Steam, defined as water in a gas state, is invisible. For the most part, in your oven, this is above 212 degrees F at normal pressure. When people refer to 'steam' as that which they can see -- they are usually describing fog/mist: water which has condensed from steam, which would be 212 or below. So your observation: that you see fog in the steam oven below 200 degrees and not above 200 degrees is to be expected.

A combi oven, like the Gaggenau, does two very related things: it helps raise the wet bulb temperature (the temp at which wet food cooks) up closer to the dry bulb temp (the temp at which dry food cooks), up to a max of 100C/212 and limits water from evaporating from your food (keeping it moist) by raising the relative humidity inside the oven. You can measure the wet bulb temperature if you like (just wrap an oven thermometer probe with a wet towel or sponge), but it sounds like your oven is working fine.

Here is an article on using a combi oven in both its drying and high humidity modes to cook a steak. I think a blow torch finishes the steak better than using the oven, but you can see their result and how the modes work.

Hmmm.... I don't really understand "bulb" and didn't entirely follow Zartemis. The combi-steam will go up to a maximum of something like 450 F, on all steam settings.

I would have said the same thing about the condensation. It sounds like your oven is working fine to me. When you open the door you should be able to see a plume of (cooling) steam escaping.

I will have to think about what zartemis said too. But, my Gagg steam oven functions just like you described. When the oven is initially turned on the chamber does fill with steam but as the temp rises and over a few minutes the glass clears and you can see the interior just fine. I spoke with a technician about this (in the course of a different question) and he said this was absolutely normal for the oven.

I have not used the steam removal function yet - perhaps I should try it. I find when I open the door after say cooking chicken there is lots of condensation on the door that drips all over the floor when I open it. Would the steam removal function eliminate this?

What are you at ends with in particular? I use this oven almost daily for just about everything - regular convection cooking and steam. I love it!

Thank you!

I'm at odds with the combi because there was an issue after installation, and although promptly fixed, i had mixed results after the fix. The tech that came said he never worked on a Gaggenau combi, nor had thw other 25 techs in his co... He said a few had removed old Gaggenau appliances and i am hopeful this means the Gagg apps last a good long time without problems.

I previously cooked ribs, but they were not fall off the bone tender as promised. I will definitely read the links (thank you zartemis!). My family ate the ribs without complaint, but I was disappointed. I have 3 slabs with dry rub waiting for me to figure out if i will go with braising or steam... I will let you know how it turns out.

Happy Halloween!
Rae

Rae, Also check sources like the Purcell-Murray website for cooking info, recipes and tips.

Zartemis, there's a gulf between reading and understanding. :) Thanks for the stall discussions, however, I did follow that (up until the dry bulb/wet bulb stuff which I'm still trying to parse). It explains some issues I had with my first try at smoking a brisket. (I got all that until the surface was dry stuff, just not so much the whole wet rag thermometer thing.) Loved this, "We have done studies of meat in a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC)." Someday, when I have a lot of time, I may undertake reading Modernist Cuisine. :)

plllog --

First speaking about measuring outside temperature:

"Bulb" is just referring to the mercury/alcohol reservoir of a regular glass thermometer. Dry bulb is the temperature you get with a normal dry thermometer. For wet bulb, you wrap it in wet cloth. The evaporating water cools it, so the wet bulb temperature reads lower. If the humidity is very low, water evaporates quickly, which results is a web bulb temperature that is much less than dry bulb.

If the humidity is very high, not much water evaporates from the wet bulb, so it is about the same temperature as the normal dry bulb.

Onward to cooking:

If the meat is still wet on the outside, and the oven is dry, the evaporating water cools the surface, which keeps the meat interior from heating up. When it finally dries out a bit, the surface temperature goes up, and the internal temperature follows. Except if you cook it in a sealed plastic, there is no evaporative cooling, so it cooks faster than an identical unsealed cut.

Fascinating, and thanks to zartemis for the education!

Oh, thank-you Attofarad. Your explanation makes it much clearer. I wasn't following that bulb thing at all.

I also learned from Zartemis's link that rendering fat--something I do at least once a year--is breaking down the collagen in fat. There are just some things your mom teaches you to do... It's fun knowing the science behind it. And also makes sense comparing it to braising shortribs.

Great explanation attofarad. This stuff also explains what happens when and why we sweat -- making our skin wet allows the water on our surface skin to evoporate, cooling us off (to the wet bulb temp which is below the air temp) and why when it's very humid, sweating doesn't help much.

Interestingly, I may have finally convinced our cooking family member that we need a sous vide setup in addition to the upcoming Gaggenau steam oven. Although he believed all the science I threw at him, it took eating some sous-vide prepped meat at a local restaurant to get him to "maybe we should get what we need to do this". You can certainly do some sous vide in the Gaggenau, but if you want to lower temps closer to the pasteurization time/temp/food-thickness borderline while still staying strictly safely above it you need better temp control than the Gagg offers (thus the PID-controlled water bath setups).

Well, that's actually two in one! If you don't already have a vacuum sealer, you can use the one you'll need for sous vide for keeping your walnuts fresh too, and making air-tight packages for the freezer. :)

I'll tell you though, I cannot abide the flabby texture of what one of those discussions called "tender" meat. Sous vide is even more repulsive. :) But anyone who reads the multi-tome revolution in cooking deserves it. There are some well rated home sized sous vide machines that aren't impossibly big or expensive. Enjoy!

I'm just happy that squash steamed in the Gaggenau is delicious.

Vacuum sealer we have. If we get a sous vide setup we'll probably go with the Sous Vide Magic for most flexibility (use any pot). In my younger years I'd be all for building my own from parts. Now I'm too lazy.

For sure those who dislike rare meat would be repulsed by the idea of a technique that maximizes the ability to cook it to that state perfectly edge to edge. But you can certainly sous vide to a well done state, even if it's not served like that at restaurants. All it is is cooking without moisture loss, nothing more. Most sous vide food prep methods combine and balance this part of cooking with a drying-out the surface type of cooking (broiling, grilling, flaming with a blowtorch) giving you control over both the level of doneness, the moisture loss and the building of a crust and maillard reaction.

Cooking uncovered food in a Gagg oven at 100% steam is almost identical to sous vide (the solitary difference being any unrecovered liquid which might pool or drip away from the food, although in sous vide you could also pour away this liquid after you open the bag, so this difference is minor).

Zartemis, that device is very cool! And the Sous Vide Magic is gloriously retro looking! :) It looks pretty small, assuming you have what to use it with, and it doesn't cost any more than a top notch sous vide dinner for two at a fine restaurant. Sounds like it's worth the houseroom for you, yes?

I've only seen sous vide dishes on TV (no one I know orders them in restaurants), and they all look raw to me (that is, obviously it's been cooked but the color and texture is still as if raw). I know raw is in. They're even serving lamb and duck medium rare now. (ick) I'm not following entirely about doing it to a well done state. Do you mean that it would have the firmness of well done? Color? Both?

This is all very interesting.

I often cook the humungous chicken breasts that are all I can get nowadays (they have proper little fryers at one store but that's whole) in the Gagg on 60% steam, regular temperature (350 more or less), often I'll brush it with a little sauce first, and usually, I'll throw in some vegetables in the same pan. It makes for nice, moist, chicken that looks and feels cooked but is still juicy without any fat or skin to hold it together. I'm still not fluent in bulb, and am not sure about surface moisture or what have you in regards to the chicken, and how it compares. It said to do it that way on the wheel, and it works. :)

Well, sous vide cooking just refers to cooking the food completely enclosed (usually vacuum packed, hence the name) in a constant temperature water bath. So, no liquid can evaporate. After that, it's all about time and temperature. A good sous vide setup can maintain +/- 0.1 degrees for days across the entire food, much better than any oven. The temperature of the bath can be anything up to just below boiling. A Gagg combi set below 212, with 100% steam does exactly the same thing, just with a little more temperature variability. Actually, there is another difference: cooking at thick slab of meat at lower temps can take hours (sometimes more than a day, which is also why one might want to double check pasteurization charts), a sous vide setup is much more energy efficient than an oven and won't time out on you like the Gagg might.

For meats, the temperature chosen can be as low as the desired internal temp when finished. This way it is impossible to overcook the food (it's OK if it sits in the bath after it meets the required internal temp, it'll just hold at that temp) and 100% of the meat is rare (on a grill, going for rare, only the center is rare, the parts of the meat nearer the surface are typically more medium to well. This is why rare-meat lovers go so gaa-gaa over the process - they get more of what they like.

If the sous vide meat you see prepared is rare or rare-ish, that's because the cook chose to finish at that temperature. There's nothing to prohibit setting the water bath to the temp needed to cook the meat well done (since well done temp is also below 212). But because rare is in and because this techniques shines for that level of doneness, that's usually what you see.

I think there's also a dismissive idea among some foodies and chefs that well-done meat lovers don't care about quality, so why bother using the sous vide technique for them, we'll just throw that rare piece on the grill and dry it out and till it is cooked through and through. Heck, why bother even starting with a better piece of meat for them in the first place -- just grab that uglier slice and use that. Our family members are mostly rare meat lovers (yes, even lamb and duck), but I don't think snobbishness about it is warranted and I do see the problem you face.

Now, it's also true that using only sous vide you can't get any sort of crust or maillard reaction. Why? This requires the surface to be dried out. The real cooking geeks have an uber cool technique for this problem as well. The problem being: how to make a crust as thin as possible so the meat just under the surface is not dried out and doesn't cook any further? Well, take your perfectly cooked but crustless and ugly looking meat slab, dip it in liquid nitrogen and then drop it in the fryer. Time it right and only the very surface will get crisped up.

MEGAcool! The deep fried meatsicle, that is. :) I know about frying frozen things (not the science, but the fact) and I can see how this would work well. I can also see how it would take a lot of precision (micrometer, anyone?) to have the meat heated through again, but only the scantest crust.

Thanks too for the explanation of the rare things cooked sous vide. That makes sense!

That snobbishness about temperatures is mostly a '90's thing, I think. Nowadays, I think most of them understand that customers just won't come back when they're treated that way. Still, I don't generally eat meat in restaurants because they don't know how to prepare it nicely at medium well to well. BTW, it's easier to hide quality problems with meat when it's medium rare than it is when it's well done!

Still, I'm no good at cooking rare, so for company I serve a lot of things like braises and meatballs that are meant to be served cooked through. That's also easier on the timing. :) Boeuf Bourguignon (a hit this month) is rather wonderful, but it's just beef stew. :) Caramelization from an initial sear. Tenderness from ... stewing. In wine. Very yummy. Very easy. :)