This is a good resource too. It shows how long you have to cook things to pasteurize them. I'm not sure, but it might have some tips about particular cuts. It has been awhile since I've read it front to back.

http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/Baldw...FS-Preprint.pdf

This makes sense. Apparently I'm going to have to come to some sort of internal compromise about doneness. And I'm going to have to stop trusting the David Chang cookbooks, because this is part of what keeps screwing me.

I notice that in the SV kitchen skirt steak recipe, they're still only doing it for an hour (well hour minimum), although at a much higher temp (as you note).

I think I've just got too much 'traditional' meat-cooking background knowledge, coupled with too much theoretical/math-based stuff on the web and too little actual applied information (i.e., recipes or blog posts that have been deemed real successes with basic beef cuts), and it's all colliding in my head in a bad way. I'll try some more cheaper cuts for longer or at higher temp this week. Thanks for the replies as always.

There's all kinds of cool science-y things about cooking. Yolks and whites get firm at different temperatures, but acid lowers the temperature whites get firm at.

Cheap cuts of meat need long, slow cooking to break down collagen (connective tissue).

You can overcook fish and shellfish in your sous vide. They are time sensitive.

Someone here experimented a lot with pork chops and just couldn't get a good result. There's just not enough fat OR connective tissue and they always get overcooked. It's the way our modern pigs are bred... sad, so sad.

The SV Kitchen blog is very good. I like it a lot.

We have an ag department at the local university. One of the classes is meat processing, and most of the classes involve raising livestock. They have a large meat sell every few months where you can get a side of pork, beef, or lamb. The beef is the most tender I've ever had, and the pork is all fatty and marvelous.

You might check to see if you have a local butcher or college with a similar program. Local groups like 4-H will also sometimes sell livestock you can split with other people to get some quality meat at a decent price.

Finally had what I'd call a success--I managed to get a nice slab-style cut of sirloin on sale at grocery store this week (although I all but had to beg them to cut it for me as they really wanted me to buy the more expensive sirloin 'filets'), cut the slab into three steaks, SV for about four hours at 130. Dried, salted, hot pan for 30 seconds a side. Now THIS was the transformative steak experience I'd been hoping for--the really good, layered beefy flavor you can get from sirloin, but with a texture beginning to approach ribeye at the 4 hour mark. SO, who wasn't actually hungry, had a bite of mine, then went and seared himself a piece. We sat there eating making "ohmygod" noises. *Perfect* intersection of flavor and texture.

I think I also got lucky in that it was really just a nice piece of meat, possibly because I'd had to have it custom cut at the store. This does bring up the possibility that a lot of my failures have been due to a sourcing problem in my area (in short, everyone just seems to have crappy beef right now).

I wish! So. CA is really urban. It's very hard to do that sort of thing here. I hadn't thought about the 4-H club though.

Gwynne, so glad to hear of your success. Transformative! Woo hoo!

Why cook sous vide?

Wow... here's an interesting way to do Sous vide lemon curd.

http://modernistcuisine.com/recipes...h-lemon-curd-2/

Looks like they do the yolks separately.

http://nomnompaleo.com/post/1246320...-plastic-safety

This is a very good article about plastic and the environmental aspects of sous vide. There's a link to some silicon bags you can use that are dishwasher safe and reusable!

...

Edited:

Ugh... maybe not so great:

I am one of the authors of the study on EA in plastics that you cited (Environmental Health Perspectives, July 2011, pp 989-996), as well as an avid amateur chef. These two statements from your post are categorically untrue. There are MANY additives to plastics, and especially to the types of polyethylenes used in bags, that have EA, not just plasticizers. There are antioxidants, slip agents, antiblocks, process lubricants, and antistats. Additionally, there are low levels of impurities such as catalyst residues which can have significant biological activity, despite low concentrations.

Silicone is no relief- although silicones can be formulated to be free of leachable endocrine disruptors, most aren't, including most medical grades.

**Unless a manufacturer has developed the product specifically to be free of EA and can provide valid test data to confirm this (not a generic "this passes FDA standards"- FDA allows the use of BPA!), consumers should assume that the plastic is likely leaching endocrine disrupting chemicals.**

Now, how much of a health hazard is estrogen mimics from plastics? That's still debatable and there's a lot of research going on to pin this down. But if you're concerned about the health effects of BPA, switching to a different plastic just means you're swapping one hazard for another. It's a fixable problem, but industry won't fix the problem until consumers demand that they do.

http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/03...llard-reaction/

Perfect soft-boiled eggs.

No really... this time I'm not lying!

http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/03...oft-boiled-egg/

I've noticed that the entry point for sous vide has gotten much, much lower.

Rather than buying a "water oven" you might want to get an immersion circulator and hook it onto a pot of water, a polycarbonate box, or some other device. They start around $199.

Here's a review: http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/12/...miku-anova.html

Also, budget for buying a Food Saver sort of device.

Why do my cheap cuts of meat come out tender but dry? I thought sous vide was supposed to prevent that!

(Might be the salt)
http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_i...-seasoning.html

I just made a very juicy steak tonight by taking on a new strategy: cook it to a lower temperature and then give it a better sear. Tonight I set the water bath to only 52C (125.5F). There was only 0.5-1 teaspoon of juice in the bag after 50 minutes of sous vide. I seared it in a hot cast iron skillet a tiny bit longer than I have been with the higher temp steaks.

This was my best sous vide steak effort yet. I've been doing them around 56.5C - 57.5C and all the juice ends up in the bag.

52C was almost rare, though. I think next time I'll try 53C and see how that goes. Then again, I was very happy with this one. It was a cheap New York strip steak and I seasoned it with s&p before vacuum sealing it.

Look at this chart (scroll down) to see how higher temperatures cause the steak to lose its juice.

What temperature have you been using?

Another factor was that I only left it in the water bath for 50 minutes. I know everyone says it's the same if you leave it in for hours, but that's not my experience. I find that the longer you leave it in, the drier and mushier it gets. I figured this out from cooking fish. I do fish steaks at 63C for 15 minutes only. Leave them in longer and they're mush.

I had a t-bone steak tonight and tried 0.5 C higher -- 52.5C. I think it didn't work as well with the bone because when it's seared the meat next to the bone doesn't get cooked any further while the meat closer to the edge does. There was more juice in the bag than at 52C, partly because of the higher temperature, partly because the steak was larger. I need to try another boneless steak at 52.5C for a better comparison.