Interesting experiment. Were the results what you expected? What was the texture of the meat? Was it moist or dry?

Where's the vacuum?

"---Were the results what you expected? What was the texture of the meat? Was it moist or dry?"

For some reason, when it comes to chicken skin, everyone seems to be confused by the meaning of "Crispy skin". I have not seen too many who have achieved true crispy skin on a chicken or turkey (except deep fried). Browned skin? yes. Crispy? No. Then to have crispy skin and juicy meat? Not easy by conventional cooking methods.

This is the only one I have found which seem to have done it, and my method is a slightly modified version.

By keeping the temperature low, you automatically end up with juicy meat. There is no magic in that.

plllog, vacuum is not required for the concept of sous vide cooking.

dcarch

But "Vide" means vacuum! Sous vide = under vacuum!

I was teasing. Just a little joke. Too little, I'm afraid...

I'm pretty sure I understand the concept of crispy. It crunches like a potato chip, right? I do that regularly on my roasted chickens. Crisp skin and juicy meat. It doesn't take much. A moist environment and a good rack, though if you want the skin to stay crisp, it should be removed if not served right away or the steam from the juicy chicken will soften it back up. For even crisper, heavily caramlized skin, I use "suntan lotion" which could be any of a number of bottled sauces, but is, operationally, oil and sugar. Still, nekkid crisps up fine for me.

Your whole fan gizmo setup is interesting, however, for trying to keep that constant low temperature. Gaggenau has a new vacuum sealing drawer and a sous vide setting on their new model steam oven. I've only seen the press release and don't know the details, but I guarantee your method is orders of magnitude cheaper!

My understanding is that while cooking the food with surrounding air removed is what's commonly thought of with sous vide, what really diffentiates the method is lower than normal temperatures , precisely held. "Precisely" being defined in MC as within 1 or 2 degrees. How do you accomplish this in a standard oven, which typically swings as much as +/- 25 degrees? Even if you've rigged the swing to be lower?

I see nothing "sous vide" about this, but I do see a very evenly crisped chicken so I'm giving it a shot as we speak. I hope to God the initial boil killed off anything toxic because I'm over 3 hours into it and the internal temp is just 146.

By the way, I disagree that it needs to be as crisp as a potato chip that breaks when touched. Crispy lettuce doesn't, and is rightfully called crispy, no?

I didn't mean that crisp, FOAS! The breaks when touched. "Crispy" is the current euphemism for fried and crunchy. In the case of chicken skin, it fries in the fat you're rendering off, right? The lettuce is crisp, but not crispy. :)

I spilled some grease and smoked up the house, and as a result probably didn't leave it in as long as I might have on high heat. It was good chicken. The meat definitely wasn't dry, but to me not noticeably different from any other chicken not left in too long. Not enough to deal with food safety concerns lingering in the back of my mind, anyway.

Picture looks weird - on my phone only. Not sure why.

I am struggling with calling sous vide cooking NOT vacuum packing the food first. Otherwise, i's just low temperature cooking, no?

I'm guessing that the purpose of vacuuming the air out of the food package is to remove the insulating barrier that air would have...so's to insure that the food has as direct as possible contact with the heat source, i.e., the water?

dcarch--what you've done here isn't much different than what you can do with one of those counter top glass-bowl convection 'turbo ovens', is it? But then I don't know how low & how precisely you can control the temperature in one of those...

" I am struggling with calling sous vide cooking NOT vacuum packing the food first. Otherwise, i's just low temperature cooking, no? "

Sous vide is a very unfortunate name for a cooking technique. It has nothing to do with vacuum (or pressure), and it does not (it did, not too long ago) cost $2,000 for the appliance.

Sous vide is nothing more than having an advanced thermostat which can keep cooking temperature to within one degree of accuracy, Circulating water is often used to facilitate better heat conduction, and air is removed as much as possible for the same reason.

Sous vide is about food safety. Having the ability to keep exact temperature, you now have the freedom to cook food at the lowest safe temperature, and you will never have to worry about overcooking or undercooking your food.

The popularity of sous vide cooking has produced many advanced sous vide cookers (circulators) in the range from $100 to $200.

Imagine you just purchased $150 of prime ribs for the holidays, don't you want to make sure that you will not mess it up for your hungry guests?

Imagine eye round roast is $2.79 a lb, wouldn't you like to turn that into tender juicy roast beef?

dcarch

FOAS, that is a fine looking roasted chicken. Good job.

It is true that regular oven has temperature swings + - 20 degrees. That is because the nature of slow response nature of capillary thermostat typically used in ovens. The large cooking chamber with different materials each has different thermal mass characteristics that can totally confuse the thermostat. By moving internal air rapidly, temperature gets evened out and the accuracy improves significantly.

This "hot air sous vide" is designed only for cooking fowls (chickens, ducks, turkeys) which you want crispy skin. It cannot be used for any other food type.

dcarch

"---dcarch--what you've done here isn't much different than what you can do with one of those counter top glass-bowl convection 'turbo ovens', is it? But then I don't know how low & how precisely you can control the temperature in one of those...)

Actually the concept is very different. Turbo ovens start cooking at very high temperature. You can't avoid over cooking part of the meat.

This method tries to cook the meat at very low temperature at the same time dries the skin for crispying later.

dcarch

Erm, no. Sous vide means vacuum packed. You're talking about a method of cooking that has evolved into something other than sous vide cooking. I understand what you're doing, but you need a better name for it.LOL

THE HISTORY OF SOUS VIDE

This method of cooking was developed in the mid–1970s by chef Georges Pralus (at the internationally renowned Michelin Three-Star Restaurant, Troisgros, in Roanne, France) initially as a means of minimizing costly shrinkage of and optimally cooking delicate foie gras.

Chef Bruno Goussault subsequently adopted and expanded the technique to consistently provide gourmet-quality meals to first class travelers on Air France.

In the last two decades, sous vide cooking has sparked a wave of culinary innovation and creativity, and has become the secret of top chefs at major restaurants around the world.

With appliances such as the SousVide Supreme, this cooking technique is now affordable and accessible to home cooks.

HOW TO SOUS VIDE: THE SIMPLE STEPS OF SOUS VIDE COOKING

The simple steps of sous vide cooking -- Season/Seal, Simmer, and Serve—require little hands-on time to dial in perfect results every time.

1. Season & Seal– Because the sous vide technique locks in the flavor, the food cooks in its own juices, intensifying its natural flavors. This means that you can season with a lighter hand or in many cases, after the fact. Vacuum/seal the food in air tight cooking pouches.
2. Simmer – Drop the pouches into the precisely controlled water bath.
3. Serve – Many foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and one-dish meals are delicious straight from the pouch. Proteins (meat, poultry, fish) are delicious out of the pouch as well, but may benefit from a quick sear in a hot skillet, under the broiler, on the grill, or with a kitchen torch to impart the beautiful golden color and savory caramelized flavor to these foods.

Well, I don't live in France and I'm not a native French speaker, but I do read French fluently and to me as well "sous vide" means vacuum.

Islay, according to Wiki it was a Brit invented this:

"The method was first described by Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) in 1799 (although he used air as the heat transfer medium).[2][3] It was re-discovered by American and French engineers in the mid-1960s and developed into an industrial food preservation method.[4] The method was adopted by Georges Pralus in 1974 for the Restaurant Troisgros (of Pierre and Michel Troisgros) in Roanne, France. He discovered that when foie gras was cooked in this manner it kept its original appearance, did not lose excess amounts of fat and had better texture.[4] Another pioneer in sous-vide is Bruno Goussault, who further researched the effects of temperature on various foods and became well known for training top chefs in the method."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide

Trust the Brits to invent such a particularly unappetizing method (sorry but it is rather offputting for me). LOVE the Brits, though, if only for roast beef and apple pie.

"---Erm, no. Sous vide means vacuum packed. You're talking about a method of cooking that has evolved into something other than sous vide cooking. I understand what you're doing, but you need a better name for it.LOL---"

"sous vide" does mean vacuum, but the concept has nothing to do with vacuum. That's why there are people call this method "water oven" . In fact, it is physically impossible to create vacuum in a flexible plastic bag. Airless yes, vacuum, no.

Water boils in vacuum at room temperature.

Sous vide today means the use of a PID thermostat to control temperature. A PID thermostat can learn the entire cooking environment of your cooking. The kind of vessel you are using, size of your vessel, BTU output of you heat source, temperature of your food, ambient temperature of your kitchen ----. The PID thermostat will make constant adjustments to keep the temperature to within one degree of accuracy.

This incredibly sophisticated digital thermostat used to be $2,000 not too long ago. Today it is about $20.

A sous vide cooker circulator used to be big and heavy. Today it is the size of a stick blender.

dcarch

Vacuum as in suction, such as with a vacuum cleaner or a vacuform machine, not vacuum as in absent of all air as in vacuum chambers where all gasses are pulled out leaving a low pressure environment for experimentation.

This is a silly big argument over a name. I used the water oven successfully at my party with most of the food vacuum sealed, and a few bits merely bagged.

Let's call your new method the air-only- no-water-oven, enhanced circulation convection oven, temperature controlled multi-fan oven, precision air cooker or anything else you please. For a lot of people (including me), "sous vide" means the suctioned plastic bag, not the water oven or anything else; the bag that lets us prep days ahead like a food DVR. Rather than trying to change the people's perceptions, or arguing over them, just say "In place of sous vide", or come up with a new name.

Dcarch. Watch a cooking show, learn about cooking. What u are arguing is laughable. Your calling dehydration of a chicken, Sous Vide? It’s the complete opposite! Your taking water out, correct? SV keeps all the juices in w/o removing liquid. It is a vacuum. The air has been removed, that is the definition of a vacuum. I like the fact that you are trying new cooking methods but they are not even comparable.

Dcarch - don't care what you called it thank you for posting and giving great details on how it was done. You also followed up on the type of fan used - that was my question when reading [what kind of fan was used that wasn't hurt by the temp of the oven]. As I recently started to play with my inexpensive Sous Vide looks like a stick blender I can say that the food is not unappetizing at all, the flavor forced with vacuum and controlled low temp cooking is fantastic. My main problem is browning it after without over doing it . . my hoisin ribs for example. Just proof that when it comes to that step I can't multi task.

Liam Tierney, thank you for sharing your interesting
view on sous vide, especially I think this is your very first Garden WEB post?
Welcome to the Cooking Forum!

Sous vide, commonly known as the “under vacuum” or “under pressure” cooking method. Unfortunately, that is the worst possible case of bad translation. Sous vide has absolutely nothing to do with either vacuum or pressure. The bad translation has caused major angry arguments, and friends to become enemies.

If you check the law of physics, it is simply not possible to create vacuum using a flexible plastic bag, therefore there is no pressure created on the food inside the bag. Airless yes, vacuum no. As a matter of fact, high school physics experiment will show you that water boils in vacuum and freezes.

Vacuum is not required for sous vide, and many people, myself included simply use the ‘water displacement “ method to get air out from inside the bag, no vacuum.

Sous vide is simply cooking by precision temperature control facilitated by enhanced thermal conductivity using circulating water. In fact, you can use circulating oil, or in this post, circulating air.

dcarch

Nobody uses your method unless they are attempting to make jerky of some sort. The point of sous vide is to retain moisture and cook to a precise temp. You may be able to cook to a precise temp using your method but you are loosing copious amounts of moisture. Circulation in actual sous vide is necessary to create a temp controlled environment where the temperature remains constant on all surfaces of the meat, or whatever your cooking at all depths of the bath.

People have been cooking things slow and low forever. Your method sounds like roasting a chicken three feet over some embers on a rotisserie with a nice breeze blowing. Would that be any different?

Whatever, if it works for you run with it. I’m glad it does. Sounds better than eating charred chicken that was cooked over way to hot of a grill. That being said, to the entire culinary world, sous vide, just as everyone else has stated is cooking in a bag, that could or could not be totally vacuumed sealed, under water.

The fact that the item is submerged means that there is pressure. The pressure is higher under water. Much. Think about how much harder it is to move around when you are under water. This is water pressure, is it not?

Check out this totally reputable source and ask the people there if they think your method qualifies. I don’t think it does. Sorry, not trying to piss u off.

https://www.seriouseats.com/sous-vide-101

Liam Tierney, thank you for your patience in exchanging ideas. Let me respond to a few of your points.

“Nobody uses your method unless they are attempting to make jerky of some sort. “

Apparently you completely missed my clarification, I said: This "hot air sous vide" is designed only for cooking fowls (chickens, ducks, turkeys) which you want crispy skin. It cannot be used for any other food type.

In all true crispy skin fowl preparations, air drying of the skin is a requirement.

“The point of sous vide is to retain moisture and cook to a precise temp. “

Not completely true. Meat cannot retain moisture just because it is under water in a bag. Try boiling meat in water. It will be tough and dry.

“Circulation in actual sous vide is necessary to create a temp controlled environment where the temperature remains constant on all surfaces of the meat,”

Actually all interior of the meat

“People have been cooking things slow and low forever. Your method sounds like roasting a chicken three feet over some embers on a rotisserie with a nice breeze blowing. Would that be any different?”

Difference is absolute temperature control, inside and outside to within 1F.

“The fact that the item is submerged means that there is pressure. The pressure is higher under water. Much. Think about how much harder it is to move around when you are under water. This is water pressure, is it not?”

Pressure is not a factor or consideration in sous vide cooking.

dcarch