I definitely have a Sous Vide Supreme on my want list but since I recently dropped about $700 on a VitaMix set at Costoc it will probably be a while. :D One dish that really fascinates me when prepared Sous Vide is Fried Chicken. Have you tried this before? I love experimenting with new techniques to improve fried chicken and this one is very promising. (My other favorite method is pressure cooker fried chicken but that's pretty dangerous if you don't have the right equipment!) To make Sous Vide Fried Chicken soak your chicken in a strong brine for 30-40 minutes, rinse and soak in seasoned buttermilk for 8-12 hours. Season the meat with your preferred spices, maybe a little hot sauce or fresh buttermilk. Put the chicken in vacuum bags and cook at 160F for an hour. At that point you can dry the meat, coat in seasoned flour and fry it. Alternatively you can chill the meat down in ice water and hold in the fridge for quick frying later. The benefit to that method is that you can do all of the prep work for fried chicken in advance. Also, there are no worries about undercooked centers or dried meat. The chicken stays incredibly moist and the flavors really penetrate the meat. It's great if you want to cook a large amount of fried chicken for a crowd in a short amount of time. It's also good if you want to fry chicken to order. One warning though, you might want to cook the chicken to 165 though since the USDA has recently revised their meat cooking guidelines. Here is a link that might be useful: Hacking Your Slow Cooker: D.I.Y. Sous Vide Setup

Very interesting post, FOAS. Thank you for taking the time to do the experimentations/investigations. Your efforts definitely will further everyone's knowledge in this Forum. Ultimately that is a very important part for the participation here. It is interesting that you have had mixed results. Let's look at it this way; at least it was not a total lost for you. Obviously your experience is not the same as mine. That is not to say that you have done anything wrong or you don't have good taste. Eating experience is very subjective and details for preparation can be unpredictable. I have been luckier. I have sous vided many kinds of foods. As I can remember, the biggest failure I had was with squid. My timing was wrong and the squid turned into mush. Otherwise all meats, all seafood; lobsters, clams, fish, scallops --- all were from good to fantastic. Unlike you, I had great results with shrimps, but I did my shrimps at 138 F for 25 minutes, and I was able to get very fresh shrimps, not the chemically treated ones you now find in stores. I can only suggest to you, given that fact that if you search the WEB you will realize the practice of sous vide cooking is more than just a fashion trend, that you may want to play with it a few time times before giving up. I am not going to discredit Jonathan Gold's opinion about sous vide, after all he is a Pulitzer-price winning writer. However, I do humbly disagree that a perfectly cooked piece of meat is by definition boring. No one eats a steak directly as it comes out from the cooker, there are other preparation steps before the steak is to be served. Off-topic, I noticed that Costco is now selling sous vide cookers. I must point out again that sous vide only guarantees that you will not overcook or undercook your food, but it cannot guarantee that your food will taste good. It is like having a fancy grill will not automatically give you great BBQ. I might also add that sous vide cooking for chefs is not necessarily easier than regular cooking, but that's another topic all together. dcarch

Posted by annie1992 "I don't like lamb in any form, so won't conjecture on the proper cooking of it. (grin) ----" Annie, I didn't use to like lamb at all, until they start charging a lot of money. Expensive = taste good ? LOL FOAS, thank you. I look forward to seeing more of your sous vide creations. Alexa, at the risk of being accused of anti Occam's Razor law, let's take a little time to chew the fat. First, the pictures might be a little misleading. I take food pictures using only the auto setting on my camera to save time. Depending on if the light is from the window (day) or from the CFL (night) or if the shot is wide-angle or close-up and the predominant color of the food item, the camera's built-in software takes charge and determines the red/white/blue balance for each picture. The colors on the first two are closer to the real thing. Rack of lamb, very expensive. If you take away the fat, and the bones, and shrinkage, it probably comes to $60.00 a pound here in NYC. Meat, bones and fat have different thermal conductivities, adding to it, the small size and the shape of a rack of lamb, it makes it very difficult to cook it perfectly unless you prefer the whole thing well-done. It is challenging to find a way to maximize perfection to every tiny morsel of this wondrous victual. At the temperature I set at 135F, it is too low to render the fat. Since I don�t eat the fat, it does not bother me just to scrape the fat off while I eat. But if I were to serve others who are not followers of the Paleolithic diet, I probably BBQ the fat a little longer and that will make the issue go away. No, you cannot make Schmaltz using a sous vide cooker. I think it needs to be emphasized that sous vide is merely a particular way of cooking with a special appliance. There is really no recipes for sous vide, no more than recipes for microwave, or cast iron frying pan, etc. It is unfortunate that the French word "sous vide" gives this concept a lot of unjustified mystique; the fact that top chefs and upscale restaurant use it makes it appearing un-approachable. It makes it seem like practitioners of this way of cooking belong to some religious cult. The truth is this: sous vide is just a water oven that can keep constant temperatures. If I were to name this appliance, I would call it "Cookware For Making Perfect Meats For Dummies" If you show a 10-year-old kid how to set the temperature, the kid can cook the meat sous vide just like a top chef. A sous vide cooker simply will not allow you to overcook or undercook, it makes no difference if your piece of meat is frozen on one half and the other half at room-temperature, thick on one end and thin on the other end. No doubt, sous vide is going to go thru similar fade as the microwave oven did. First microwave oven was scosting like $5,000 and there were many myths and fears surrounding these bizarre new electronic "radar ranges." By the seventies, more and more people were finding the benefits of microwave cooking to outweigh the supposedly risks, and none of them were dying of radiation poisoning, going blind, becoming sterile, or impotent. As fears ebbed, acceptance began pouring into the kitchens. dcarch

(aptosca will read your link later) DH says: There are several ways of doing this. Easiest is to set the oven to what ever temp you want. Put in a big heavy pot. Fill with water and cover. Take your food in a vacuum bag with spices etc, seal and put in water. Let sit and eat. There is no need to spend a lot of money on a temp controller, since the oven will do it. The large pot of water will maintain the temp stable. I am willing to try it however. Making an immersion bath with a temperature controller is quite easy. They can be bought on the used restaurant market not too expensive. basically a steam table. A crock pot can be converted to low temp cooking. I do worry about bacterial contamination however.