sous vide cooking (fancy boil in the bag)

[wanye]

tell him to start with something simple, like a steak or chicken, and then move onto bigger cuts of meat/longer cooks...

[wanye]

spent the last 2 hours oncall, and while i was waiting on other people to do stuff, i saw someone in an anova group on facebook mention "egg bites"

im gonna be trying them soon! just need to get me some small jars

anovaculinary/easy-homem...ide-egg-bites/

*edit*
jars ordered! £22.50 for 12 kilner style jars. they arrive tomorrow (weds) so ill be making some over the weekend with any luck

amazon/Nutleys-125...81f3ea36adf9a9

[wanye]

ok, first attempt at the sous vide egg bites. pretty good effort!

**GREASE JARS WITH A LITTLE BUTTER OR NON-STICK SPRAY**
(i didnt, i've learned my lesson as you end up having to eat them out of the jars, making re-heating difficult due to the metal)

cook off a pack of diced up cooking bacon until it was crispy and added to the jars

in a food processor (if you're lazy like me) mix up the following
1 cup grated gruyere cheese
1/2 cup double cream
9 eggs
salt and pepper (not too much salt though, as the bacon was quite salty to begin with)

pour mixture into jars. i made the mistake of not having enough for all the jars - next time i will use 12 eggs to make 10 jars. i got 9, but 3 or 4 of them werent nearly as full as the others

add a bit more gruyere on top of the mix for good measure.

close lids, place in pot covered with water and cook at 172 for an hour. i had to do them in two batches, as my pot wasnt big enough

[wanye]

my most ambitious cook so far. beef wellington...

i used a 30 day dry aged joint rather than tenderloin as there is more flavour in the meat, especially when cooked for so long! this stuff sliced like butter when it was finished!

i double bagged the beef as i havent done any cooks for this long before. i vacuum sealed it in a heavy duty foodsaver roll, and then used a hefty ziploc back on the outer. before bagging, i coated the joint in salt and pepper, added some garlic paste and fresh thyme, then a generous coating of english mustard powder

prepare the mushroom "pate" - fry off a few finely diced shallots and cloves of garlic
rehydrate some dried mushrooms in a little boiling water (porcini in this case, although ≈≈≈≈ake work well too) - once rehydrated, chuck in a food processor, then reduce the liquid down by *at least* half and add that too. blitz in the processor, along with a couple of large packs of other mushrooms (i used reduced price chestnut and baby portobello mushrooms for a bit of extra flavour, but whatever you have available/cheap!)

chuck the mush into a pan on medium heat and keep stirring until all the liquid has boiled off (this took about 45 mins and was by far the most labour intensive part)

once all the liquid is gone, add a big knob of butter and salt and pepper to taste, cook a little longer till its all combined. stick in a tub in the fridge once cooled until ready to assemble tomorrow.

cook beef at 130 for 30-36 hours - the longer the cook, the tenderer the meat. i've done 12 hour cooks before and they were great, but the extra 24 hours made a big difference IMO

BEHOLD MY NEW COOKING VESSEL! a lidded plastic container, with a hole cut out for the anova. this made a huge difference to long cooks, as you get a lot less water evaporating - when i did my last long cook in the beer cooler, i needed to top it up twice due to evaporation...it was an xmas gift from the gf she gave me a couple of days early when i said what i was planning on cooking for xmas eve dinner while i was off work sick and unable to leave the house...

remove from bags and pat dry with paper towel.
pour the beef juices into a pan for gravy later
remove the string once cooled a little too

prepare the welly!


lay down a large sheet of clingfilm
put down a layer of prosciutto ham
cover in mushroom "pate" and spread so its all even in thickness
paint beef joint in mustard (some prefer dijon, i like english though, and even though it was covered, it didnt overpower any other flavours)
place beef on top and roll. stick clingfilm covered ball of stuff into freezer for 30 mins to firm up.

remove from freezer, peel off all clingfilm and place onto your already rolled out puff pastry (i used a full sheet of jus-roll) - make sure everything is covered, and any joins in the pastry and sealed. wash with milk and/or egg and bake for ~45 mins at gas mark 6ish until golden brown

chuck a load of veg onto a baking sheet, drizzle with oil, salt and pepper, throw a few cloves of garlic youve squished slightly with the back of a knife (or the palm of your hand) - i used cauliflower, potato, carrot, sweet pepper and radishes. i also chucked a few sprouts in for festiveness

stick some non-roasting veg into a pan with water and boil for 15 mins (i did peas, sliced carrot, mange tout and a bit of broccoli)

serve with mash, and a gravy made out of the juice from the beef bag, some of the water from the boiled veg, a shallot, the roasted garlic from the pan, add a little flour (or gravy powder if youre lazy) and bring to the boil. reduce down to thicken up

there was enough leftover to take to my mums for xmas day too as an accompaniment for the turkey

[theCMG]

Looks delicious, ingenious cooking box too

[wanye]

Originally Posted by theCMG

Looks delicious, ingenious cooking box too

See more...

a lot of people in the US use old coleman coolboxes with a hole in the lid for maximum heat retention (which in turn saves electricity as the anova doesnt have to heat the water quite so much), but them things are damned expensive in the uk!

[wanye]

couple more cooks in the last week...

first off Sous vide sweet chilli chicken. Cooked at 145 for ~5 hours (could have been eaten after an hour, but I wanted to test how long I could cook for without losing texture)

A bag of veg was also thrown in the tub. All of it was seared on a griddle for a minute at the end, served with boiled long grain rice and the sweet chilli sauce poured over it all at the end.

then last night i did Sous vide butterflied Cajun lamb joint. 2 hours at 130 then browned in a pan to finish. Served with veg, homemade oven chips and a sauce made from the lamb juices, shallots and a bit of veg gravy powder. Meat was perfectly cooked!

Served with a nice chilly Chablis

[wanye]

so i did a bone-in ribeye joint yesterday...

season with salt and pepper, and double bag due to the long cook time

after 44 hours at 130 degrees (we were planning on having it the night before,
but as the snow was improving, we decided to go out instead!) take it out of it's bath and pat dry with paper towel...

sear in a pan for a minute or so on each side so it doesnt look like a grim grey mess...

slice insto centimetre thick chunks...

serve with sweet potato and potato mash, roast and boiled veg, yorkshire puddings and a gravy made from the meat juices left in the bag, some finely diced shallots, chopped up roasted garlic and a bit of onion gravy powder (i normally make my own properly using flour and butter, but i was in a hurry to serve, so i cheated a little

[Colette-S]

That looks so nice. Do you just leave it on for 40+ hours without attention?

[wanye]

Originally Posted by Colette-S

That looks so nice. Do you just leave it on for 40+ hours without attention?

See more...

pretty much, yeah. now i've got the lidded container, theres very little water evaporation, so doesnt need topping up at all (even if it did, i would get a notification in the app). all i do is check on it (mostly for water leakages in the bags - which is why i double bag for long cooks) and/or turn it round, but i've got to the stage where i'm happy to leave it unattended for the full cook. it just sits in its container on the kitchen table doing its stuff.