Why print, when you can print? Cook time/temp reference

Just a simple engraved piece to keep on the side of the fridge next to where I generally cook sous vide. These are my times and temps for just the sous vide process, things like poultry and meats and crustaceans are generally finished on a grill or similar. THD white/black board.

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I have a friend who’s a sous vide fiend, I should ask him if something like this would be helpful!

Also :musical_note: Fish heads, fish heads, 30 seconds for fish heads :musical_note:

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Eat 'em up, yum! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
(I love that song)

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I have been wanting to try it myself, but wasn’t really sure where I needed to start. I’m leery of paying the price of admission and then not liking the experience.

You can do a home-made version by figuring out at what temp your stove simmers (find the one that matches the temp for the cut of meat you have - figure 140° for medium rare). Then put your piece of meat in a ziplock and drop that into a pot of water, bring that to a simmer - having a meat thermometer that you can drop into the pot makes tracking the temp easier, but if not once you get a simmer going the water won’t change temp much…cook for the right amount of time (1-4 hours usually) - sear and serve.

The bonus of the sous vide is that it does all the figuring for you :smiley: You can even dump it in frozen in a sous vide and it’ll let you know when it’s perfect.

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I have a couple of induction units that I can set a precise temp and I have a vacuum sealer… I think I’m going to do some fancy cooking’

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I regularly smoke/cook ribs and wings for 100+ meals that sometimes take a couple of days. Lately I’ve considered smoking for a couple of hours and finish cooking a day or two later where ever I’m serving dinner. With this I could get a good smoke flavor, freeze and then finish cooking on site so the food is hot.

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You can get an immersion circulator for <$100. That’s all you need to give it a shot, after you try the stove-top method pointed out above (I did that first as well). I use an appropriate-sized pot for whatever I’m cooking, although since I started using my instant pot regularly, it lives permanently on the counter next to my stove, and I’ve found that is the perfect size for most things I cook in water - plus it’s insulated on the sides. For long cooks or large items, I bought a medium cooler at WalMart years ago, and cut a hole in the lid for the circulator to fit thru. You can accelerate the heating for huge volumes (or even regular cooks) by using hot tap water.

The vacuum sealer (which you have) isn’t necessary. I cook mostly in open bags, even though I have the vacuum sealer. When the food is submerged, the water pressure pushes the air out. Some food needs to be held down a little - I use a heavy steel utensil. If I buy a few steaks from Costco, or a larger pack of chicken, I will season/marinate and vacuum bag those, then freeze, and I can just throw in the pot at some point in the future, adding about an hour of cook time. Can’t beat the convenience of “I’ll have a steak tonite” and setting the circulator to 125º at 3pm and forgetting about it until 7 or 8pm when it takes minutes to finish on a grill or in a skillet.

The only downside is you do need to finish after SV, as you will lose any “bark” on the surface, so I’m not sure it would be ideal for your example. Of course you could try it and see. The other downside is the expense of the bags for food at scale like that. I’ve only done regular ribs once and it wasn’t worth it. My “signature” ribs are smoked as close to 200º as possible for 6-7hrs.

I did two pork loins to take to a dinner party on Saturday, and finished them on my grill at home right before heading over, wrapped in foil in a large container. They only have a small green egg at their home and as great as that is, it would have been a production to use that when I got there. Side note - I introduced them to SV many years ago, they have one of those clear containers everyone thinks they need permanently on their counter. :zipper_mouth_face: They like it enough, they have the same setup at their lake house.

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Oh hey, that looks like a useful sign!

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Nice practical project!

This is so true! Just make sure not to forget about it for too long… I once had a steak in for just over 4 hours (but didn’t start that one frozen), and it tasted good, but was mushy and the texture was weird.

You can always buy one and return it if you don’t like it? Ask around maybe family or friends have one you can borrow for a weekend? If they say yes and no…that means they will be a GOOD resource when you have questions…it means they can’t part with it because they cook with it ALL the time.

I was VERY VERY skeptical about it. Now I won’t eat steak at home until it has been sous vide first!! I actually have a bunch of cut up chicken pieces in the freezer…we sous vide the chicken breasts (Tip: seal-a-meal is wonderful for this!!), then we pull them out and cut into bite size pieces. We then use a seal-a-meal bag again (it pulls out air so you don’t get freezer burn)…then you have pre-cooked meats ready to drop into a recipe and save time cooking later!!

Example: my sons (I don’t) like the chicken helper fettucini al fredo…my son today will pull out a package of the precooked chicken bites…and half of the cooktime is already done…they will be eating in a fraction of the time.

Ribs…ohhhhhhhhh Brisket …ohhhhh Chicken breasts … ohhhhhhhhh but let us not forget about desserts!!! My hubby makes creme brulle (dang I’m lazy about looking up the right spellings today; first cup of coffee)… in the sous vide. Small little canning jars make individual little servings and he adds the sugary topping and hits the topping with the fire and voila! and excellent dessert. He likes experimenting with the flavors (cinnamon is one of our favorites).

Be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Basically to try it out… you need your own deep pot and the actual sous vide device. You can even use ziploc bags with clips to hold the zippers above the water…we use freezer grade not cheapy…you could end up with water in your food and visa versa. all the other cool things to have can come later.

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You must fish deep in the oceans…you cook 30 foot long fish and 45 foot lobsters? Them there carrots are scary big as well. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

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Sorry you’re not familiar with standard minutes and seconds notation…

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the apostrophe is the universal symbol of minutes, the open quote " is the symbol for seconds.

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I thought that was what the COLON was used for??? 1:30:45 maybe I’m too used to IT technology at work… :laughing:

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I thought maybe they lived in Texas where everything is larger than it is here

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