Sous vide smoked burgers

[bigmikey14]

129 for hours in the sous vide. Shocked cold in ice water for 10 minutes while the vortex was getting ready. Seasoned with Tatonka Dust. They were 85 when they went on the kettle. Smoked indirect for about 30 minutes with a chunk of cherry til they reached 120 then seared over the top til they reached 130. Topped with some smoked Colby jack, bacon, lettuce, ketchup and mayo. This burger was AMAZING!

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[b-one]

Lots of work for a burger! They look great,good thing they turned out after all that fun!

 

[bigmikey14]

Wasn't much work at all. I buy burger in bulk and vac seal smaller packages. While I'm at it I seal up some 3/4 pound patties. Then they just sit in the bath while I work. When it's time to eat, finish on the grill or cast iron pan. If I get home late from work it's ok, it'll be ready when I get there

 

[SmokinAl]

Now that is one good looking burger!!!

POINTS!

Al

 

[cliffcarter]

Great job as usual.

For some reason the pictures looked better at the other place

 

[chef jimmyj]

Looks great. I get using Sous Vide to tenderize steaks but is there that much gain spending the time to SV Burgers?...JJ

 

[bigmikey14]

I wouldn't eat a medium rare burger without it. I can cook great burgers on the kettle or yoder also, sous vide is just another tool to play with with and the results are phenomenal

 

[dirtsailor2003]

Tasty burger! POINTS!

I'm still not sold on the whole sous vide for everything you cook. I like fewer steps to get to the finish line.

 

[johnmeyer]

129 hours? That seems like about 120 hours more than is needed. Most tests I've seen, where they divide the food up into separate pouches and then cook one for four hours, the next for eight, etc., don't show any improvements after 12 hours, and things tend to get mushy and the texture gets worse after that time. I'm not sure about how this applies to ground beef, but I assume that it too will suffer a gradual breakdown of the tissues which might result in a "mushy" texture.

Did you grind your own meat? I know people in these forums are very concerned about food pathogens and the temperature "safe zone," and I posted some USDA information that shows how you can achieve safety at lower temps as long as you hold at those temps for a long enough time. However, it only required two hours. If you start with a whole cut of meat, rinse the exterior, and then grind it, you greatly diminish the possibility of contamination compared to purchasing meat that has been ground in bulk. Thus, if your long sous vide times were intended to make the meat safe so you could eat it rare, you really didn't need to go for anywhere near that amount of time.

Grinding your own also tastes a LOT better. Night and day, actually. It's the biggest single improvement you can make when cooking burgers.

So I love all the things you did after the long sous vide cook, but I do wonder whether you might have gotten even better results with a more normal 6-hour sous vide, followed by all your other steps. And, if you didn't grind your own, doing a coarse grind with some combination of chuck, boneless short ribs, flap steak, and a little oxtail might have kicked it up another notch,

 

[bigmikey14]

Oops, should of said 129 for 6 hours. I would love to grind my own meat, but haven't got into that yet.

 

[mummel]

Looks great!

 

[Bearcarver]

Beautiful Burgers, Mikey, as usual !!!

Mighty Tasty Looking!!!

-------------------

Bear

 

[johnmeyer]

Oops, should of said 129 for 6 hours. I would love to grind my own meat, but haven't got into that yet.

Well that makes a lot more sense!! In fact, that sounds just about right.

Do look into grinding your own meat. I did it for years with a hand-crank, something you can get for next to nothing, especially if you look on Craigslist or swapmeets. I eventually got an attachment for my KitchenAid mixer as a gift, although I think they are only about $50. It make really short work of the grinding. It is really fun to experiment with different types of beef. I'm still looking for the "ultimate" combination.

 

[zombiekitty]

I love my Sous Vide. You can season burgers however you wish and have them ready for a quick flash in a pan or on the grill after a tough day at work and it tastes like you spent all day tending to the grill.  I grind my own meat to control the level of fat.  I find that making burgers that aren't smashed into a puck work best, especially if you vacuum seal, since it will 'snug up' your patty a bit.  My last burger was in the bath for 5 hours at 130 degrees.  I took it out, sprinkled generously with cajun dust and seared it on the grill with a thick slice of red onion.  About a minute before I put it on the toasted bun, I put a slice of my homemade bleu cheese butter (butter, bleu cheese,smoked garlic, Worcestershire sauce & chives).  Add some potato salad and a cold homebrew and you've got a great Wednesday night meal.

Those burgers look great! I'm ready for one right now and it's not even 8am. 

 

 

[khnry]

Wow. Awesome!

 

[driedstick]

Looks great from here but I will stay to the grill,,, nice and fast!! POINTS - great looking meal and great post. 

A full smoker is a happy smoker 

DS
 

 

[sport45]

I'll start by saying I know absolutely nothing about Sous Vide cooking. But 6 hrs at 129°F sounds like it's keeping that ground beef in the danger zone for a long time. What keeps the bacteria from thriving? I thought ground/injected meats needed to be at 140° within 4 hours to be safe.

Looks very good though and if you put it in front of me I'd eat it!

 

[zombiekitty]

My comedian friend saw your post and said "I don't know much about smoking food, but it seems to me that surrounding meat in smoke for 2-12 hours is bad. I mean, just think if you smoked a 12 hour cigarette". I guess education is key. There is a ton of good sous vide information here and on the web. Check it out. You may find that sous vide cooking is something you will ultimately understand and like.

 

[sport45]

I'm happy to entertain you. :)

But yeah, I suppose Sous Vide questions are best asked on different forum. I did search before asking though and didn't see a burger recipe that kept them below 140 for that long. Maybe my google-fu needs honing. And maybe one day I will graduate to that cooking method. It wouldn't surprise me.

 

[johnmeyer]

 
I'll start by saying I know absolutely nothing about Sous Vide cooking. But 6 hrs at 129°F sounds like it's keeping that ground beef in the danger zone for a long time. What keeps the bacteria from thriving? I thought ground/injected meats needed to be at 140° within 4 hours to be safe.

Good question, and if all you look at is the first page of the USDA safety information pages, you would be right. However, if you read further in the USDA site, you get to information that describes why this is perfectly safe. I posted about this a few months ago. Click on the following link to see the charts and links to the original source:

Sous Vide, Smokers, and Food Safety - We're Safer Than We Thought