Prepare the Garlic Before Adding It to Your Sous-Vide Bag
The words “this is too much garlic” never left my lips. Garlic should be added to recipes with wild enthusiasm – should double if not triple the recommended amount – but if this is a sous vide recipe, you should no doubt cook the garlic before it ends up in your bag.
Sous-video is great for a lot of things, but doesn’t roast well. According to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking , most Maillard reactions occur around 250 or higher, while caramelization starts around 330. That’s much more than any recipe you would ever try to make sous vide. as water evaporates at 212 ℉ and you cannot cook in an empty tub. (Plus, you would completely overcook your food – to get a nice, juicy, medium-rare steak, you have to cook it at 130 ℉.)
Adding raw garlic to the meat bag means you get a lot of warm, yet fairly raw garlic, which will add a pungent and pungent flavor to your food. It also – due to some sulfur compounds – can turn green, which I saw with my own eyes, and I don’t like looking at it.
In addition, there are concerns about botulism, which, while it sounds very scary, is actually quite minor if you store food outside the 37.9-122 ° F “danger zone” and follow food safety guidelines. This is not to say that this cannot be, but the risk is small.
The real danger is that raw garlic spoils the taste of delicious, well-cooked food, so saute, fry, or otherwise cook the onions before dropping them into the bag. (Or you can just use black garlic, which goes great with that pork breast .)