Sous Vide Cooking in Cooler

[TheTodd]

I thought this looked like a fun, healthy and tasty addition to our hobby:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/disco ... er-cooler/

[beerocracy]

A friend sent me a link to that. Looks interesting. I already have a food saver for bulk hops so I could use that & I have the $25 bucket heater from Miller Harness which would be easy to hookup to a temperature controller to keep the water temp constant.

[JohnF]

If it isn't immediately obvious, a rims/herms works well for sous vide too. The recirculation even stirs the water around like a real immersion circulater. Unlike the countertop domestic sous vide appliances either the cooler or a rims/herms is big enough to do brisket, pork shoulder, an entire tender or strip loin cut into steaks at once etc.

I have Thomas Keller's Sous Vide book which has some very ambitious recipes obviously but is almost worth the price just for the included table of temperatures and times for various items. If you don't want to buy the book (probably 30ish on Amazon) one could probably find it at a library or bookstore and copy the table.

[@clstokes]

Anyone tried this yet? I read about this a while back and am curious to try, but haven't gotten around to it.

-Cameron

[Field]

it should work, I know I'm not the only one using a 10 gallon drink cooler as a mash tun and it easily holds that temperature range for a long time

replace the barley with a steak in a bag, and you're not mashing your sous vide cooking


obviously you'd want the cooler to be as close to the size of the food as possible, not a 10 gallon cooler for cooking, more like a few quarts in size

[Mylo]

Anyone tried this yet? I read about this a while back and am curious to try, but haven't gotten around to it.

-Cameron

I have done this a few times in an insulated cooler, with decent results. There are very strong similarities between finding the right strike temp for your steaks, as finding the right strike temp for your grains. Initial temps and mass comes into play. Now that I have automated temperature control on my brewstand, the "strike temp" will be less of an issue for me. The real benefit of this type of cooking is that once the food equalizes with your water, it won't overcook. It's a great idea for large qualtities to be done at the same time (and that is the primary reason sous vide is used for large catering events. Perfect edge to edge temperatures. You will need to sear the outside quickly and efficiently. I use a cast iron pan to quickly develop those tasty melanoidins.


Mylo

[triple-oh-six]

We actually just throw it in the mash. I've only done chicken so far but it works pretty good.
I was skeptical at first but it is vacuum sealed.
After mash-out we throw it on the grill just to put a bit of a sear on it.

[Mylo]

We actually just throw it in the mash. I've only done chicken so far but it works pretty good.
I was skeptical at first but it is vacuum sealed.
After mash-out we throw it on the grill just to put a bit of a sear on it.

Yeah, that probably works great for chicken - but I like my steaks a LOT more rare than my sacc rests would allow.


Mylo