Four years ago I performed an experiment in which I compared 8 different time and temperature combinations for cooking pork belly sous vide. The result was that my preferred options were 48 hours at 57C/135F and 24 hours at 74C/165F. … Continue reading Pork Belly Sous Vide Time and Temperature Experiment, the Sequel
Homemade limoncello tastes better than most store-bought limoncello. I have been making it myself for about 10 years now (click here for the recipe). Lemon peels, infused for 4 to 6 weeks in pure alcohol (95% pure), then add a … Continue reading Homemade Limoncello: To Sous Vide Or Not To Sous Vide?
Ossobuco is a classic Italian dish from Milan: braised veal shank, often served with a saffron risotto on the side (which is the exception to the Italian rule that pasta or rice (primo piatto) is not served together with meat … Continue reading Ossobuco Sous Vide Time and Temperature Experiment
Char siu is one of my favorite dishes to prepare sous vide, because it is so easy and delicious. Because the pork is cooked for 24 hours in the marinade, I had always assumed there was no use in marinating … Continue reading Experiment with marinating before sous vide
Today is the first day of the 2021 Sous Vide Summit, and I am one of Friday’s speakers. My presentation will be a summary of the blog post below. For me there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when it comes … Continue reading Combining Sous Vide And Freezing
The advantage of preparing a stock sous vide is that you are extracting the flavors in a sealed bag, so the aromas can’t go anywhere but into the stock. If you make a stock on the stove, all the aromas … Continue reading Lobster Stock Sous Vide
Today, January 26th, is International Sous Vide Day and it is the 50th anniversary of sous vide. I joined a global panel discussion about sous vide cooking. To watch the panel discussion, register for free at InternationalSousVideDay.com. The panel discussion … Continue reading The International Sous Vide Association (ISVA)
Sous vide is a very precise cooking technique when it comes to temperature control. This is especially useful for cooking meat and fish, because proteins react strongly to a difference in temperature. A difference of 2 degrees Celcius or 5 … Continue reading Chicken Breast Sous Vide Time Experiment
In Facebook groups I see many people using a sous vide stick in a pot or in a container without a cover or insulation. This made me wonder how much difference it actually makes for your electricity bill and your … Continue reading Why You Should Cover and Insulate Your Sous Vide Container
Bife de tira is a cut of beef that I had not seen before, so I bought it out of curiosity. It did look nicely marbled. I tried to google it to find out what it was, but found contradicting … Continue reading Bife de Tira Sous-Vide
The topic of chilling after cooking sous-vide, also referred to as “shocking” or “ice bath”, is frequently debated in sous-vide support groups on Facebook. Some people insist chilling after sous vide should always be done, others don’t understand its use … Continue reading The Use of Chilling After Cooking Steak Sous-Vide
Yesterday I was interviewed by Jason Logsdon of Amazing Food Made Easy for the Exploring Sous Vide Show. Click here to watch the full interview on Facebook. It was great to talk to Jason about topics like how to use … Continue reading Pork Neck or Pork Shoulder Sous Vide Temperature Experiment
Yesterday I spoke at the Sous Vide Summit of the International Sous Vide Association about how to adapt stew or braise recipes for sous-vide. Because of the pandemic, the conference was held virtually. It was a great conference and if … Continue reading Adapting Classic Stew Recipes for Sous-Vide
Octopus can be tough and tasteless, but when cooked sous-vide more flavor is retained and it will be tender with the right combination of time and temperature. So far I have always used 4 to 5 hours at 77C/170F or … Continue reading Octopus Sous-Vide Time and Temperature
The season for white asparagus started very early this year in the Netherlands due to the warm winter, but then came to an abrupt end caused by a shortage of people to harvest them due to the Corona crisis. But … Continue reading White Asparagus: To Sous-Vide or Not To Sous-Vide?
In sous-vide forums and Facebook groups there are often debates about adding stuff to the bag when cooking meat sous-vide. Someone posts a photo of a piece of meat sealed with a lot of stuff in the bag, and someone … Continue reading Does it make sense to add stuff to the bag when cooking meat sous-vide?
Cooking sous-vide can be confusing, as recommendations for time and temperature can vary considerably. Personal preference plays a role in this, as well as misconceptions about food safety (i.e. using higher temperatures than necessary). For pork belly I’ve seen recommendations … Continue reading Pork Belly Sous-Vide Time and Temperature Experiment
Six years ago I did some testing and concluded that there was no added benefit of cooking scallops sous-vide before pan searing them. However, scallops were on sale by the kilo (2.2 lbs) jar at the market, and because of … Continue reading Sea Scallops Sous-Vide
Blade steaks are a cut of beef from the shoulder area with a fascia (tough connective tissue) in the center. If the same part is sliced the other way and the fascia is removed, it is called a flat iron … Continue reading Beef Blade Steak Sous-Vide Time & Temperature Experiment
Six years ago I blogged for the first time about a technique that I called “warm aging”. Aging is a technique that is used to improve the texture of meat and sometimes also to give it more flavor by the … Continue reading Sous Vide Warm Aging Revisited
Dry aging is a technique to improve the texture and flavor of meat, especially steak. It is costly because the outside needs to be trimmed and discarded, and moisture is removed from the meat so it loses weight. To improve … Continue reading Fish Sauce-Aged Steak
Many recipes for pork loin or pork tenderloin will tell you to brine them, so the meat will be more tender and juicy. And many people keep on brining when they prepare the pork sous-vide, even though that cooking technique … Continue reading Pork Loin or Tenderloin Sous-Vide: To Brine or Not To Brine?
In conventional cooking using a pan on the stove, the oven, or a barbecue grill, the cooking time is the main variable you have to decide upon. We all know easy rules like bake a turkey for 20 minutes per pound. … Continue reading How to choose Time and Temperature to cook Meat Sous-Vide
When you cook meat (beef, lamb, pork, venison, etc.) sous-vide for a long time (8 hours or more) at a temperature below 60C/140F, sometimes the meat comes out with an unpleasant smell. Sometimes just faintly, sometimes very strongly. The bag … Continue reading How To Prevent A Bad Smell With Long And Low Sous-Vide Cooks
Veal scaloppine is one of my favorite Italian secondi di carne (meat dishes) and I prepare it often. (Please note that the Italian singular is scaloppina, plural scaloppine. The American “scaloppini” is as wrong as talking about “one panini” (which … Continue reading Veal Scaloppine: To Sous-Vide Or Not To Sous-Vide?
Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but in this case the picture above doesn’t completely convey the difference between the two pieces of roast beef. Both are cooked to a core temperature of 55C/131F. The one on … Continue reading Roast Beef: Oven Versus Sous-Vide
The popularity of picanha as a cut of beef to be prepared on the grill (BBQ) hails from Brazil, and that is why the cut is known under its Brazilian (Portuguese) name. It is called rump cover or rump cap … Continue reading Warm-Aged and Hay-Smoked Beef Picanha
Before talking about herbs or no herbs, I would like to compliment SousVide Supreme for their excellent customer service. After six years of faithful service, my SousVide Supreme water oven had burnt out. I e-mailed customer support about this, and … Continue reading Sous-Vide With or Without Herbs in the Bag?
Meat tastes good when it is tender, juicy, succulent, flavorful, and looks good. In the previous two parts of this series, I have explained how cooking affects the juiciness of meat, the factors that affect the tenderness of raw meat, … Continue reading Understanding What Happens to Meat When You Cook It, Part 3: Succulence, Flavor, and Appearance
We cook meat to make it nicer to eat because it is more tender and flavorful than raw meat, and to make it safe to eat by killing harmful bacteria that may be on the meat. In order to be … Continue reading Understanding What Happens To Meat When You Cook It, Part 2: Tenderness
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