Sous Vide and the Danger Zone?

[Fgignac]

Sous Vide isn't for everything. For example, I think it would make a terrible Ice Cream maker.....

Maybe not for Ice Cream. But it makes a great Yogurt incubator!

the main concern is Trichinosis and that parasite is eliminated at 131 held for 6 minutes.

This is one of my favorite things about sous-vide. I hunt bear, which can also carry trichinosis. But with SV, I can make delicious, medium cooked bear while my hunting buddies, who are too scared to try it, eat theirs well done and then some. No wonder they think bear is tough and dry...

In fact, as near as I can tell, that is the only reason the sous vide products have the circulator.

The circulator also allows for a more even water temperature. If you were to have just a static heating element at one end of a container and checked with a thermometer, you would have varying temperatures throughout the water. The water near the heater would be warmer than the water at the far end, and the water at the surface would be warmer than the water at the bottom. The bigger the container, the bigger the temp difference. Circulating the water mitigates this problem.

 

[SonnyE]

This is one of my favorite things about sous-vide. I hunt bear,

Isn't that kind of cold?

I'll just let her buy her own Yogurt.

 

[dr k]

The round 6qt crockpot doesn't need circulation plugged into my Auber PID. The small size and thick stoneware ceramic is the same temp all over that touches the water. But a roaster would need circulation. It's a great yogurt maker to pasteurize milk before bring down to 106° or your favorite incubating temp to pitch your favorite container of yogurt as a starter and let it go for 12-24 hours.

 

[johnmeyer]

I make yogurt every week and have done so since 1974. In other words, thousands of batches. I've used dedicated yogurt makers, but nothing matches sous vide for making great yogurt.

FWIW, there are three keys to great yogurt:

1. The time and temperature to heat the yogurt to denature the proteins. You should heat to 180º F and then keep it there for five minutes before cooling down to the incubating temperature and introducing the culture.

2. The incubating temperature. 110º is what I use. Some sites call for temps as high as 115º. It wasn't until I switched from using my Salton yogurt makers to doing it in my sous vide that I realized the Salton units weren't getting much above 103º. You still get yogurt, but it doesn't have characteristics that are quite as good as the 110º culture. 110º led to a big improvement in my yogurt. You can Google this and will find 110º is the most often-mentioned temperature.

3. Incubation time. I started doing yogurt overnight, with 8-10 hour incubation times. I then kept reducing the time and finally found that the ideal time is four hours. Any more than that and the yogurt starts to get pretty "tangy." It's not bad, but it definitely loses the sweetness of fresh milk. If you keep going all the way to 24 hours, you are going to get a lot of sour notes. I realize some people may prefer it that way, but if your goal is to get live cultures and get the yogurt set, you don't have to keep it going that long.

P.S. Here's a link to one of thousands of sites that describe how to make yogurt. They too discovered the "hold for five minutes" trick that I stumbled into a few years ago. That extra time at 180º makes a huge difference in how quickly and how well the yogurt sets.

The Official YOGURT CULTURE Master Homemade Yogurt Recipe

 

[checkerfred]

Thank you for all the replies. I really want to get into sous vide. I’ve been looking at them for a while but the temp/safety thing just wasn’t clear to me.

 

[daveomak]

Follow Baldwin's charts and you will not go wrong.....

Baldwin's Sous-Vide Tutorial and Charts

 

[indaswamp]

Follow Baldwin's charts and you will not go wrong.....

Baldwin's Sous-Vide Tutorial and Charts

Baldwin is 'the guy'.........

 

[indaswamp]

Thank you for all the replies. I really want to get into sous vide. I’ve been looking at them for a while but the temp/safety thing just wasn’t clear to me.

Pasteurization....that's why it works!

 

[Bearcarver]

Follow Baldwin's charts and you will not go wrong.....

Baldwin's Sous-Vide Tutorial and Charts

Yup---My best SV book is definitely "Sous Vide for the home cook" by "Douglas E. Baldwin".

Bear

 

[dr k]

I make yogurt every week and have done so since 1974. In other words, thousands of batches. I've used dedicated yogurt makers, but nothing matches sous vide for making great yogurt.

FWIW, there are three keys to great yogurt:

1. The time and temperature to heat the yogurt to denature the proteins. You should heat to 180º F and then keep it there for five minutes before cooling down to the incubating temperature and introducing the culture.

2. The incubating temperature. 110º is what I use. Some sites call for temps as high as 115º. It wasn't until I switched from using my Salton yogurt makers to doing it in my sous vide that I realized the Salton units weren't getting much above 103º. You still get yogurt, but it doesn't have characteristics that are quite as good as the 110º culture. 110º led to a big improvement in my yogurt. You can Google this and will find 110º is the most often-mentioned temperature.

3. Incubation time. I started doing yogurt overnight, with 8-10 hour incubation times. I then kept reducing the time and finally found that the ideal time is four hours. Any more than that and the yogurt starts to get pretty "tangy." It's not bad, but it definitely loses the sweetness of fresh milk. If you keep going all the way to 24 hours, you are going to get a lot of sour notes. I realize some people may prefer it that way, but if your goal is to get live cultures and get the yogurt set, you don't have to keep it going that long.

P.S. Here's a link to one of thousands of sites that describe how to make yogurt. They too discovered the "hold for five minutes" trick that I stumbled into a few years ago. That extra time at 180º makes a huge difference in how quickly and how well the yogurt sets.

The Official YOGURT CULTURE Master Homemade Yogurt Recipe

Yes I stumbled across the 180* five minute pasteurization as well. I sometimes just nuke a half gallon 20 minutes or so to get it there quickly without scorching. Separating whey when done to get consistency or add back once removed is the toughest part. Once it's stirred in it's there to stay but when it's it's own separated pool of whey it's hard to remove without incorporating it.

 

[johnmeyer]

I gave up worrying about the little bit of liquid (whey) on the top. Most of the time you hardly see it, although if you make it in big containers (I use old peanut butter jars) when you scoop some out, you then get more separation in the stuff that's left behind, the next time you go for some more.

As for heating, I gave up heating in a saucepan decades ago, because of the scorching. Then for twenty or thirty years I used the microwave which, when I was only make a quart or so at a time, didn't take long. I then started making half a gallon at a time and realized the way to go was to just put water in one saucepan and then nest a slightly smaller saucepan in that. I heat it on my portable induction cooker. This is a little like a double boiler except that the pan with the milk is actually in contact with the hot water, rather than above it. Because it only takes a small amount of water in the bottom saucepan, and because water conducts heat really well, it actually only takes a few seconds longer to heat it this way than it does to heat over open flame, and it is much, much faster than doing it in the microwave.

I should have been doing it this way all along.

 

[dr k]

I make yogurt every week and have done so since 1974. In other words, thousands of batches. I've used dedicated yogurt makers, but nothing matches sous vide for making great yogurt.

FWIW, there are three keys to great yogurt:

1. The time and temperature to heat the yogurt to denature the proteins. You should heat to 180º F and then keep it there for five minutes before cooling down to the incubating temperature and introducing the culture.

2. The incubating temperature. 110º is what I use. Some sites call for temps as high as 115º. It wasn't until I switched from using my Salton yogurt makers to doing it in my sous vide that I realized the Salton units weren't getting much above 103º. You still get yogurt, but it doesn't have characteristics that are quite as good as the 110º culture. 110º led to a big improvement in my yogurt. You can Google this and will find 110º is the most often-mentioned temperature.

3. Incubation time. I started doing yogurt overnight, with 8-10 hour incubation times. I then kept reducing the time and finally found that the ideal time is four hours. Any more than that and the yogurt starts to get pretty "tangy." It's not bad, but it definitely loses the sweetness of fresh milk. If you keep going all the way to 24 hours, you are going to get a lot of sour notes. I realize some people may prefer it that way, but if your goal is to get live cultures and get the yogurt set, you don't have to keep it going that long.

P.S. Here's a link to one of thousands of sites that describe how to make yogurt. They too discovered the "hold for five minutes" trick that I stumbled into a few years ago. That extra time at 180º makes a huge difference in how quickly and how well the yogurt sets.

The Official YOGURT CULTURE Master Homemade Yogurt Recipe

Wow! Heat and hold milk at (I did 2%) 180 for five minutes, cool and pitch a container (I did plain fat free Oikos) at 110 , stir and wait four hours is a hit. Like you said not as tangy with fresh milk flavor. Will be good to cook with in sauces, baked potatoes but mainly by itself. Thanks for the info.

 

[weedeater]

Since this thread started out as a thread about Sous Vide and safety I thought I would pose a question to see what fellow SV users think.

I use SV on a lot of tough pieces of meat like anything with “round” in the name. SV does a great job of making these cuts tender but if I had a complaint it would be that you can end up with a very tender piece of meat that has very little distinctive flavor. These cuts tend to be very dense and marinates, spices, and rubs tend to not get much penetration into the meat.

My question for further discussion is: Would it be save to use a “Jaccard” type meat tenderizer on say an Eye of Round and then Sous Vide it. The purpose of using the Jaccard would be to open up the meat more to allow better penetration of flavor enhancers rather than for tenderazation. Sous Vide already does a good job on the tender part.

My concern is the old question poking and puncturing meat that now is potentially not sterile internally. My feeling is that you are still fine given the long time frames in SV at temps above 130 degrees. After several hours in the bath you have reached a temp internally that kills any potential bad stuff.

What say yes? chef jimmyj , daveomak , others?

Weedeater

 

[daveomak]

For "rounds" etc, do not vac pack... add spices and herbs to the bag and meat.... Vac pack sucks the meat flat and doesn't allow to flavors to penetrate the meat... let the meat cool in it's juices, they should suck back into the meat....
Jaccard should be OK if you are SVing the meat like for 24 hours at 135

From Baldwin's tutorial....
At lower temperatures (120°F/50°C to 150°F/ 65°C), Bouton and Harris (1981) found that tough cuts of beef (from animals 0–4 years old) were the most tender when cooked to between 131°F and 140°F (55°C and 60°C). Cooking the beef for 24 hours at these temperatures significantly increased its tenderness (with shear forces decreasing 26%–72% compared to 1 hour of cooking). This tenderizing is caused by weakening of connective tissue and proteolytic enzymes decreasing myofibrillar tensile strength. Indeed, collagen begins to dissolve into gelatin above 122°F to 131°F (50°C to 55°C) (Neklyudov, 2003; This, 2006). Moreover, the sarcoplasmic protein enzyme collagenase remains active below 140°F (60°C) and can significantly tenderize the meat if held for more than 6 hours (Tornberg, 2005). This is why beef chuck roast cooked in a 131°F–140°F (55°C–60°C) water bath for 24–48 hours has the texture of filet mignon.

 

[chef jimmyj]

Use the Jaccard but hedge your bet. Before puncturing, wash the meat with cold water and again with Vinegar. Dry with dispoable paper towel and season the surface. S&P, SPOG or Rub of choice containing Salt. The Surface will be sanitized and the Jaccard will push the salty seasonings inside adding to the flavor while the salt inhibits any bacteria that may still be present...JJ

 

[weedeater]

For "rounds" etc, do not vac pack... add spices and herbs to the bag and meat.... Vac pack sucks the meat flat and doesn't allow to flavors to penetrate the meat... let the meat cool in it's juices, they should suck back into the meat....

I have seen this argument about not vac packing and I just don’t buy it from my experience. I spent a lot of years without a vac sealer, using ziplock freezer bags for SV and other cooks and from my observations I have seen no difference.

Since I usually cut a large piece like Eye of Round in half before SVing it this might be a good experiment to do. Vac Pack one and just bag the other. All other things being equal this should be a good comparison. I’ll put that on my list for a Sous Vide in the near future.

Weedeater

 

[weedeater]

Use the Jaccard but hedge your bet. Before puncturing, wash the meat with cold water and again with Vinegar. Dry with dispoable paper towel and season the surface. S&P, SPOG or Rub of choice containing Salt. The Surface will be sanitized and the Jaccard will push the salty seasonings inside adding to the flavor while the salt inhibits any bacteria that may still be present...JJ

Thanks Chef jimmy! I always wash the meat with cold water prior to seasoning. The Vinegar would add another layer of safety. Will give this a try soon and report back my thoughts on the Jaccard process.

Weedeater

 

[JWFokker]

What about ground meat? I’ve seen people doing burgers sous vide style. I assume that since they aren’t super thick they come up to temp quick enough?

A rare to medium rare burger is never hot enough to be pasteurized so the trick is to sear and consume the burgers ASAP once they reach the desired temperature. Ground meat doesn't keep in the hot water bath for very long regardless. Texture/consistency is ruined after a few hours. With burgers you only want to heat them up to the desired internal temperature and then finish immediately.

 

[Jonok]

(Not a paid endorsement)
If you’ve got a Schwann’s guy around town, they sell irradiated ground beef. No worry about bacterial contamination (unless you contaminate it yourself, after you thaw it and remove it from the package) so it’s perfectly safe to eat rare. I cannot taste any difference between that and 80/20 that I’ve ground myself.

 

[johnmeyer]

A rare to medium rare burger is never hot enough to be pasteurized so the trick is to sear and consume the burgers ASAP once they reach the desired temperature. Ground meat doesn't keep in the hot water bath for very long regardless. Texture/consistency is ruined after a few hours. With burgers you only want to heat them up to the desired internal temperature and then finish immediately.

If you follow the sous vide tables you should be able to get a perfectly safe rare to medium rare burger.

As for using sous vide for a burger, and whether it is a good idea, or not, have a look at this great post from a year ago:

Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburgers Sous Vide Style