag juices into couscous along with the oil and water to give it some extra flavour.
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When you tip the bag juices and then heat them, don’t you have issues with ‘scum’ appearing from coagulating proteins?
Cornflour is a good way to thicken a sauce. Mounting with butter looks and tastes better, but you’d also be adding quite a bit of butter, which is not necessarily a healthy thing to do.
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Butter is NEVER unhealthy. No amount of fat is (unless or until the amount makes one vomit)
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Thank you! I had the same problem and tried various ways to deal with it (Beurre manie, cornstarch, rapid beating etc) but had pretty much come to the same conclusion when I saw your post. I hated to throw all that nice protein away, but it looked gross.
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It sure does! I’ve found that in certain sauces there are no issues (for example when cooking beef sous-vide with a teriyaki marinade, the bag juices can simply be reduced without any scum issues). I also read somewhere that someone sautéed the ‘scum’ and included it in the sauce anyway, but for the look and the texture that doesn’t seem like a solution to me.
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I’ve done this with poultry before, slightly modified. Took some chicken juices, mixed with mozzarella, cognac, little salt and pepper. Made an incredible, rich sauce.
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Thanks for visiting and taking the time to let me know. Mozzarella in the sauce, how did that turn out? Does that melt and mix well with the sauce or does it become stringy like on pizza?
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Thanks Stefan, this is a great tip. I will use this technique.
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Hi Mervyn, thanks for taking the time to letting me know that. What type of meat do you cook sous-vide?
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Thanks for covering this topic. Did you heat up the juices before straining off the coagulated proteins or can you just strain them directly out of the bag?
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You have to heat the juices to let the proteins coagulate. If you don’t heat the juices above the temperature at which the meat was cooked sous-vide, there won’t be any coagulated proteins to worry about. The coagulation happens when the juices are heated above that temperature, for instance when you bring the juices to a boil to reduce them to make a sauce. Does this help?
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I bring the bag jus and all ingredients but the starch up to a quick boil. Then strain it. Sear my steak in the pan then deglaze with the strained jus then thicken. (I use potato starch mixed with some water). Sometimes I just use without thickening. Depending on whats in bag. More like au jus.
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Excellent article, Stefan, Thanks for tackling the issue. I am looking to use the meat juices accumulated in my frozen meat pkgs.
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I had limited juice from cooking pork chops w/shallots, garlic, and thyme sous vide. I decanted the juices and scraped the aromatics. off of the pork chops. I then simmered the liquid away, leaving the aromatics. I added 2 Tbsp butter and sauteed for about 30 seconds to a minute, followed by adding 2 Tbsp of flour, mixing and heating for 2 minutes to create a light roux. I swirled in a cup of chicken stock and found I had a pretty tasty gravy to ladle over the pork chops.
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While my chops were in the sous vide cooker I roasted some pork bones and used that pan to make a rich gravy, adding the juices from the bags. Delicious!
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I just pour the juices off into a glass and drink them down. They taste delicious. If I don’t drink them, I freeze and add to my bone broth or I make them into a reduction as described above. I don’t worry about the curdled bits as I have a vitamix blender. If anything is too lumpy it gets a whirl in the blender to smooth it all out.
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I just pour off the juices into a glass and drink them down.
Cook’s privilege.
They are slightly salty and absolutely delicious.
If I don’t drink them, I freeze and save for when I make bone broth.
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Cathy you are wasting the best bits!
You can easily blitz the lot which will cause the juices and solids to form a nice sauce, or add some red wine estragon etc. first then boil for 3 to 5 min to get rid of the alcohol, then blitz and add a little cream or butter and spices to finish.
also check ” never f….d up sauce hollandaise ” for your braise to get the gist of the sous vide possibilities and to embellish your braise.
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