I said it on another thread and got no response other than one "no thanks" so I'll repeat my offer to those who may have missed it the first time:

If any "regular poster" here is interested in trying sous vide but doesn't want to commit to time and/or expense without trying it out first, I'll be more than happy to loan you my equipment to play around with. If I get any response I'll seek out the cheapest shipping options. You can email me through GW.

So where does the browned exterior crust come from?

That looks delicious. I have to finish building my cooker.

FOAS, that's an incredibly generous offer. I'm not ready to try sous-vide yet, but maybe some day. In the meantime I am enjoying my garlic chopper often. That's a great kitchen toy.

Dcarch, are you a scientist in your other life? You always have such a methodical approach. Interesting info.

Arkansas Girl, browning is an extra step. You have to brown the meat after it is cooked.

FOAS, I agree with Pam. That is a very generous offer. The method doesn't appeal to me but I'm sure there are many others that will be willing to give it a try.

Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: Sous Vide

Thanks for the offer, but not interested.
We do a lot of smoked meats...

Linda

I agree, it IS a very generous offer but I just cut off a haunch and eat it raw. At least my kids accuse me of that...

You still have tomatoes, dcarch? Mine have all frozen, and so now I wait until next year. I refuse to eat "store" tomatoes, they're icky, so I'll have to wait until I can grow more.

Annie

I still had tomatoes until today Annie. I chopped down the rest of the plants on my deck and moved the brightly colored pocelain clad metal cages to the garage. I still have celery in a planter. I will continue to snip it for soup until the snow flies!

Teresa

Posted by arkansas_girl "So where does the browned exterior crust come from?"

There are many ways. Grill, pan fry or fire. These two were fired with a blow torch. It is very controllable to get the right kind of crust. For instance, where there are fat layers, just fire that area more.

Posted by johnliu "That looks delicious. I have to finish building my cooker."

Thanks John. Are you talking about building a sous vide cooker? Let me know if you have questions.

Posted by dedtired "-----Dcarch, are you a scientist in your other life? You always have such a methodical approach. Interesting info."

No. I am not. I like science because I like to take advantage of the environment around me, and not the other way around.

Annie, yes I am still enjoying tomatoes. I have done well this season. Lots of pizzas, salads, tomato leather, dehydrated tomatoes -------.

The yellow tomato is a very special one. I am the only one and the first one on the face of this earth who have tasted that tomato. I crossed it myself. It is very pretty yellow and with a little pink. Very sweet. I will grow it out a few more seasons then may be I will let others enjoy it also.

dcarch

Nice as always. I will have to seek out restaurant where sous vide beef is served before I commit to trying to use it myself. As I have read, it can be a texture issue for some, so I want to be sure I love it before I try to cook with this method myself.

punamytsike, I had sous vide pork, and found it too soft and mushy, I've got that weird texture thing going. I should try again, that might not be representative of all items cooked sous vide. I don't even care much for rib eye, it's too soft, I prefer sirloin because it has some "chew" to it. Yeah, I know, I'm weird.

dcarch, NOW I'm intrigued. If you get a second year with a consistent result, I'll be even more intrigued, I never seem to get consistent results from one year to the next.

Annie

punamytsike and Annie, I am not sure how sous vide got to be so complicated. The whole sous vide idea is to make things simple and fool proof.

The basic thing to remember is just this: Meat only knows temperature and how long it is cooked. It make no difference in the texture whether it is cooked in the microwave, broiler, grill, stir fried, stewed ---.

Beef cooked at 130 F for one hour is identical in texture in any cooking method.

Except Sous vide is one way that can keep exact temperature for the entire piece of meat. Therfore, you can go as low as and as long as the safety factor is to be considered, which is very difficult to do with other cooking methods.

Some smoker can do that.

At this point, I enjoy brisket stewed, but I cannot see why not also enjoy tender brisket, medium rare.

dcarch

FOAS, if no one has taken you up on your generous offer, I wonder if a local chef from a small but creative restaurant would want to borrow it from you. Might be good for a free dinner :-)

Interesting thought, Jessica. Back in the day (read: pre kids) I was a "regular" and friendly with the staff at a few small restaurants where they might have been interested, but no longer.

But yeah, suffice it to say my email isn't blowing up with requests.

I don't think sous vide has a lot of use for a home chef. Where it's useful is in a restaurant that wants to be able to plate up lots of things quickly like different steaks with different degrees of doneness in a moment's notice. Not in a place where you pick out your steak from a display and they grill it to your order. Sort of like the place where they have the pot of cooked cold pasta in olive oil and they pop it into a sautee pan, jump it to heat it up and ladle on the hot sauce. Or like my local Chinese place where you order and they cook it on the spot. They have the bowls of sliced meats, bowls of sauces and ingredients....the you place your order and they put a bit of this and that into the wok and ladle on one of their sauces and plate it up.
Most home cooks don't cook like that....but there were times when the kids were teens when I felt like I did!!

Posted by Lindac "I don't think sous vide has a lot of use for a home chef. Where it's useful is in a restaurant that wants to be able to plate up lots of things quickly like different steaks with different degrees of doneness in a moment's notice. ------"

Of course you may be correct. I am just wondering if you do a Yahoo or Bing sous vide search, you get 1,500,000,000 hits. Can all those be just restaurant interests?

Many places now sell home sous vide cookers, including Amazon and Costco. Are they mostly selling to restaurants? Just curious.

FOAS, a restaurant will have no interest in your system. There are many stringent regulations and rules for restaurants which use sous vide, in their equipment, staff training, inspections, etc.

dcarch

Ah, you're right. Looks like it requires jumping through a lot of hoops or risking a health code infraction.

There's certainly an interest for sous vide in the home, and it's only a matter of time before someone with an Aussie accent pushes sub-hundred-dollar cookers on an infomercial. At that point a lot more people will actually TRY it rather than talk about it. It'll be interesting to see the response.

Of course there's a difference between "interest" and actually wanting to try it. The lackluster response on this forum of cooks alone is testament to that. I made a cooker, John plans to. Anyone else? dcarch, you get a lot of reaction to your posts, but sous vide per se? I've not seen it. And you know I pay attention to your sous vide posts.

I don't know how you got 1.5 billion hits but if you type sous vide into a google search you get about 12 million hits. Refine that a bit more by simply putting quotes around it (thereby eliminating many unrelated results) and you get down to a much more believable 3.6 million hits. Still a lot, but search for Pringles and you get nearly 17 million hits so does the number really mean anything?

Anyway, USDA Prime hanger steak is on sale this week, and that was one of the few results I really enjoyed. Maybe I'll bust out the cooker, since it doesn't seem to be going in the mail anytime soon!

Posted by FOAS "-----Of course there's a difference between "interest" and actually wanting to try it. The lackluster response on this forum of cooks alone is testament to that. I made a cooker, John plans to. Anyone else? dcarch, you get a lot of reaction to your posts, but sous vide per se? I've not seen it. And you know I pay attention to your sous vide posts. ---"

Some people do things to be popular, I like to be popular too, but for now I like to share what I feel is useful information more than I like to be popular.

I said many times, and I repeat; if I spent a hundred dollars on a precious piece of meat, I want to make sure that it is cooked at exactly the perfect temperature I want, the perfect texture I want, not more and not less, this time and the next10 times. But why should I spend a hundred dollar? If I can transform a cheap cut of meat for the same enjoyment?

The lack of response here is OK with me, each forum members have a different mix. I get very different responses form other forums where I also post. I am posting for those lurkers who for many reasons do not or cannot post. I don't know how many here read my posts, but my Corn Video has been viewed today 14,000 times.

It is a good thing that I don't have a WEB site, a blog or a product to push, or I would be accused of having many unspeakable ulterior motives.

Cooking is for trying out known recipes, and for me, cooking is also for fun, for adventure, and for new discoveries. I am very excited that I can have the same cooking experiences as some of the high-end restaurants and famous chefs.

dcarch

FOAS,I have pretty much stayed out of the sous vide discussions but I'll jump in this time.

I tried half a dozen or so stove top sous vide experiments last winter and this spring with success in all but one attempt (although bemoaning having to listen for the alert beep of the probe thermometer when the temperature fluctuated). The one failure was with lamb shanks which came out tasting so gamey that they became dogfood. They were large shanks and maybe from an older animal. They were seasoned with a little salt, pepper, garlic and bits of preserved lemon and should have been great. I think the fault was with the meat and not the method.

This spring Max got me a Sous Vide Magic temp. controller and a Fresh Meals Magic bubbler/heater that came with an 18 liter Cambro type vertical container and lid. I would say that on average I use the entire setup about once every ten days. I like that you can cook more than one kind of meat at time, as long as they cook at the same temperature and as long as you write down and set timers for the amount of time each meat requires. I use the heater with my ten cup (probably six quart water capacity) rice cooker for cooking smaller amounts of meat and bringing previously sous vide cooked and frozen meats up to a serving temp. I would say I use the rice cooker setup at least 5 times a month. I have a two and a half pound chuck roast reheating now, and what I have learned about chuck roast is that I should cut and seal it in smaller amounts, more like a pound, because while it reheats and sears beautifully ONCE, it is not so great if you have leftovers at that point. Although Oliver, the 76 pound poodle in the house, thinks they are wonderful so nothing is wasted.

As with anything there is a learning curve and I have kept notes on what I've cooked, the time and temperature, and whether any adjustments needed to be made in the future. I'm not sure how or if altitude affects the whole process. I have Doug Baldwins book and since he is at the University of Colorado here in Boulder I can only assume that since his book does not address altitude there are no modifications needed.

My questions, earlier this year, about seasoning cast iron pans were in order to have more successful post sous vide searing and I do now have a number of well seasoned pans that I'm happy with and use them and my cast iron grill pan to do most of the finishing.

We are only a two person household and don't eat dinner at the same time every day (basically we eat late, and later) so it is a great convenience to just be able pull something out of the freezer and thaw and heat in 45 to 60 minutes. Of course there are many other ways of achieving a good and quick dinner and I use them too.

The meats that I have cooked repeatedly and like are: eye of round, cooked to just below med rare with one dinner using the hot roast and the rest chilled, sliced thinly, frozen and used for sandwich meat (beefy red-pink all the way through and tender); pork loin done the same way as a roast and sandwich meat and also with one inch thick boneless slices to finish as pork chops (pork cooked to 138�), boneless, skinless chicken breasts to use in many ways, chicken hindquarters bone in skin on cooked in a confit style; short ribs; chuck roast, lamb shoulder chops (very successful unlike my one attempt with shanks), ribeye steaks and prime grade sirloin steak.

Only once did I cook pork too long and noticed that it was harder to slice neatly and had a slightly softer texture than I would have liked.

So I'm glad I have it, I wouldn't want it to be only cooking method for these meats but we have been pleased with the results. I haven't tried fish in it because fish is so quick to cook in other ways but I'm sure I'll get around to trying salmon since one of our favorite ways with that is low/slow roasted at 225�. I haven't tried eggs, or vegetables, but I am intrigued with using it for yogurt and dulce de leche.

Lee

P.S. You are probably right about the sub $100. version, but wait we'll send you two, on a late nite infomercial - someone is already marketing a modified deepfryer/sous vide unit.

Which corn video got 14,000 views today? "Shuck a corn" on youtube currently shows 457 lifetime views, so is that not the one you're talking about?

Hey, I've got no issue with you promoting sous vide, or anyone promoting any method. From Ann_T with her high heat roasting to Semper Fi Cajun with his low and slow BBQ, what differentiates you from them (and most people on this forum) is your seeming unwillingness to go "beyond the headline." Except for cauliflower, LOL.

FOAS, according to youtube, that video have been viewed:

Views:14,145

Lee, I have turn some meat to paste a few times. LOL!

Keeping track is a must, but I think the same cut of meat can be very different because you don't know what they have done to the meat.

I like serving eggs to friends. I have a photo chart showing 12 consistences of eggs cooked, I ask them which picture is the one they want, and I will give them exactly what the pictures show, every time.

Same with steaks.

For browning steaks, in addtion to using a torch, I sometime use two cast iron pans. And for thin cuts, to avoid overcooking, I put the steaks in the freezer for a while.

dcarch

Lee - That's awesome, I'm glad you piped up! I'd love to hear more about what you cook regularly and successfully., including times and temps.

I can totally see your appeal to sous vide from the aspect of time reheating, timesave, etc. I've not tried to use it for that purpose. I'm more interested in finding something that turns out tasting, to me, better than what I achieve with "traditional" methods. And in that regard I've fallen short.

I hope you join the discussions and share your experiences.

Re corn count (which REALLY doesn't matter, so I probably shouldn't have questioned it) this is what I saw on search results:

shuck a corn by dcarchHow to shuck an ear of corn
by dcarch7 : 3 months ago : 457 views

But now that I actually clicked on it, they show 611. Where do you see 14,145?

Here is a link that might be useful: shuck a corn

I am not sure why this is an issue either. I was only trying to say that there are many lurkers out there, who can benifit from the sharing, whether they comment on a post or not.

You happened to look at the other corn video. But thank you for checking out.

This is the one shuck corn video I was refering to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmnG2GU9lyg

dcarch

Here is a link that might be useful: A Kernel Of Truth?