Sorry, no picture folks, but I finally found the perfect sous-vide temp/time for chicken thighs. 150F for 1.5 hours. It was Nom Nom Paleo blog that showed me the light. I used boneless skin-on thicken thighs cured overnight like for confit. Actually, it wasn't as much salt as traditional confit. I seasoned them at about 0.8% by weight and added some black pepper, shallots, and fresh sage to the mix. The next day I dried them off, and vacuum sealed with duck fat (about 2 tsp fat per thigh). I cooked them in 150F bath for 1.5 hours. Chilled in ice water and weighed them down with a cast iron skillet in the fridge for a few hours to flatten the skin. Then I poked the skin all over with a paring knife to help the fat render and seared them in cast iron skillet until golden and crispy. The meat was very juicy and skin very crispy.
If you have some sous-vide ingredient/temp/time that you've used successfully, let me know. For chicken thighs I've found everything from 180F for 8 hours to 150F for 1 hour. I wish there were better sous-vide resources available for home cooks than the ubiquitous advice that you can leave things in the bath as long as you want because they won't overcook. I hear Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine at Home is coming out in October. Let's hope it will pull us out of sous-vide dark ages.
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Eye-round roast, wrapped in bacon. 130 degrees for 24 hours, then finished on a blazing fire (bacon stripped off and added to sauce). One of the lowliest cuts on a steer was transformed into fork tender goodness.
Helen - I thought you would enjoy reading this - http://blogs.mathworks.com/seth/2012/02/21/sous-vide-cooking-with-simulink-part-1/ and http://blogs.mathworks.com/seth/2012/02/28/sous-vide-cooking-with-simulink-part-2/
Hi Amy,
Thanks so much for this link. I am glad people are building their own sous-vide machine particularly using Simulink :) I have a sous-vide supreme. It has its benefits, but also many frustrations. I can't believe a better and cheaper sous-vide option hasn't hit the market for home cooks yet.
By the way, are you by any chance Amy from the usability team at the Mathworks?
Cheers,
-Helen
Yep, that's me. :)
We should start a cooking group at the Mathworks. Maybe we can get together for lunch sometimes with other enthusiastic cooks at the Mathworks and exchange geeky cooking ideas.
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