12 Successful Secrets of Sous Vide Cooking

Ensure Vacuum Bags Stay Submerged in Water

Ensure that your vacuum bags are always fully submerged in the water.

At times, when using an immersion circulator, vacuum bags can float up and down on the water’s surface like a fishing float. This can create air pockets within the bag and cause difficulties in the cooking process. To address this issue, you should add a lightweight item to the corner of the bag before sealing it, but make sure it doesn’t come into contact with the food being cooked.

Pre-Sear Meats Before Vacuum Sealing

Pre-searing certain types of meat before vacuum sealing can be an extra step to enhance the flavor, especially for beef, pork, venison, and other meats when using the sous vide cooking method. This additional preparation step triggers the Maillard reaction (browning reaction) between amino acids and reducing sugars, creating a deep flavor in the meat when slowly cooked in the water bath. However, is this necessary for sous vide cooking?

In reality, no, it is not obligatory, and it depends on personal preference and your ultimate goal. Many restaurants skip this step because it adds to the cooking process and increases food preparation time. Instead, they may choose to slow-cook the meat after seasoning it and only cut the meat after it’s finished cooking. However, if you want to become a culinary expert for your family and guests and make a difference in flavor, pre-searing meat before sous vide cooking can be an intriguing option.

It’s essential to understand that this is not a mandatory step, and you can decide based on the situation and the goals of the dish you want to create.

Prepare Food Before Sous Vide Cooking

Let’s assume that you’ve “pre-seared” the meat and want to lower its temperature below 38°F before proceeding with sous vide cooking. This step is unnecessary if you haven’t pre-seared the meat. To do this, place the piece of meat in a vacuum-sealed bag and immerse it in an ice bath.

During this process, you don’t need to seal the bag tightly; let the bag float on the surface, leaving it open. You need to reduce the temperature of the meat below room temperature, and 20 minutes will suffice. Some may wonder about the importance of this step, and there are concerns that it might pose a food safety issue when meat is left at room temperature for too long. Let me address both of these aspects.

First, there is no food safety issue when meat is left at room temperature for a short period, typically no more than 2 hours. In practice, the preparation, cutting, chilling, and vacuum sealing of “pre-seared” meat typically takes less than 30 minutes. Consider the alternative of cooling meat by boiling it at a low temperature below 212°F under pressure. If you transition from searing in a pan to sous vide cooking at 130°F, you won’t bring the food in the bag to a boil. However, think about how the food may feel if you cook beef for 30 hours or a vegetable dish for 40 minutes at this temperature. While the taste remains good, there may be a change in texture.

A quick tip, before placing the meat in the bag, roll down the top part of the bag about 2 inches. This will keep it away from the meat, seasoning, or fruit juice and not interfere with the sealing process. Use a paper towel to ensure the rolled area is dry and unroll it before sealing.

Bacteria and the Risk of Food Poisoning

Though this isn’t discussed much in sous vide, there’s nothing to worry about if you handle and store food correctly. Most types of meat can be left unrefrigerated for up to two hours without issues. Leaving it for longer can create conditions for bacteria to grow. Vacuum-sealed meat can be submerged in water for several days without risk, but remember to limit it to less than 3 days to ensure safety.

Don’t leave meat in a vacuum-sealed environment for more than three days. While guidelines may allow for longer times, I always adhere to the 72-hour rule. When you take the meat out of the water bath, don’t put it in the refrigerator with the intention of opening the bag after one or two days to use. Botulism is a type of toxin produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, and it doesn’t need air to develop, similar to the environment within a vacuum-sealed bag. If you sous vide a piece of meat for 3 days and then leave it in the refrigerator for an additional 2 days, you create conditions for bacteria growth within 5 days, which poses a risk. Therefore, adhere to the 72-hour rule.