Will It Be Sous Vide? You Have Chosen Hot Pockets
Cheers and greetings, and welcome back to yet another exciting piece ofWill It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where you tell me what to cook with my Anova.
Earlier this week in our post for selecting topics, I tried to narrow the focus and suggested trying some unusual or unusual meat, such as an alligator, pig’s foot, or duck. I thought that the duck would take it, but then a dark horse appeared, which received ten stars and our hearts.
If there is another, more ridiculous use for my Anova, I cannot think of one, and it is moments like these that make me love my work. So on Wednesday afternoon (after a few campari and sodas because it didn’t feel right to enjoy Hot Pocket while being cold sober), I went to 7-11 and bought a lot of Hot Pockets for pepperoni pizza and Diet Coke ( for energy).
Despite the fact that I have the dietary habits of a constantly drunk toddler, I haven’t had a Hot Pocket for at least seven years, maybe more. And yet I remembered the struggle to make this delicacy at the gas station. As nobe pointed out in his comment, getting a constant temperature all over your pocket is always a challenge, making it an ideal candidate for sous video. (Hint: Hot pockets love to swim. To make them sink, place the butter knife in your bag with them before submerging them.)
Surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find any recipes or resources for sous vide Hot Pockets on the Anova website or anywhere else on the internet for that matter. Fortunately, it was pretty simple: According to the Hot Pocket box, this bag of dough must be cooked until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. I tossed a bunch of (frozen) hot pockets into plastic bags, immersed them in a 165-degree bath, and removed them periodically to check the internal temperature at the ends and center of the pocket.
In the first half hour, the temperature rose rather quickly, but then slowed down a little, reaching 160 degrees, starting from the one hour mark. In terms of flavor, the one-hour “Hot Pocket” tasted great and still had a rather scaly crust.
After two hours of su-video at 165 degrees, the temperature at both ends and the center of the hot pockets was still stubbornly holding around 160, so I raised the temperature five degrees and gave them another fifteen minutes to cook. … (Note: I verified that my thermometer and Anova were temp syncronized; they showed the same temperature within 0.2 degrees of each other, so the bath temperature was indeed 165.)
This increased the size of the pocket to 165 at both ends and in the middle, but by then the sauce had soaked in the edges of the crust, staining it red and making it wet.
So the core temperature was finally reached, but at the expense of the crust. Apparently a hybrid method was needed, so I packed and stuffed another hot pocket in the bag and left it on for an hour before cooking in the oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for one minute.
It may seem like a really dumb proposition, but this Hot Pocket was the best Hot Pocket I have ever tried in my entire life. It was cooked evenly, the gummy melted cheese was evenly distributed, and the crust was as crispy and flaky as this particular dough can be, with a messy leak.
Returning to the eternal question: will there be Hot Pockets sous vide?
Answer : Yes, my friends, Hot Pocket will do, but you must be a big fan of the microwave sandwich to be worth it. I’ve only ever wanted a Hot Pocket while drunk or high (or as a kid), so I doubt I ever had the foresight to heat up my water bath an hour ahead of time. But if you know you need a Hot Pocket an hour before you want to, feel free to turn off your immersion circulator and enjoy the best Hot Pocket for pepperoni pizza of your life.