Yeah, 160 is pretty good, but even that doesn't kill all the botulism organisms. I've been reading and the food safety thing is very complicated! Apparently to completely kill botulism you have to heat things to above 212'! And of course, no one does that in the normal course of cooking, but in canning. The issue with sous vide *is* botulism because like in canning, the food is in an airless environment that the organism likes very well. However, if you're going to eat your stuff right away, or freeze it, you should be ok. Freezing doesn't kill most organisms, just slows them down a whole, whole bunch. Optionally you can refrigerate stuff but the temperature is pretty low, like 38' and I don't know if you can rely on a home fridge to be that accurate.

I did the chicken at 160. 130 pasteurizes things and kills stuff like e-coli and salmonella and kills the toxins created by botulism (I think).

The botulism concern seems to be storing it. One thing they do with sous vide is store the cooked product a long time. Like that stuff you eat in a top 5 star restaurant might have been cooked weeks ago and stored in the vacuum sealed bags.

I made my first steak! Oh man, it was awesome and I even screwed it up! I wanted to cook my steak to 131 (medium-rare, and pasteurized) then finish it by searing in a cast iron skillet. Instead, I managed to bungle things and forgot to reset the temperature to 131 and ended up cooking it at 160! Oy! Way over done and a lot of juice came out of it.

However, I went ahead and seared it in butter and it was awesome anyway! The juice I poured into the very hot pan and it sizzled down to a nice reduction sauce.

I never knew an overcooked, cheap steak could taste so good!

Tomorrow I'll do it again and hopefully get the cooking temperature right!

At the moment I'm reheat a custard-y egg I made yesterday in the water bath.

Other than the flavors the nice thing about sous vide is that you can basically prep everything ahead of time and cooking is merely dropping a bag in the device and setting a timer. Then just a quick sear (if needed).

If you freeze you can just reheat in 130 water.

I'll have to look into sous vide veggies.