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On Jan 29, 2007, at 15:42, Billy Abbott wrote: > Basically, a bit of easy to do home vacuum bag cooking, without the > vacuum bag. > > Anyways, I bunged an off the boil kettle's worth of water into a > big casserole dish and heated my oven to about 60degC (thanks to my > 5pound oven thermometer that I bought the day beforehand because it > looked nice). I chucked cold water into the casserole until it was > about 60degC (by my other thermometer. I like thermometers). I then > stuck my room temperature steak into a zip lock back, squeezed out > as much air as I could and sealed it up. I bunged it in the water, > put a lid on the casserole and shoved it in the oven for 30 > minutes, checking the temp from time to time. Recently, I bought a cheap vacuum-sealer (from the wonderful Nisbets, FWIW. ) Mostly with the intention of putting portion-sized packages into the freezer so that they don't get freezer-burn. But I did have a crack at some sous-vide, too. I did lamb fillet, without anything else in the bag but a little salt and pepper. I used a slow-cooker on low, with a probe thermometer to keep an eye on it. I had to occasionally top up with cold water to keep it from going above 70[1] (Which is about when you start overcooking and the seal on the bag starts to go[2].) After 4 hours, I whipped them out and served with some pommes boulangère and sugar snaps. They were great, although I think that they could have done with being blowtorched on the outside to caramelise the edges a bit - the flavour was rich and consistent, but rather one-note. I might also consider larding them in future. Experiments to follow are: salmon sous-vide with earl grey. (It's great if you hot-smoke it, so I reckon that a slow infusion should work too). And I reckon that there's some things that can be done with injecting eggs with liquidised aromatics and then soft-boiling them when sealed. Tom. [1] Insert 'Speed' joke here. [2] Which I discovered the hard way when cooking pork chops on the hob. Poached pork is not nice, kids.
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