Sous Vide tip for home sous vide

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BeerChef

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So for those using a food saver style vac sealer as opposed to a chamber vac your longer cook times need to be adjusted. When reading books like under pressure, or other books from a pro point of view, a major difference occurs with the negative pressure in the bag. A professional chamber vac will reduce the internal atmospheric pressure way more then a house hold sealer, and in effect changing the boiling temp of liquid. This will greatly effect the time it takes something like a pork belly to cook. Keller gives his belly 12h at 180, a home user will need more like 18h to get the same effect. Just thought I toss that out there for all yall. Happy sous videing
 
Your hypothesis is interesting but I don't see any support for it. What suggests that level of vacuum can be predictive?

A strip sealer pulls a vacuum, though it would be difficult to measure. SV has enough time and temp variables, product thickness, et al. I'm not sure how a variable for vacuum could be included in any empirical way. 6 hours more? Or is it 50% more? What if it's a "good" strip sealer as opposed to "cheap" strip sealer? Keller's chamber sealer probably pulls more vacuum than mine - should I adjust a little bit?

I'm not being contentious, just the SV tables make my brain hurt enough as is - I don't want to make it any harder.

And a happy SV to you as well.:cool2:
 
15 years of pro and home use of both levels of tech. That's why I know. Trust me
 
I've no problem with reaching back and pulling out a SWAG. When it's presented as such. Me thinks you are offering anecdotal experience as something empirical.

I use a Sous Vide branded strip sealer (POS), within it's limitations, for catering and use a Weston strip sealer or VP112 chamber sealer at home. I've not found any reason to adjust timing for a SV product based on the sealing device used.

YMMV
 
Should it matter with sous vide? At the temperatures you're working at, you are far below the boiling temp of the liquid unless you pull and hold a tremendous vacuum. The only reason I can think of for it making a difference is that the lower boiling point allows for more vigorous convection currents at a lower temp.
 
I' agree with DavidB, I've been an early adopter of SV and used both a Clamp sealer (Original Foodsaver) and my chamber vac (VP 112) and have never heard about adjusting cooking times depending on which sealer is used. Not only that, once the food hits the warm/hot water, the bag will deform somewhat to the product being cooked probably equalizing any difference in pressure anyway.

Also, around here if you think saying "I have 15 years as a pro", is supposed to grant you instant credibility, that and $.99 will get you a DD coffee.

Welcome to the forum
 
James said:
At the temperatures you're working at, you are far below the boiling temp of the liquid unless you pull and hold a tremendous vacuum. .
Click to expand...

Yeah, it would also be observable due to the formation of gas in the bag due to boiling...
 
Mucho Bocho said:
I' agree with DavidB, I've been an early adopter of SV and used both a Clamp sealer (Original Foodsaver) and my chamber vac (VP 112) and have never heard about adjusting cooking times depending on which sealer is used. Not only that, once the food hits the warm/hot water, the bag will deform somewhat to the product being cooked probably equalizing any difference in pressure anyway.

Also, around here if you think saying "I have 15 years as a pro", is supposed to grant you instant credibility, that and $.99 will get you a DD coffee.

Welcome to the forum
Click to expand...

I have no experience as a professional chef and no experience with sous vise but I did sleep at a motel 6 :D
 
I will remain highly skeptical until I have a chance to try your beer and food the next time we make it to the Philadelphia area :D
 
I don't know why I never thought of it before, but today I used my Poly Pro as a defroster.

I'm making Carnitas tonight and wanted to pull some rib scraps from the freezer to marinate and cook them tonight. So I though, hum, I wonder how low the PS will go, turns out it will go to 32 C.

Nice, so I put some water in a bucket and circulated the frozen (SV bagged) pork and within 20 minutes, the meat was thawed and ready for marinating.

I'm now thinking the circulator could be used to quickly chill my stocks and large batch soups.

Just throwing it out there.
 
Heh, I started doing this a couple of months ago...very handy. I hadn't thought of it for chilling though. I also use one of those "rapid wine chillers" for defrosting...and chilling bottles of beer :)

Mucho Bocho said:
I don't know why I never thought of it before, but today I used my Poly Pro as a defroster.

I'm making Carnitas tonight and wanted to pull some rib scraps from the freezer to marinate and cook them tonight. So I though, hum, I wonder how low the PS will go, turns out it will go to 32 C.

Nice, so I put some water in a bucket and circulated the frozen (SV bagged) pork and within 20 minutes, the meat was thawed and ready for marinating.

I'm now thinking the circulator could be used to quickly chill my stocks and large batch soups.

Just throwing it out there.
Click to expand...
 
Oh wow very interesting concept (dethawing) i was also thinking about throwing in a vac sealed (glass/old/clean/wine) bottle of water with some tea leaves the next time i do some chicken and see how that comes out.
 
Update:

Tea was meh: really clear and defined but lacked overall complexity and watery on the mouth feel.

Would not recommend garlic roasting(SV) still prefer PC for garlic but I will attempt again.

Would recommend Wine bottles (vacuumed) with OrganicEVOO and herbs (rosemary) @140 for 2 hours ( I had chicken going) but I think shorter cook time is possible, I'll try to do a more empirical study in my next attempt. Whether vacuuming helps or not I don't know but I don't think so in this case.
 
BeerChef said:
So for those using a food saver style vac sealer as opposed to a chamber vac your longer cook times need to be adjusted. When reading books like under pressure, or other books from a pro point of view, a major difference occurs with the negative pressure in the bag. A professional chamber vac will reduce the internal atmospheric pressure way more then a house hold sealer, and in effect changing the boiling temp of liquid. This will greatly effect the time it takes something like a pork belly to cook. Keller gives his belly 12h at 180, a home user will need more like 18h to get the same effect. Just thought I toss that out there for all yall. Happy sous videing
Click to expand...

This idea presumes that the food in the bag remains under vacuum. It doesn't. The food in an s.v. bag will be at precisely the same pressure as its surroundings. Sitting on your counter, it's at atmospheric pressure. In your s.v. bath, it's under atmospheric pressure plus the pressure exerted by the water at that depth. It's only under vacuum when it's in the vacuum chamber and the air is evacuated.

S.V. cooking uses the temporary condition of the vacuum for one purpose: to evacuate excess air from the food bag. This reduces oxidation during cooking, eliminates insulating air pockets, and helps keep the bag from floating. That's it. There is zero effect on the pressure in the bag during cooking, and therefore zero effect on the boiling point of the food.

The reason this is the case: a plastic bag is not rigid. If you put food in a glass jar in the vacuum sealer, it would maintain a vacuum inside. You'd know this, because it would hold its shape after the air has been evacuated and after the jar's been returned to normal external pressure. A plastic bag collapses. External air pressure pushes the bag against its contents (or against itself) with the force of external atmospheric pressure. That's why you see the bag suck down onto its contents when you let pressure back into the chamber machine.
 
paulraphael said:
This idea presumes that the food in the bag remains under vacuum. It doesn't. The food in an s.v. bag will be at precisely the same pressure as its surroundings. Sitting on your counter, it's at atmospheric pressure. In your s.v. bath, it's under atmospheric pressure plus the pressure exerted by the water at that depth. It's only under vacuum when it's in the vacuum chamber and the air is evacuated.

S.V. cooking uses the temporary condition of the vacuum for one purpose: to evacuate excess air from the food bag. This reduces oxidation during cooking, eliminates insulating air pockets, and helps keep the bag from floating. That's it. There is zero effect on the pressure in the bag during cooking, and therefore zero effect on the boiling point of the food.

The reason this is the case: a plastic bag is not rigid. If you put food in a glass jar in the vacuum sealer, it would maintain a vacuum inside. You'd know this, because it would hold its shape after the air has been evacuated and after the jar's been returned to normal external pressure. A plastic bag collapses. External air pressure pushes the bag against its contents (or against itself) with the force of external atmospheric pressure. That's why you see the bag suck down onto its contents when you let pressure back into the chamber machine.
Click to expand...

You are correct
 
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