Our sous vide is a workhorse (plus sous vide bags)

(Bob M) #1

A tropical storm passed through CT, and we lost power. Trees are down everywhere, and I mean everywhere. A massive tree came down in our yard, another right after our driveway meets the road. The massive tree is so big, a large portion of the base is wider than my chainsaw.

Anyway, we’ll be out of power about 7 days. We’re running a small generator. What this means is we can only run certain circuits, including the one I’m typing this on. We select the circuits to run, and turn everything else off.

We have a gas (propane) cook top. That’s our only source of heat for cooking. Generator is not powerful enough to run the oven. (We keep the fridge and freezer going, and also the fridge in the in law apartment where my mother lives; a few circuits going; periodically turn on the well pump so we have water.)

The sous vide helps a lot. I am currently “cooking” two different types of meat (brisket, chuck roast). I’ll cook them for 24 hours, then cool them on ice, then put them in the fridge. When we want meat, we take them out, cut them up, heat up/sear in a pan.

The other thing: My wife bought silicone sous vide bags for me for my birthday. I think they are something like this one:

So far, these have worked well. They are a bit tricky to get the air out, but I’ve done shrimp and the meats I’m sous vide-ing now, along with other meats. You really need to clean them well, too.

I’ll report back when I’ve had them 6+ months or so.

#2

What do you do with the brisket after you pull it out (normally) just go at it as normal? I don’t have a smoker anymore and would love a brisket but thinking of a bark-less brisket breaks my brain.

(Bob M) #3

Often, I just cut it up and take it to work. Eat it cold.

Otherwise, we slice against the grain, and reheat in a pan.

If you can find one with some fat, it’s actually quite filling.

For many of these meats, temperature matters. Lately, I’ve been cooking them like a steak, so near 130 degrees. You get a steak-like texture. If you cook at a higher temperature, like 150 degrees, you’ll get a pull apart texture.

This discusses the temperature aspect:

You could also “fake smoke” this by using liquid smoke.

Yesterday, since I was cooking two different meats at once, I just used 132.

I started doing this because we had stored meats in the freezer, sealed in plastic. So, I just took one out and threw it in a sous vide, to make for my own lunches. My wife started cutting it up and eating it for her lunches, then the kids said “Hey, where did you get that steak?”, and thus these went from being solely for my lunches to the family’s, then to dinner.