Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Amy, speaking of hamburgers, the same website that Paul mentioned about the beer cooker hack (strategy) also has a very good comparison of sous vide hamburgers with some nice photos to demonstrate various results. I'll be using it in the next couple of days myself. Sous Vide Hamburger at Serious Eats

My one disagreement with the hamburger article is on the addition of any sort of oil or butter. While I understand his concerns, the idea of flavor exchange is quite possible and I am playing around with a sort of "flavor equilibrium" that was described in an article at the French Culinary Institute as well as by Heston B. That is where water (or oil) will saturate with flavor from whatever is cooked in it until it is just as flavorful as the items, particularly if the water is used continuously for lengthy periods. This is seen in hot dog carts where the dogs are heated in water and by the end of the day, there is zero flavor loss to the water since it is just as flavorful as the hotdog. The Chinese have been doing similar things with their stocks, keeping them for decades.

My idea is that a worthwhile flavor exchange can be accomplished and the resulting oil or broth should be stored (safely of course) for reuse. I and my wife are something of cayenne enthusiasts, or pepper flakes. I may try, for want of a coronary blockage, a Tabasco infused bacon grease addition. If it doesn't give me a coronary, it probably will my doctor when he hears about it.

Somewhere I read that using fresh garlic in sous vide is a no-no. Supposedly it will develop a very nasty odor and flavor, akin to old socks. So I have always resorted to garlic powder when do my semi-vacuum sous vide ziploc bags. One of these days I'll have to test that bit of trivia to see if it is true or not.

Tatoosh

I found this interesting. Stove top sous vide by Rory Herrmann.
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-master-class-thomas-keller-20110908,0,3863290.htmlstory?track=la-hp-market-food-thomas-keller-kitchen-tip-20110912-sl

Added a sauce to my SV chicken breast last night. The sauce came out much stronger, and really really enhanced the breast; kind of made the total have more chicken flavour like a thigh then a breast. Basically took 250g of brown chicken stock (homemade, relatively strong) and reduced it to 100g. Added a little (0.2%) Xanthan gum. Blended it with 40g of melted butter (original recipe called for rendered chicken fat for even more chicken flavour, but I didn't have any) with a little (4%) liquid soy lecithin. S&P to flavour. Served under the breast to preserve the crispy skin (*). Really, really enhanced the dish. I think you could happily eliminate teh lecithin, especially if you were serving it immediately, but the Xanthan gum really does help the texture, and probably could even go for slightly more. My stock was pretty high gelatin, so as it cooled it had a good texture, but fully hot it was a bit runnier then I might like.

(*) One change I've made from early attempts was to lower the searing heat and cook longer. It helps get a very nice crispy brown without burning, and firms the breast slightly without noticeable loss of moistness so long as you don't let it get totally out of hand.

I bought a Nomiku as part of their Kickstarter and we should have it next month sometime if there are no more delays. I can't wait to try some of these recipes! I've done some simple sous vide (salmon, eggs) with a thermapen and hovering over the pot, but I can't wait to do some longer time frame items.

Does anyone recommend any other cookbook than "Under Pressure"?

--Lisa

I was under the impression that Under Pressure was not a SV cookbook but a pressure cooker cookbook.

Maybe I'm thinking of a different cookbook.

ETA: OK, I was wrong. Never mind.

I don't own Modernist Cuisine at Home, only the original Modernist Cuisine. I would assume the home-based version uses sous vide techniques as much as the original more professionally-oriented tome.

Amy

MC@H certainly has SV, but not as much as you would expect, though quite a few recipes will have a SV variant. It is lighter on SV than MC percentage wise I think.

I use under pressure, baldwins guides, MC, MC@H and lots of google. And a few random bits here and there like Momofuku and Blumenthal, sometimes directly , sometimes where you can see it was an SV recipe and they 'adapted' it to be non-SV, but it is easy to put it back being SV.

Seems odd that there aren't more options out there, but I really don't need any more cookbooks. :/

--Lisa