Cookaholics Bulletin Board

This came out very well

• Boneless, skin on chicken breast, carefully trimmed
• Rub with canola and salt.
• Bag it
• SV @ 64 C for 35 min. Or so.
• Trim breast. Keller says to a "rectangle" or the like, but I'm not that crazy. I do trim the edges a little so that basically the all the skin will be touching the pan, so I trim off the little 'curving away' bits.
• Heat pan at med/med-hi with some canola
• Place chicken skin side down for 4 min. Adjust heat to hit this target.
• The last optional bit, but really 'kicked it up a notch' -- place for 3 min in a container with some apple smoke (I generated with The Smoking Gun)

This gives a very tasty, versatile chicken breast with an extremely crispy skin that you can hear crack. The smoking step adds a very nice flavour, and doesn't seem to adversely affect the skin crispiness; I was concerned that being in a closed container might knock off the crispiness, but it didn't seem to appreciably affect it (maybe a tiny bit)

This was an instant hit in our house. Had it with ceasar, very good. The dressing is nice under the chicken too.

I didn't know you got a smoking gun. I've done something similar...it is good.

Amy

Tis very recent I will be making more with it!

I have yet to try SV, it is on my bucket list of things to do. I saved this recipe and I also have the burger one. These will be my first two. Now just need the time to do it!

Laurie

Would like to find a Dummies Guide to SV......

I think most of the units come with some kind of guide. Douglas Baldwins book is very likely a good intro (i've not read it, but have used his other work quite a bit), though will still have lots of 'heavy' stuff in it, but you can mostly ignore it and just go with the techniques.

Paul, do you have to have the machine to do SV? Can you just do it on the stove top? This is not something I have explored yet.

Laurie

I'm not Paul, but you really won't be able to regulate the temperature well enough on the stovetop. The key to sous vide is keeping the water at the exact temperature you want the final product to be cooked. This is extremely difficult on the stovetop. You could perhaps get away with it on items where the final temp isn't as crucial (say a steak), but not for all items. I've thought about rigging up my crockpot with a PID (temp controller) but haven't yet made the plunge. Maybe this winter when I have more time to play.

On the stove, for meat, would probably be tough; the temp is a very difficult one for most stoves to keep. However, for relatively short cooking times like these, you could definitely go for Beer Cooler Sous Vide. Also, for somethings you can cook pretty close to right out of the tap, depending on the item and the heat of your tap water. I can cook some kinds of fish with tap water (our tap water is quite hot), because some kinds like quite low temps and cook quickly (thin fillets).

Paul -
I just took the temperature of my kitchen tap. It's 133F. I suppose that would work for thin fillets. For how long to "cook" is the question.