Will It Be Sous Vide? Snowstorm Edition
Hey beauties, and welcome back to the somewhat unusual but highly addictive Will It Sous Vide? , a weekly column where I do whatever you want with my immersion circulator.
I actually planned to try a whole bunch of different coffees this week, but then a foot of snow fell on Portland and my plan was thwarted. A foot of snow may not seem like a big deal – after all, I work from home, so it doesn’t seem like I can’t “catch up” to watch things – but Portland isn’t equipped to handle that much snow. , and the city practically shut down.
Not only was the place where I wanted to drink coffee was closed, but also my “coffee expert” was stuck in Northwest Portland. I suppose I could try the crappy coffee experiment and evaluate the results with my questionable coffee taste, but I really want to experiment with this topic, so I decided to postpone it.
This meant I needed a new topic, and since the only grocery store within walking distance was closed, I also needed sous video food . I tried capturing a snowball and it worked, but the results weren’t impressive enough to merit a whole post.
I rummaged in the freezer until I found candidates. In fact, there were more options than expected, and for our experiment I chose the following:
- Frozen chimichanga
- Freezer Burnt Chicken Thighs
- lima beans
- Mysterious cube god knows what (don’t worry, everything will open.)
I started with chimichanga, mainly because I was stuck inside without a lot of food, and that really calls me out.
Will it be sous vide? This frozen chimichanga
In our Hot Pocket adventure, we already created a use case for viewing frozen convenience foods, so I used that as a guide. I unwrapped the item, sealed it in a plastic bag, and immersed it in a water bath set at 165 ℉ for an hour.
Then I took it out of the tub and tucked it under the brazier to make it crispy. As with Hot Pocket before it, the internal temperature was constant from edge to edge, with no large ice or molten lava patches, and the cheese was beautiful and melted. The fried potatoes made the tortilla-style wrapper a little more crispy than the microwave, making it one of the most enjoyable chimichanga eating in recent memory.
So, going back to our favorite question: Will the frozen chimichanga that hung in my freezer for about five months be sous-vide?
Answer: It actually will, and does it quite charmingly with an evenly boiled, hot, but not melted filling.
Moving on.
Will it be sous vide? Chicken thigh, burnt in the freezer
To be honest, I have no idea when I put this piece of meat in the freezer, but as you can clearly see, I did a terrible job of storing it. This thing clearly went through a whole bunch of temperature cycles and was pretty badly damaged by a frostburn.
It was the only protein I had to work with (at least I thought so), and I wanted to see if cooking sous-video could somehow save this poor piece of meat. I put it in a vacuum bag with a large old tablespoon of duck fat and a few cloves of garlic, which I accidentally left for some reason , and left it in a water bath at 165 degrees for an hour. (I usually did 45 minutes, but I added 15 more because they were frozen.)
An hour later, I fried it in hot duck fat. I almost lit the fat, but the color of that chicken was worth it.
So now we have to ask ourselves: Will the sad, freezer-burnt chicken thigh watch the video?
Answer: Yes, mostly. While it wasn’t as juicy as the “normal” sous vide chicken thighs, it was still good. It tasted a little dry, but it was quite edible, as evidenced by the fact that I ate it all.
Next.
Will it be sous vide? Lima beans
Hello. My name is Claire Lower and I love beans as hell. It makes me very sad, especially from my hated mother, but I would argue that there are few things tastier than a bowl of properly cooked lima beans (buttery beans if you’re a Southerner). I also believe that there is nothing worse than whole grain, undercooked beans, and I suspect that many people who “hate lima beans” have never eaten fully cooked beans.
Anyway. I really wanted to see if my Anova could help me get perfectly cooked legumes, so I tossed a whole bunch of little frozen guys in a plastic bag and added enough salt water to cover them (about 1 1/2 cups per half bag of beans). According ChefSteps , legumes at a temperature of 199 ℉ can “soften the cell walls and to hydrate the starch granules” that lead to a “more uniform wetting of the seeds and the containment inside of beans.” It seemed good to me, so I set the temperature to 199 ℉ and left the limas hanging out for an hour and a half.
After 90 minutes, I drained the beans and ate them.
I know you are all wondering: Will frozen lima beans – arguably the tastiest of all legumes – be sous vide?
Answer: they really will. The beans were plump and perfectly cooked, with fluffy, creamy insides that were seasoned with salt water while in the bath. From now on, I will seriously prepare my limas in this way. Not only were they absolutely delicious, I didn’t need to boil or stir. (Instead, I was able to have a cocktail in the tub while the beans were cooking, which is much better in my opinion.)
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for …
Will it be sous vide? Frozen Mystery Cube
This thing hung in my freezer for several months, and I put it in my daily routine. About once a week, I took it out, looked at it with a wrinkled forehead, and then put it back in the freezer without knowing anything.
But nothing more. I was going to get some answers and Anova will help me get them. Since I literally had no idea what the cube was, I set the circulation pump to a not too high 145 ℉ and let the interfering block dangle until it melted.
The mystery cube began to soften and turned into a sponge-like beige brick. I still didn’t know what I was dealing with, so I opened it and sniffed it.
It was tofu and I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed. It was not only tofu, but also very porous tofu that had been soaked in water for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I could do anything about it, but I went ahead and pressed and doused with a mixture of sesame oil, fish sauce, soy sauce and minced garlic. Then I sealed it in a vacuum bag and set it for two hours at 180 ℉.
I finished it under the brazier for seven minutes, swiping halfway through to get some color on each side. The result is a bunch of very unusual tofu strips.
Now for the question on everyone’s mind: Will the spongy tofu, formerly known as the “mystery cube,” be sous vide?
The answer is no, not really. I mean, I think it was safe to eat, but that weird spongy texture never faded away and cooking made it look like bread. So it was mostly tofu flavored bread and I hated it. (Note: Regular tofu that hasn’t been stored in the lousy freezer is great.)
And that concludes this special, snow-covered edition of Will It Sous Vide? … Hopefully this snow melts soon so I can go out and buy some coffee. (Actually, I generally need to buy food. I’m almost out.)