When you fry a piece of meat in a pan or on the grill, there is an amazing aroma around, and your steak (or roast beef, filet mignon, chicken leg, etc.) looks very appetizing. True, cooking at high temperatures has one “but”, especially when it comes to beef. So fast way most often, “premium” meat is prepared: the most tender, non-working muscles (different tenderloin, thick and thin edges, or they are cut into steaks according to the Western method - rib-eye, strip-ploin, etc.). And this is only a small part of the carcass of the animal. What about the rest of the cuts - the working muscles (rump, shank, eye muscle, etc.)? If you are not going to make burgers or cutlets out of them (this is a completely possible solution to the problem), and you are tired of endless stewing and boiling, there is only one answer - cooking with low temperatures.

The history of the appearance of the method

The person who invented cooking at low temperatures was the English physicist Benjamin Thompson, Earl Rumfoord. He studied the relationship between mechanical work and internal energy and laid the foundations of thermophysics. And in the process, he came up with a lot of useful items - for example, a stove and an army kitchen. One day, the Count came up with the idea to cook a lamb shoulder in a potato drying apparatus invented by him, where the temperature inside did not exceed 80 ° C. He put the meat into the machine, after 2 hours he tried it - the lamb remained raw. Rumfoord decided that nothing had worked out and went home. After a couple of hours, the assistants tried the meat - it was raw, then they put out the fire and left the laboratory. The spatula remained inside the car until the morning. When they took it out and tried it, they found that the meat was ready and had a surprisingly delicate texture and a very expressive taste! What happened? To make meat soft, you need to disrupt the structure of muscle fibers. That's what heating does. The fibers are covered with connective tissue containing collagen. At high temperature collagen is cooked so that the meat loses moisture. At low temperatures the meat warms up gradually - and the collagen, changing, turns the connective tissue into jelly. At high temperatures, the volatile substances responsible for odors and tastes evaporate, while at low temperatures they remain. The meat remains juicy and does not lose flavor.

What is sous vide cooking

200 years have passed since the time of Count Rumfoord, and experiments with low temperatures continue. In the 1970s, the chef of the famous Troisgros restaurant, Georges Pralu, tried the technology, which was later called sous vide (sous-vide - French for “vacuum”). He put foie gras, a fatty foie gras, in a bag, seasoned it, and delicately bled the air out. He immersed the package in a pot of water heated to 70°C. He wanted to ensure that the liver does not lose valuable fat, and the aroma of spices penetrates into the pulp as intensely as possible - and everything worked out! Since this method requires a constant low temperature and a vacuum apparatus, for a long time only the kitchens of expensive restaurants were equipped with a sous vide device. But already about ten years ago, sous vide machines for home kitchens began to appear on sale (however, they are still not cheap).

But complex devices are not required at all. A good stove and oven that can keep the right heat is quite enough. On the stove, you can cook meat "wet languishing", that is, in a regular saucepan in any liquid. You need to be sure that your burner does not warm up more - to do this, set the minimum heating value for the electric stove (more precisely, this is obtained on induction hobs), and put a divider on the gas burner. For the oven, the “dry” method is more suitable - baking just like that. You can try to cook any recipe from this issue of the "Collection" not at 120-140 ° C, but at 70-80 ° C. Cooking time will take 3 times more.
So, there are 3 ways of low-temperature cooking. 1) Baking in the oven at a temperature of 60-140 ° C. 2) Stewing meat in liquid on the stove at 50-90 °C. 3) Cooking in sous vide - in a vacuum bag immersed in a liquid at a temperature of 40-90 ° C. Let's deal with each separately.

How to bake meat and poultry at a low temperature in the oven

For great cooking results different dishes, you need to understand very well what exactly you are doing. As a general rule, the more "working" a cut was (neck bends, legs walk, etc.), the longer it will take to cook it. It is best to simmer in the oven the following beef cuts: boneless brisket, sirloin, inside of the back cut, eye muscle. Pork: shoulder, ham, brisket. Chicken: the whole bird, legs, wings.

You need to remember:
The larger the piece, the better it is suitable for baking in the oven with the “dry” method. The larger it is, the lower the temperature should be and the longer the time.
The more fat in a piece, the better it is to bake it “dry” - the fat will gradually melt and make the meat juicy.
The less fat, the more often you need to grease the piece with sauce during the baking process.

Temperature
At what internal temperature is meat considered cooked and safe?
chicken - 73 ° C
pork - 62 ° С
beef - 52-60 ° С

We have empirically established that long-term roasting of pieces of meat is best possible at 120-130 ° C. For fatter pieces - at 140 ° C. So the meat is cooked from 2 to 6 hours, depending on the size and quality. The temperature can be reduced to 60-70 ° C, but the time increases to 10-12 hours. High temperature - 180-240 ° C - is needed for a short time to get a delicious crust on the meat.
Processing and cutting

Before baking, large pieces of meat do not need to remove any fat or films from the surface. You can even leave the skin. All of them will serve to protect meat juices and flavors from evaporation - this is a natural meat "package". With prolonged baking, they will have time to soften enough, and pork skin, fried under the grill at the last stage of cooking until crisp, becomes a real delicacy. If you want to stuff meat, make cuts only from above, but almost all the way down (1).
If you need to cut the meat into smaller pieces for baking, follow the natural "cutting" - the meat has tendons and films running along the fibers. By separating the meat into pieces, the pieces will not fall apart further, and this "covering" can also be left as a protection (2).
If you want to get portioned beautiful pieces, then, of course, the meat will need to be cut across the fibers. The thickness of the pieces is at least 2 cm so that the meat does not become dry (3). Cutting the meat finely for long roasting does not make sense.

Spices and marinades
Here, too, there is general principle: the fatter the meat, the more aromatic spices it requires. These are, first of all, coriander, star anise, allspice, paprika, nutmeg, cardamom. To make such meat better absorbed by our body, you can add fennel seeds. Spicy vegetables and herbs will not interfere: garlic, ginger, thyme, rosemary, oregano. However, they are also great for lean meat, along with more delicate spices: black and pink pepper, zira, sumac, turmeric. Fatty meats love dry marinades, where spices and ground herbs are mixed and rubbed into the surface of the meat from all sides.
Lean meats are best marinated in different types unrefined oils: olive, peanut, sesame, oils walnut, adding soy sauce or salt. Adding onion to the marinade gives a taste of onion in the finished meat, like in a classic Soviet barbecue - not everyone likes it. But if you like it, then chopped onions with salt and pepper are a self-sufficient option, you can add nothing else to it. And after the meat is marinated, the onion can be fried and served with the meat.
You need to remember:
The larger the piece of meat and the fatter, the longer it is marinated - from 2 to 24 hours.
Pickling with an "acidic" component should be quick: 30 minutes. – 1 hour
If you don't have much time to marinate, cover the marinated container with cling film and leave at room temperature for 2 hours - this is enough.
Store fermented milk marinade in the refrigerator from the very beginning, you can keep meat in it for quite a long time - up to a day.
Marinades containing acid (vinegar, wine, lemon juice, tomato paste) are quite aggressive, quickly softening - and subsequently destroying - the top layer of meat without reaching the core. Do not add acid for tenderness - good meat does not require it, put only a little bit for taste and aroma.
Other types of marinades - in yogurt or kefir, in teriyaki or oyster sauce - are best for poultry and fatty cuts of pork. You can add an "Asian set" to them: ginger, garlic, chili, curry powder or paste, cilantro and green onions.

How to cook meat sous vide without a sous vide machine

Sous vide cooking devices have become more affordable, although they continue to be quite expensive. But you can do without them! If you want to try steaming meat in a bag at low temperature, you will need a slow cooker that can keep a precisely set heating level, and ziplock bags with a lock. The principle is very simple.
1 Put the product in the bag, add herbs, salt, spices, oil, vegetables, wine.
2 Immerse the bag in a container of water so that the water reaches exactly to the edges of the bag and displaces the air without pouring inside. Close the clasp carefully.
3 Heat water in a slow cooker to the desired temperature (usually 65-70 ° C) and lower the bag there. If it floats, put a plate on it: the bag should be completely submerged in water. Close the lid, set the time (from 4 to 12 hours) and press the "start" button. The cooked product is soft and tender, but looks cooked. For a browned crust, quickly fry it in a pan over high heat on all sides.

Cooking meat and poultry at low temperature on the stove

For languishing on the stove, you can use the toughest and densest pieces of meat, that is, the working muscles of the animal. It is best to simmer the following beef cuts on the stove: front and back shank, brisket ribs, outer part of the back cut. Pork: knuckle, ham, legs, boneless brisket. Chicken: breast, thighs, whole poultry, cut into portions.
In order for the toughest pieces to soften, and collagen to turn into gelatin, it is required long-term temperature maintenance 60-80 °С. How to achieve temperature accuracy? The easiest way is in a slow cooker (1) - this is described in detail in the chapter “How to cook sous vide meat without a sous vide machine”. The second simple option is on an induction cooker (2): at the minimum thermostat settings, exactly this temperature is reached, although it is better to check with a thermometer. And, finally, on other stoves (conventional electric, glass-ceramic or gas). Here you need a thermometer (3), which from time to time will have to be lowered into the sauce to see if the temperature has risen too high. To reduce the heating level, use the divider (4) for the gas stove. And on the electric burner, you can put a ring (5) folded from tightly twisted foil - and already put dishes with meat on it.
The utensils for languishing must necessarily be capacious enough and have a thick bottom (made of several layers of metal, double or triple) and better thick walls. It can be stainless steel (6) or coated cast iron (7). Cast iron (ducklings and goslings) is an ideal cookware for languishing both on the stove and in the oven: heat is distributed as evenly as possible in it.
If you do not have the opportunity to wait for hours for your dish to be cooked, you can always replace this laborious process with tender and soft ready-made stewed meat from Miratorg - it languished in natural marinades and sauces right in the package at 95 ° C for more than two hours.

Processing and cutting


Most often, meat and poultry are cut into portions or very small pieces for languishing on the stove. It is possible to simmer as a whole, but the product must be completely covered with liquid (1) or the pan must have a lid that fits without gaps - so that the resulting steam remains inside
and did not allow the protruding piece of meat to become dry. Otherwise, the processing of meat for languishing is the same as for baking (2).
If the meat has a layer of fat on it, put the piece fat side up while simmering so that it gradually melts and enriches the meat with its taste (3).
Processed meat can be immediately fried until golden brown and then immersed in liquid, or vice versa - first simmer, and fry, clearing the sauce when it is completely ready. Both options have the right to exist, but the taste is different - try and decide which one you like.
Sauces for languishing
In order for the meat to be better saturated with flavors during languishing, ingredients with the appropriate qualities must be added to the cooking liquid. The most versatile sauce base is stock. Moreover, it is not necessary to take chicken for chicken, and beef for meat. The use of a "different" broth enriches the taste of the stewed meat. You can add not salt to the broth, but its substitutes - soy or Asian fish sauce.
An excellent element of sauce when languishing is chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned in their own juice. You can also use ready-made tomato sauce with a minimum addition of vinegar or a small amount tomato paste. In the same small quantities, dry wine, lemon juice or other sour fruits can be added.
Unlike high heat frying, you can use unrefined oils when simmering. Since the temperature in the pan is low, you can choose any oil you like to taste - even sunflower or sesame oil, which burn on medium heat. Olive, mustard, walnut and flaxseed oils are also suitable.
Fresh herbs can be added in the middle of cooking and at the very end, while dried herbs can be added only at the beginning. Whole, unground spices are more suitable for long-term languishing: coriander, cinnamon, cumin, star anise, barberry, peppercorns, cardamom, mustard seeds ... Spices can be placed in a cloth bag so that you do not need to strain the sauce later. Bay leaf it is better not to keep it in the sauce for more than 15 minutes - it starts to smell unpleasant and bitter. Try not to combine rosemary with bay leaf and / or juniper - you will not feel the taste of meat behind them. If the vegetables in the sauce are boiled, beat the sauce with a blender - this will make the dish look much more attractive.

Modern ovens have made roasting the most reliable way to cook guaranteed tasty dish with a minimum of hassle. Just put the fish, vegetables or meat in a preheated oven, "forgot" about it for a period of 10 minutes to several hours - and voila, you have a full dinner ready without additional gestures.

If you randomly open any recipe that involves baking in the oven, it will most likely show a temperature in the range of 180 to 220 degrees, or even higher. This method has both pluses and several minuses.

Pros and cons of baking in the oven

home distinguishing feature oven baking (let's call it traditional) - the temperature used, which significantly exceeds the temperature of the readiness of the product, which we strive for.

Read also:

It doesn't matter if you want a juicy Medium Rare roast beef (ready temperature - 55 degrees) or, out of harm's way, prefer to roast the meat completely (ready temperature - 70 degrees): both results are equally far from the range of 180- 220 degrees. Figuratively speaking, we use a hydraulic press to hammer in a small nail. Why is this happening?

Baking at a high temperature has several advantages, the main of which are:

• Time. The link between the heat source and the food placed in the oven is air, and as you know (or don't know) from school course physics, air has an extremely low thermal conductivity and low heat capacity. This means that it slowly heats up itself and slowly heats up what it comes in contact with. That is why we can steam in a bath at a temperature of about 100 degrees, and the roast beef that is taken out of the oven remains juicy and pink on the cut. However, it also means that we need to set the temperature well above the desired doneness temperature, otherwise we will have to wait for ages.
• Convenience. What does a good, appetizing roast beef look like, since I took it as an example? Yes, inside it is juicy and pink - but its surface should be ruddy, fried, appetizing. This roasting is a direct consequence of the Maillard reaction, during which, when a temperature of 120 degrees and above is reached, caramelization of sugars occurs. By roasting meat at a high temperature, we create the right conditions for this reaction, which eliminates the need for additional frying: everything happens right in the oven, without any extra effort on your part.

But the disadvantages of traditional baking are also too significant to turn a blind eye to them:

• Supervision. The word “forgot” in the first paragraph of this article I put in quotation marks for a reason: you won’t be able to forget about chicken or fish baked in the oven. Otherwise, missing for some half an hour, you risk getting an inedible dish, or even a full pan of coals. What is most offensive, this process is irreversible, minced meat, as it was sung in the old song, cannot be turned back.

• Evaporation. Cooking above 100 degrees has another consequence, and you know exactly what I'm talking about even if you didn't have an A in physics. At this temperature, the water evaporates, and if we are talking about the water that is contained in the product itself, it will become drier as a result. It is very easy to overdry a piece of meat or fish, ducklings and molds with a lid help - but exactly what helps, and does not completely remove the problem.
• temperature difference. It still exists, and the heat capacity with thermal conductivity does not cancel this fact. While we use a meat thermometer to measure the temperature in the central part of our roast beef, its outer layers are exposed to much more extreme heat and dry rapidly. In a well-cooked roast beef, this layer of overdried meat will be thin and will not prevent us from eating our piece with pleasure, but if we miss a little - and that's it, put out the light.

All these disadvantages can be combined into one - "If you do not look after what is cooked in the oven, you can spoil the food" - and, of course, the advantages of traditional baking outweigh it in most cases. But there is also an opportunity to go the other way - to reduce the temperature and increase the cooking time. This principle follows several cooking methods at once.

Low temperature cooking

Low-temperature cooking in all its diversity usually operates with temperatures ranging from 50 (lower - no longer baking, but light heating) to 100 degrees, that is, not higher than the boiling point (and, which is much more important for us, active evaporation) water. You probably know the main types of low-temperature baking:

Boiling and stewing

Cooking foods in a liquid allows you not to worry too much about their drying out: for this, the liquid in which you boil or stew must first dry out or, more precisely, evaporate, and this is much easier to track than measuring the moisture content in a piece of meat.

Cooking in a water bath

Products (usually liquid or at least viscous) are transferred to a container, which is placed in another container filled with water. You don’t have to worry about overheating - the water that surrounds the food container on all sides will not allow them to heat up above 100 degrees until it evaporates completely. This is how desserts and pâtés are prepared, and read.

Steam cooking

sous vide

Products are packed in plastic bag, immersed in water, the temperature of which is controlled to within fractions of a degree, and cooked in this way for several hours, or even days. As a result, the dish gets even roasting throughout its thickness, retains its taste and remains incredibly juicy. Of course, the sous-vide method cannot be described in a nutshell, so I recommend that you refer to my article for details.

Low temperature baking

Since I did not write a separate article about low-temperature baking, unlike other methods of low-temperature heat treatment, let's dwell on it in a little more detail. Low-temperature baking is still the same baking in the oven as we know it, but at a significantly lower temperature, in the same range of 50-100 degrees. You might get the impression that this method was invented recently, when chefs began to move away from decades-old recipes and not be afraid to experiment, but in fact, low-temperature baking has a long tradition.

In the old days, when all food was cooked in one oven, it was thoroughly melted, and then, as it cooled, it was used to cook different dishes. At first, under the red-hot vaults, baked things that required a high temperature, but cooked quickly enough - bread, cakes, and so on. Then came the turn of soups and dishes, which were cooked at a temperature slightly lower, but still quite high. And at the very end, when the oven was no longer so hot, hard pieces of meat were sent into it, which languished for many hours at a low temperature, softening and gaining flavor.

Today, low-temperature roasting is used for approximately the same purposes: slow roasting at low temperatures helps soften hard cuts, turn connective tissue into gelatin, and low temperatures help such meat retain more juices, because it is not rich in them.

However, low-temperature baking also has its drawbacks - for example, the meat dries out anyway, because the evaporation of moisture somehow occurs naturally. In order to slow down this process, the meat can be placed in a mold with some water added (or not added, depending on how juicy the meat we are cooking is) and covered with foil. Another disadvantage is that meat cooked in this way is completely devoid of a crust. For this reason, it is usually brought to a higher temperature or fried, either at the very beginning or at the end, before serving. However, for those to whom fried is contraindicated, this disadvantage may well become a virtue, giving the opportunity to try delicious meat baked in the oven.

Recipes for baking at low temperatures

In principle, you can bake any piece of meat in this way - just reduce the temperature and increase the cooking time. Vegetables and fish can also be baked at a low temperature, but this makes no sense, they will not benefit much from this approach. To give you an idea of ​​the method, here are some ready-made recipes. Some of them use a temperature slightly higher than 100 degrees, so technically they are not low-temperature baking, but something in between, but they can also be cooked using this method.

This roast beef is so easy to make and so hard to mess up. I highly recommend this roast beef cooking technique for young housewives who are not experienced in working with meat. Due to the low roasting temperature, the meat is very juicy. After all, it is the temperature regime that has the most great importance, since under the influence of high temperature, the muscle (meat) contracts and becomes stiffer, pushes water out of the cells, and accordingly it becomes drier, and the higher this temperature, the harder and drier your meat. And with such, one might say, caring roasting, at a not so aggressive temperature, albeit for several hours, the meat remains fabulously juicy!

Before baking, we fry the meat in a hot pan to give a crust and a pleasant aroma of baked meat to our roast, since in the oven, at a relatively low temperature, neither a golden crust nor the aroma of baked meat will form on its own. That's why we fry.

Just do not believe any myths that by frying meat, you keep meat juices inside, that during frying meat, as it were, forms a crust through which the juices do not flow out. The fact that the meat in the pan continues to sizzle even after such frying is the best proof of what nonsense this is. That hiss is nothing more than meat juices continuing to slowly flow out in contact with hot fat.

6-8 servings

Ingredients

• 1 whole piece of beef (1.4-1.8 kg), rump, back, etc.
• Salt to taste
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp granulated garlic
• 6 tbsp vegetable oil

1) Wash the meat and pat dry with paper towels. Grate with salt, pepper, paprika, garlic and 2 tbsp. vegetable oil.

If you wish, tie the meat with kitchen string to help it hold its shape better. (See below for how to do this)

2) Over medium heat, heat a large frying pan (preferably stainless steel or cast iron), add the rest of the vegetable oil and put the meat in the pan. Fry for 4 minutes on each side. Do not touch the meat, just turn every 4 minutes!! A nice crust should form.

3) Preheat the oven to 120˚ C.

4) Transfer the meat to a wire rack inserted into a heat-resistant dish.

If there is none, then place the meat directly on the bottom of the heat-resistant dish. Insert the meat and bake, turning occasionally, 3-4 hours, until the temperature inside the meat rises to 60Cᵒ, if using a thermometer, for a medium stage of readiness (pink inside), or 70ᵒC, for a full readiness, according to world standards, overcooked meat (well done).

5) Take the meat out of the oven.

Despite the fact that the preparation of products by the sous-vide method has been known for a long time, a real boom in “vacuum” cooking in our country began quite recently, which could not but cause a response from manufacturers: today there are a lot of sous-vides themselves, and related products (for example, household vacuum cleaners).

In our opinion, the main advantage of sous vide is that this method is ideal for non-professional cooks. Cooking food in a vacuum bag at a strictly set temperature does not require much experience or special knowledge. A dish prepared in this way is almost impossible to spoil, and the duration of cooking, which at first frightens inexperienced cooks, in practice saves rather than wastes the cook's time: after the bag of food has gone into a pot of water, it practically does not require attention. This cannot be said about other cooking methods, where a dish left unattended tends to burn, run away or boil away.

In this guide, we decided to collect and systematize the knowledge we gained during testing domestic sous-vides. Also (despite the fact that this is somewhat beyond the scope of the designated topic), we decided to talk a little about temperature conditions and how to prepare food in the safest way.

sous vide principle

We will start, as usual, from the very basics and give a definition of what sous-vide is and why it is needed. The article from Wikipedia does a good job of this, telling us the following:

Vacuum cooking (also sous-vide, from French sous-vide, "under vacuum") is a cooking method in which meat or vegetables are placed in an evacuated plastic bag and cooked slowly at a relatively low and precisely controlled temperature, usually in a water bath.

What are the characteristics of sous vide cooking? First, it is achieving exactly the degree of preparation of the product that you need. The result will be guaranteed juicy and tender meat that has not lost any juices or taste during the cooking process. With the help of sous-vide, you can forget about overheated gray steaks, tough chicken breasts and other culinary “masterpieces” that are familiar to us.

The result will be stable and of high quality.

beef sous-vide, lightly fried in a pan before serving for a nice crust

Secondly, sous-vide allows you to “soften” and make “edible” even those foods that are usually good for food only after a long stew. Get a good quality steak from a rather tough meat? As easy as pie! True, you will have to wait from 12 to 24 hours.

Finally, sous vide allows you to cook familiar foods in an unusual way. Take, for example, an ordinary chicken egg, which can be of a very different consistency - not only hard-boiled, soft-boiled and in a bag, but also, for example, with a formed creamy yolk, but liquid kefir-like protein. To achieve such a result with a conventional bucket will not work.

With sous vide you can:

• preserve during the cooking process the natural juices of the product, which are lost during cooking or frying
• forget that the products may turn out to be too dry or overcooked
• don't worry about the meat being raw inside: in sous vide it will be cooked evenly throughout the depth
• prepare a tender and tasty dish even from hard meat cuts
• quickly and easily cook vegetables that (unlike those cooked in a pan) will retain their shape and structure
• easily store the finished product in the refrigerator or freezer for later use - right in the vacuum bag

Sous vide for the home: different types

Of all household appliances, several types of devices are suitable for sous-vide cooking. Among them are multicookers with a temperature control function, induction cookers with a built-in temperature probe, as well as special devices (actually sous-vides) - submersible or stationary.

For sous-vide cooking, it is far from necessary to buy a special gadget. If the house has a multicooker with a temperature control function, then you can be congratulated: you already have the simplest sous-vide. Of course, this raises the question of how accurately a slow cooker can control the temperature. For example, many models allow you to change the temperature only in increments of 5 degrees. But even with the help of such a device, it is quite possible to get acquainted with what sous vide is and how it generally works. True, you will have to choose the right recipe, but with cooking chicken breasts at 65 °C, the multicooker will do just fine - not even the most complex one, such as .

The second suitable appliance is an induction hob with a temperature control function. We are primarily interested in models with a remote probe thermometer. Such tiles quite successfully fulfill the role of sous-vide (this is even directly indicated in the documentation). The only thing that will be required from the user is not to place the bags of food too tightly in the pan to ensure uniform circulation of water.

Sous-view for home: submersible and stationary models

All sous-vides (both domestic and professional) can be divided into two main types: submersible and stationary. The first visually resemble an “advanced” boiler with a temperature sensor and a motor for water circulation - they will require a special container (pot) with water. The second is an "aquarium" with a built-in heater. The advantages and disadvantages of each type are obvious: submersible sous vide takes up less space and is suitable for working with a wide variety of containers.

But when using such a sous-vide, the problem of evaporation of the liquid from the surface of the water arises, because it will not work to close the pan with a lid. As a result, the water does not heat up as quickly as we would like, with prolonged cooking it has to be topped up, and the energy consumption is increased. The problem is usually solved either by buying special balls floating on the surface, or in an artisanal way - for example, using an Ikea container instead of a pan with a cutout for installing the device.

example of "home creativity" with a container from Ikea

250 balloons will cost about $25 (excluding delivery charges)

Stationary sous-view, unlike submersible, is devoid of these shortcomings. But by purchasing such a device, you will be strictly tied to the available volume. And it is also better to think over the issue of storing a rather voluminous “box” in advance - it is far from a fact that there is a permanent place for it in the kitchen.

Thus, when choosing a sous-vide, you must first decide on two main questions: how often is it supposed to use the device and how large volumes of the product are supposed to be cooked.

For submersible sous vide, the power and volume with which it will be comfortable to work are usually indicated: for example, the Steba SV 50 household submersible sous vide has a power of 800 W and can heat 20 liters of water in 45 minutes to 56 ° C.

For stationary sous-vides, power is also indicated, but the decisive factor here will be the volume of the chamber. In most household stationary sous-vides, it does not exceed 12-13 liters.

We add that for submersible sous-vides, such a parameter is often indicated as the performance of the pump, which ensures continuous circulation of water in the tank. For most models, this value will be approximately equal to 8 liters per minute. It is difficult to derive practical benefit from this knowledge, so it is better to focus on the volume recommended by the manufacturer: it will usually be from 14 to 20 liters.

We sum up the intermediate result. Submersible sous vide take up less space and can be used with any suitable utensil. However, you will have to make sure that the dishes are sufficiently insulated and that the water does not evaporate too quickly. Stationary sous-vides have solved these issues for you: they provide both thermal insulation and a special cover that prevents evaporation. Also, stationary sous-vides have special grills that allow you to more rationally place products (for example, steaks) inside the chamber. The payoff for this convenience will be a strictly fixed volume of the camera and the need to find a place to store a rather large device.

Returning to multicookers: obviously, a multicooker with the ability to set the temperature to within a degree is a kind of impromptu stationary sous-vide. What are the disadvantages of this improvisation? The main ones are two:

1. Stationary sous vide is equipped with a pump that continuously mixes the water, making its temperature as uniform as possible at any point. Multicookers do not have a built-in pump, so more or less heated areas may appear in the bowl with water.
2. A slow cooker is a very small stationary sous vide. Most even household stationary sous-vides have a capacity of 8 liters or more, and the bowl of an average multicooker is 4-5 liters.

grill for several steaks at a stationary sous-vide

Operating range and temperature control accuracy

For each device, the documentation indicates the operating range and accuracy of temperature control. The working range for homemade sous vide is from 30 to 90°C, which is quite enough for cooking the vast majority of dishes (we didn’t even remember a single product that would require more than 90°C).

Most homemade sous vides allow you to set the temperature to within 1 °C or even 0.1°C. Our experience has shown that an accuracy of 1 °C is more than enough for most dishes. But the declared accuracy of 0.1 ° C often turns out to be a trick of marketers - not every device is able to provide such accuracy in reality, especially considering that food bags can interfere with uniform mixing of water. In general, we would not refuse to purchase a suitable device just because the documentation indicates an accuracy of 0.5 or 1 °C, and not 0.1 °C. Moreover, errors of 1 °C usually appear at high temperatures (above 70 °C), and there such a difference no longer has any great significance.

Management and related features

Household sous vides are controlled with electronic system control, consisting of several buttons and an LED display. In submersible sous vide, you can often find a wheel (like a computer mouse), with which you can quickly and easily set the desired temperature or time. Almost all devices have the ability to give an audible signal indicating the end of the cooking process.

Many sous-vides only allow you to set the desired temperature and cooking time, and the countdown begins when the set temperature is reached. At the end of the work, an audible signal sounds. Such functionality can also be found in professional restaurant sous-vides, so a certain “minimalism” in this case is not a drawback at all, but a feature of the device.

Some sous vide also has the ability to set a delay start timer. This feature can be useful if you want to have a dish ready by a certain hour. In our opinion, this functionality is somewhat redundant: put food in water for several hours room temperature- Not best idea in terms of food safety. However, on English-language forums, you can meet people who are not stopped by this problem: some users put food in the container with ice in the morning and set a start delay to get a ready steak by the time they return from work.

Finally, it is necessary to mention the possibility of remote control. Some sous-vides (particularly the Anova-branded devices are famous for this) have built-in Bluetooth or Bluetooth + Wi-Fi modules. To communicate with the device, a special application for Android or iOS is used. Thus, the user gets full control over the device from his smartphone. Here you can find the temperature control function, and the ability to remotely start / stop the cooking process, and other features. The application also contains a collection of recipes that allow you to start cooking the selected dish "in one click" - the device will automatically set the desired temperature and cooking time depending on the selected recipe.

Anova mobile app allows you to control sous vide remotely

Operation and care

Household sous-vides do not require any special care: during normal operation, the parts of the device come into contact only with clean water, and therefore, to care for the device, it will be enough just to wipe it with a sponge and a mild detergent. But if the package depressurizes and the contents fall into the water, then the consequences can be very different. A submersible sous-vide will survive such an incident more easily: it will have to remove the case and thoroughly rinse everything under it (heating element, temperature sensor, rotating screw that circulates water). With a stationary sous vide, more serious difficulties can arise: if the water circulation is provided by a pump, then it will be necessary to rinse not only the cooking container, but also the entire system involved in the circulation of water.

What to cook at what temperature?

On the Internet, you can find a lot of guides and tables that clearly explain what products, how long and at what temperature you need to cook.

If we are not talking about long cooking, the purpose of which is to “soften” tough meat, then the time is calculated based on the thickness of our product (it must have time to warm up evenly to the full depth). The temperature is chosen based on the desired degree of "cooking" (or "roasting", as you like).

The general principle is that thicker pieces take longer to cook than thinner ones. Higher temperatures shorten the cooking time. Lower ones may take longer.

Below we provide data collected from several trustworthy sources. Under the "minimum time" in this case, you need to understand the time after which a standard portion of the product should be ready. Under the "maximum time" - the time after which it is no longer advisable to keep the product in sous vide - it has probably already been cooked.

Time, of course, begins to report not from turning on the device, but from the moment the water is heated to the set temperature.

Note that various sources may offer different modes for the same products. There is no danger here, no one is trying to deceive you. This is caused, as a rule, by the difference in the definition of various degrees of roasting (which for one Medium, the other will call Medium-well) or the desire to “play it safe” and prevent the appearance of undercooked meat in the center of a large piece. In principle, we can recommend the same to our readers: if you prefer more fried meat, do not be afraid to focus on the upper recommended limit both in temperature and in time. Subsequently, you can try to cook the same dish at lower temperatures and fix the result that best suits your taste.

But the comments of users who argue that the meat turned out to be “raw” or that there should be a lot of bacteria in such meat should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. There are still quite a few such alarmists, but few of them can back up their words with references to relevant studies or standards.

type of product	The degree of "boiling"	Temperature, °C	Time (minimum)	Time (maximum)
Chicken (light meat)	exceptionally tender meat	60	1 hour	3 hours
	soft and tender meat	65	1 hour	3 hours
	well done	75	1 hour	3 hours
Chicken (dark meat)	tender and juicy meat	65	1 hour	5 o'clock
	meat easily peels off the bone	75	1 hour	5 o'clock
Beef (steak)	Medium Rare	54	1 hour 30 minutes	3 hours
	Medium	60	1 hour 30 minutes	3 hours
	Medium Well	63	1 hour 30 minutes	3 hours
Beef (roast beef)	Rare	56	7 o'clock	16 hours
	Medium Rare	60	6 hours	14 hours
	well done	70	5 o'clock	11 o'clock
hard cut	Rare	55	24 hours	48 hours
	Medium Rare	65	24 hours	24 hours
	well done	85	8 ocloc'k	16 hours
Pork (chops with bone)	Rare	58	1 hour	4 hours
	Medium Rare	62	1 hour	4 hours
	well done	70	1 hour	4 hours
Pork (loin)	Rare	58	3 hours	5 hours 30 minutes
	Medium Rare	62	3 hours	5 o'clock
	well done	70	3 hours	3 hours 30 minutes
hard cut	Rare	60	8 ocloc'k	24 hours
	Medium Rare	68	8 ocloc'k	24 hours
	well done	85	8 ocloc'k	16 hours
Fish	tender translucent meat	40-43	30 minutes	30 minutes
	tender crumbly meat	51	30 minutes	1 hour
	traditional Well Done	55	30 minutes	1 hour 30 minutes
Eggs	soft yolk, barely set protein	60	1 hour	1 hour
	creamy yolk, opaque tender protein	63	45 minutes	1 hour 5 minutes
sausages	very juicy and soft	60	45 minutes	4 hours
	juicy and soft	66	45 minutes	4 hours
	traditional, elastic	71	45 minutes	4 hours
Hamburger (patties)	Very Rare/Rare	46-51	40 minutes	2 hours 30 minutes
	Medium Rare	51-54	40 minutes	2 hours 30 minutes
	Medium	54-58	40 minutes	4 hours
	Medium Well	59-62	40 minutes	4 hours
	well done	63-68	40 minutes	4 hours
Green vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, etc.)		84	15 minutes	40 minutes
Root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc.)		84	1 hour	3 hours
Fruits	warm warm	68	1 hour 45 minutes	2 hours 30 minutes
	cooked until soft (for puree)	85	30 minutes	1 hour 30 minutes

However, in many cases it will be better to see once than to hear a hundred times. Many sous vide fans have done their own research and recorded the results of cooking different foods at different temperatures.

Here is a mini steak guide by Stefan's gourmet blog.

And this is how the structure of meat changes depending on the cooking time (photo -).

Interesting experiments can be done with the usual chicken egg by cooking it at different temperatures.

It's quite easy to deal with:

Is it really safe?

In the comments to articles concerning cooking at low temperatures, fighters against "raw" and "unsafe" meat inevitably appear, trying to intimidate other participants in the discussion. There are stories about various bacteria, salmonella and even worms that live in the brain.

Is it necessary to be afraid of bacteria during low-temperature cooking? Our answer: no, if you follow the basic safety rules. The latter include the rapid cooling of products that are intended for long-term storage (for example, in water with a lot of ice).

As for the development of bacteria directly in the cooking process, all sorts of tables and guidelines have long been drawn up on this subject, demonstrating at what stage the products become pasteurized (i.e., all bacteria in them are destroyed).

Especially for the doubters, we provide data on the pasteurization time for various products. Source - Office for Sanitary Supervision of Quality food products and medicines in the United States.

poultry pasteurization time:
(at initial temperature 5 °C and water temperature 57-65 °C)

Thickness of a piece of meat	57 °C	58 °C	59 °C	60 °C	61 °C	62 °C	63 °C	64 °C	65 °C
10 mm	2¼ hours	1¾ hours	1¼ hours	55 minutes	40 minutes	35 minutes	30 minutes	25 minutes	20 minutes
20 mm	2¾ hours	2 hours	1¾ hours	1¼ hours	1¼ hours	55 minutes	50 minutes	45 minutes	40 minutes
30 mm	3¼ hours	2¾ hours	2¼ hours	2 hours	1¾ hours	1½ hours	1½ hours	1¼ hours	1¼ hours
40 mm	4 hours	3¼ hours	2¾ hours	2½ hours	2¼ hours	2 hours	2 hours	1¾ hours	1¾ hours
50 mm	4¾ hours	4¼ hours	3¾ hours	3¼ hours	3 hours	2¾ hours	2½ hours	2½ hours	2¼ hours
60 mm	5¾ hours	5 hours	4½ hours	4¼ hours	3¾ hours	3½ hours	3¼ hours	3¼ hours	3 hours
70 mm	7 hours	6 hours	5½ hours	5 hours	4¾ hours	4½ hours	4¼ hours	4 hours	3¾ hours

Meat pasteurization time (beef, pork, lamb):
(at initial temperature 5 °C and water temperature 55-66 °C)

Thickness of a piece of meat	55 °C	58 °C	60 °C	66 °C
5 mm	2 hours	45 minutes	30 minutes	14 minutes
10 mm	2 hours	55 minutes	40 minutes	25 minutes
15 mm	2¼ hours	1¼ hours	55 minutes	35 minutes
20 mm	2½ hours	1½ hours	1¼ hours	45 minutes
25 mm	2¾ hours	1¾ hours	1½ hours	55 minutes
30 mm	3 hours	2 hours	1½ hours	1¼ hours
35 mm	3¼ hours	2 hours	1¾ hours	1¼ hours
40 mm	3½ hours	2¼ hours	2 hours	1½ hours
45 mm	4 hours	2¾ hours	2¼ hours	1¾ hours
50 mm	4½ hours	3 hours	2½ hours	2 hours
55 mm	5 hours	3½ hours	3 hours	2¼ hours
60 mm	5¼ hours	3¾ hours	3¼ hours	2¾ hours
65 mm	6 hours	4¼ hours	3¾ hours	3 hours
70 mm	6½ hours	4¾ hours	4 hours	3¼ hours

For those who are interested in the details, we recommend that you refer to the book, in which you can find many recipes, tables and recommendations for all occasions. We, in turn, believe that the issue of the safety of cooking meat in sous vide can be considered closed.

Sous vide is easy, delicious and safe.

I have made this pork before, but, as often happens, I did not write down the recipe. It seemed that everything was so simple that there was no need to write it down, but no, a couple of years passed, and the subtleties were forgotten. I only remembered that it turned out divinely tender and fragrant roast from the cheapest part of the pig.

Addendum: Today I served this pork for breakfast as a cold cut for a sandwich. It is difficult to say how tastier it is, but even when cold, the meat retains the same tenderness and richness of taste with a bright note of fried pork:

I had to re-examine the Internet and my cookbooks. My Recipe Sourced From Numerous Variations Slow Roasts And carnitas , but none of them suited me as they are, so I had to display my arithmetic mean recipe again.

But this time, being already a scientist, I will document this recipe right here.

I used one of the cheapest pieces of pork for him - like this:

http :// www. clean food connection. com/ catalog/ images/ pork%20 shoulder%20 roast%20 boneless. jpg

It is called by us Boneless Shoulder Roast . My piece weighed a little more than 2.5 kg. First, I salted it well with kosher salt and peppered it. Then I thought and under the influence of recipes carnitas I added a glass of fresh orange juice. I thought about it and decided that I would like some piquancy, and maybe even a slightly smoked taste, and added a little Sweet Mesquite Seasoning :

http://www.vitasprings.com/kirkland-sweet-mesquite-seasoning.html

Indeed, these additives fit perfectly into the taste of the finished meat, but the taste of pork itself with this cooking method is already so good that one could stop with salt and pepper, as I did last time. Although, however, orange juice was still in place.

And so, put the pork smeared with spices in a large plastic bag or bowl and refrigerate for 1-3 days. It just so happened that I kept exactly half - a day and a half. I wanted to pamper my husband, who returned from Estonia today, so this was exactly what the time for marinating meat dictated.

Remove the marinated meat from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. It takes 1 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the piece. While the meat is heating up, it makes sense to tie it with twine for a neat look.

Heat the oven to 300 gr. Fahrenheit (~ 150 gr. C). Put the prepared meat on a baking sheet lined with foil (easier to wash and collect meat juice) with the fatter side up and put in a heated oven on a wire rack set to the middle position.

And this, in fact, is all. Then you can forget about meat for 5 hours. If the piece is smaller than I had, then 4-4.5 hours may be enough. I, having checked the meat after 5 hours, decided to add another half an hour. The task was to get absolutely soft, almost flaky meat. That is, the meat is ready when a large meat fork enters it very easily.

There are many more options. You can just serve it immediately hot, pouring juice over it, with a side dish (I served it with fried cabbage, but this is by no means the only option). You can cool, cut into medium-sized cubes, fry in a pan until golden brown and serve with tortillas, salsa and guacamole ( carnitas ). Can be cut into pieces, chopped with a fork into fibers ( Shredded Pork ) and eaten on a BBQ sandwich. And you can use it as a cold cut for sandwiches.

By the way, since the cooking process, although simple, is long enough, it makes sense to cook a large piece at once. If this is too much for your family, then half can be frozen without any loss of taste.

Yes, and one more thing - the juice and fat that leaked out during frying should definitely be used to stew potatoes, it turns out amazingly tasty.
Here are the photos, as always:
Pork, salted and peppered:

This is how pork looks like, marinated in the refrigerator for almost two days and prepared for baking:

And here it is ready, ruddy and lying in its juice and fat:

Served with fried cabbage and freshly baked rye bread:

And here is the bread itself, but I’ll somehow make a separate post about it when I manage to film the whole process: