Sous Vide Cooking

[Prime]

I came across this online. It looks interesting...and tasty

http://seattlefoodgeek.com/category/sousvide/

I’ve recently been fascinated by the idea of sous vide cooking – a method of slowly cooking vacu-sealed foods in a precisely controlled water bath to achieve the optimal doneness.

Follow the link for some culinary experimentation

[doo_much]

Interesting but I wouldn't follow those directions blindly?

Set your sous vide water oven to 56°C. Add the vacuum sealed steak, making sure the meat stays submerged. Cook for a minimum of 1 hour, up to 48 hours.

AFAIK you need to cook meat at ~70°C to kill bacteria and pathogens. Specifically E. coli O157.

[rustypup]

63°C - or so they say... but that's for medium and i prefer juicy, so my gut will just have to come up with a plan B for dealing with unwelcome intruders...

[doo_much]

I'm thinking we need a professional opinion here.

WIZ!!!!!

[ryanrich]

Interesting form of cooking. I was looking at getting a setup as well. The Sousvide Supreme is like R7K though, so those DIY solutions look way more cost effective...

[hamin_aus]

Sacre-bleu!!!!

Nom De Plume!!!!

You are considering buying a machine that will enable you to boil your food in a plastic bag... How avant-garde!!!!

Bonus points for it taking a farking age to cook... why not just stick meat under your armpit and run the comrades - that should get it slow cooked to perfection - and with only a little less hassle than sous vide!!!

[lancelot]

It will be a cold day in hell when I cook my fillet steak in a plastic bag or a carrot in a condom.

[Johnny Fairplay]

Cooking any food in plastic will give you 7 types of cancer according to Wikipedia

[wizardofid]

I'm thinking we need a professional opinion here.

WIZ!!!!!

Some one called? Check the other thread soon.

[rustypup]

Cooking any food in plastic will give you 7 types of cancer according to Wikipedia

the more i mull this over the less likely an issue it appears to be... as long as they contain no actual plastic you should be fine, (esp if it's polyethylene which only starts losing stability at much higher temps than those being touted...)

sure, i wouldn't use any old plastic bag but most of what you'd be able to purchase in a supermarket these days would have been spec'd safe for use in microwave ovens, which would require them to be stable to temperatures far in excess of those required to cook the food...

to be fair, i love a slow-cooked meal, but this just smacks of foody elitist twaddle... until i've tasted the apparent difference... (and i don't get how fillet could taste the same without a little searing :/ ...)

[Johnny Fairplay]

sure, i wouldn't use any old plastic bag but most of what you'd be able to purchase in a supermarket these days would have been spec'd safe for use in microwave ovens, which would require them to be stable to temperatures far in excess of those required to cook the food...

I've seen people put the fillet, plastic and all on open flames on the braai. Makes me wonder whether some of the plastic dissolves into the meat...