Active Low-Carber Forums
Atkins diet and low carb discussion provided free for information only, not as medical advice.
Home Plans Tips Recipes Tools Stories Studies Products
Active Low-Carber Forums
A sugar-free zone


Welcome to the Active Low-Carber Forums.
Support for Atkins diet, Protein Power, Neanderthin (Paleo Diet), CAD/CALP, Dr. Bernstein Diabetes Solution and any other healthy low-carb diet or plan, all are welcome in our lowcarb community. Forget starvation and fad diets -- join the healthy eating crowd! You may register by clicking here, it's free!

Go Back   Active Low-Carber Forums > Main Low-Carb Diets Forums & Support > Kitchen: Low-Carb Recipes > Kitchen Talk
User Name
Password
FAQ Members Calendar Mark Forums Read Search Gallery My P.L.A.N. Survey


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #166   ^
Old Sun, Nov-01-09, 10:37
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

Read that PDF I linked, it has info about using a burner. Induction burners, not sure. They might have electronic controls in which case the PID won't work. Or it might have the same issue as the hot plate and might overheat the PID.

Remember that the Eades SV equipment doesn't include the foodsaver so that's another $100 or more you have to spend. So we're talking about a $500 investment versus the $270 I spent.

You might also look on eGullet, I think there were people talking about other devices.

But like I said, it might not be perfect for big gatherings right now, but it's great for me 99% of the time.

Here's info from eGullet about induction burner SV: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php...-for-sous-vide/
Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #167   ^
Old Sun, Nov-01-09, 18:33
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

Oh, I 'applied' to egullet and they accepted me, so it might be something to do if you're interested!
Reply With Quote
  #168   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 09:57
edgy edgy is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 151
 
Plan: roughly paleo
Stats: 151/144/128 Female 5'5½"
BF:
Progress: 30%
Default

My two-cents... I'm not comfortable with the idea of sous vide cooking on a paleo diet. Eating paleo isn't just about the ingredients, it's about the preparation as well. We're trying to eat what our bodies are adapted to eat because this is optimal for health. If our cooking methods change the basic nature of the food, it could have unintended consequences.

Part of eating paleo is to not eat processed foods - not just because commercially processed foods have weird ingredients, but because the processing itself changes foods in ways that could not have occurred in the stone age. Is this dangerous? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what we don't know. It also can alter the natural proportions of nutrients in the diet, and this definitely can be dangerous.

A good example is the invention of cold-pressed oils with their high concentrations of omega-6 fatty acids. As an ingredient, safflower oil might be considered "paleo", but in fact it's very bad for health because it causes us to eat much more omega-6s than we would if otherwise. Excess omega-6 increases inflammation and risk for all kinds of disease (heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, etc.), and it was decades before this risk was identified (or we even knew there was such a thing as omega fatty acids). We don't know what we don't know. But if we asked the question: "Would this food be available to a stone-age person?", the answer (no) would send up a red flag, the only warning we had of the danger before nutrition science caught up with technology.

The principle of "no processed food" applies to food you process yourself, as well as commercially processed foods. Vacuum-sealing food - especially with very high pressure - changes the food's cellular structure in ways that could never have occurred in paleo times with stone-age technology. I did a google search and found no evidence that it's harmful, but it's new and we don't know what we don't know. Another possibility is that vacuum sealing under high pressure could encourage us to eat much higher amounts of a particular food than we would naturally, and this (as we've seen with oils) can have dangerous consequences.

So my instinct is to avoid these more exotic technologies for cooking. The old fashioned techniques can produce quite delicious results. There's no need for this, and there is a risk.

(I've read that microwaves change food on the cellular level on ways that are dangerous, but I can't bring myself to give up the microwave - too convenient.)
Reply With Quote
  #169   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 10:13
bike2work bike2work is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,536
 
Plan: Fung-inspired fasting
Stats: 336/000/160 Female 5' 9"
BF:
Progress: 191%
Location: Seattle metro area
Default

Interesting point of view, edgy!

I hadn't heard that about microwaved food.
Reply With Quote
  #170   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 10:14
bike2work bike2work is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,536
 
Plan: Fung-inspired fasting
Stats: 336/000/160 Female 5' 9"
BF:
Progress: 191%
Location: Seattle metro area
Default

Nancy, thanks for all the information and links. It's very helpful.

I didn't know you needed to apply to eGullet! Sheesh, some of these online communities get quite full of themselves.
Reply With Quote
  #171   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 10:18
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

*blink*
Umm... cooking changes food on a cellular level. That's why we cook it. It makes it easier to chew, it refolds the proteins, it destroys bacteria and parasites, it breaks down cell walls in veggies so they're easier to chew and we get more vitamins and minerals out of them. There's nothing un-paleo about cooking since we've been doing it for at least 140k years, maybe much much longer.

Cooking is cooking. You just get different results at different temperatures. Usually people get upset over cooking because the temperatures get too high and it forms HCAs and stuff. But that happens less in SV. In fact, because you have such precise control over temperature you tend to keep it much lower. Mutagens don't form so much at lower temperatures. And because everything is packed in close there's no water or air for vitamins to dissipate into.

You're objecting to the mild vacuum? The Foodsaver is like 24" inches of mercury pressure, Sea Level is 29". I'm not sure how it translate but you can probably get that much pressure from going up in the Rockies at a high altitude. I hope you don't eat any canned food. They're sealed in a vacuum that's probably much better one than you can get in your kitchen with a foodsaver, or sucking the air out with a straw like Allison does. Don't use any jars either, pickles or other things are also contained in vacuum jars. And you'd better avoid eating out since you're almost certainly eating sous vide stuff done with commercial grade vacuum sealers.

If I recall correctly, you like to eat out? Well, sous vide is used extensively in restaurants. In fact, the best restaurants in America using sous vide extensively. In France it's old news, they've been using sous vide cooking for 20 years. In one article I read they described that the restaurant you're paying $30-$100 for your main course, it might have been made 3-4 weeks ago sous vide style and then frozen. It sounds gross but the food stays really pristine when it is kept from oxygen (They have better vacuum sealers than we do). Then before the crowds arrive the food goes back in the water bath to be reheated to serving temperature and quickly finished in a pan. In chain restaurants, like TGI Fridays and Chili's, the kitchen staff nowadays just reassembles all the stuff they get sous vide and frozen.

The vacuum in sous vide especially with home gadgets is pretty mild, it's only purpose really is to keep the food from floating and keep the air from insulating the food so the heat is better distributed. In fact, it doesn't really do a very good job and I generally have to put something on top to submerge my bags.

The only marginal criticism I have of SV is that it is cooking in a plastic bag. But the research I've done is that the bags used are fine and don't leach any bad chemicals.

I could understand someone who is very strictly following paleo rejecting it because of the plastic bags but I suggested this method of cooking for you because I know you're time and space restricted and you're having issues staying on low carb, much less paleo. If it isn't for you, then it isn't. It was a suggestion. I don't think anyone roasting an antelope on a spit over an open flame would probably go for it, but last I checked, few people were actually THAT paleo!

Last edited by Nancy LC : Mon, Nov-02-09 at 11:02.
Reply With Quote
  #172   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 10:24
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by bike2work
Nancy, thanks for all the information and links. It's very helpful.

I didn't know you needed to apply to eGullet! Sheesh, some of these online communities get quite full of themselves.

LOL! I don't think it's too exclusive, they did accept me after all. They're a little different I think, they're a non-profit 503something. Maybe the application just keeps the awful spammers away.

BTW: I have decided you must be an Iron Chef in disguise after I saw that recipe you use for your protein shakes!
Reply With Quote
  #173   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 10:54
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

I was just looking up how much pressure a Foodsaver is capable of, and stumbled on this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Vacuum-Sealer/

How to make your own vacuum sealer.
Reply With Quote
  #174   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 11:52
bike2work bike2work is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,536
 
Plan: Fung-inspired fasting
Stats: 336/000/160 Female 5' 9"
BF:
Progress: 191%
Location: Seattle metro area
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy LC
BTW: I have decided you must be an Iron Chef in disguise after I saw that recipe you use for your protein shakes!
That's hilarious Nancy! Now I'm picturing myself competing in The Next Iron Chef with my blender and canisters of protein powder.

Will have to check out the link later. Thanks.
Reply With Quote
  #175   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 13:16
capmikee's Avatar
capmikee capmikee is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 5,160
 
Plan: Weston A. Price, GFCF
Stats: 165/133/132 Male 5' 5"
BF:?/12.7%/?
Progress: 97%
Location: Philadelphia
Default

I don't trust microwaves, but I've never heard a convincing scientific explanation of what's wrong with them. The clearest warning I've heard is that they heat a few molecules to extremely high temperature instead of heating all the food evenly. Sous Vide is the opposite of that!

I think it's easy to trust something that's familiar in the home, like a microwave, but sous vide sounds a million times safer to me. I do have some concerns about the plastic (and who doesn't use THAT in a microwave?), but really, putting food under a mild vacuum is such a minor physical effect compared to bombarding it with radio-frequency energy. In my mind, the most significant "modern" aspect of sous vide cooking is precise temperature control. If anyone has a problem with that, I'd be very curious to hear about it.
Reply With Quote
  #176   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 13:19
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

The only issue I have with microwaves is the small potential of them escaping. And I did rediscover that they don't do justice to most food. But it isn't because there's something scary about microwaves, it's just because of the way the food gets heated up. I'm now using SV to reheat my food (when I have time) and finish it in a cast iron pan. *Waves to her duck breast and looks at the clock impatiently*

Someday we might have refrigerators cooled by sound waves, I wonder if people will panic over that?
Reply With Quote
  #177   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 14:45
edgy edgy is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 151
 
Plan: roughly paleo
Stats: 151/144/128 Female 5'5½"
BF:
Progress: 30%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy LC
*blink*
Umm... cooking changes food on a cellular level.


Yeah, but our bodies are used to cooked food - they are adapted to handle this type of cellular change. There is no technology available to stone-age people that could give watermelon the texture of meat, as the NY Times article said sous vide does. The article said sous vide originated in the processed food industry and did things to food that changed their fundamental character - texture, density, cellular structure. The types of changes from sous vide are different from what you get with cooking - different from anything in nature. That's what concerns me about it. Maybe it's harmless, but who knows? It's weird and different.

I'm not saying it's the most dangerous thing you could do. There are all kinds of worse things you could eat, and perhaps it's not dangerous at all. But for me, the strangeness of what it does to food is a red flag. I'm not comfortable with a high-tech contraption that does things to my food that could never occur through low-tech means. I don't roast wild animals on a spit, but the action of my oven on meat is essentially the same.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy LC
If I recall correctly, you like to eat out? Well, sous vide is used extensively in restaurants.


I never claimed eating out to be a healthful practice! I'm trying to stop doing it.
Reply With Quote
  #178   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 14:50
edgy edgy is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 151
 
Plan: roughly paleo
Stats: 151/144/128 Female 5'5½"
BF:
Progress: 30%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by capmikee
I think it's easy to trust something that's familiar in the home, like a microwave, but sous vide sounds a million times safer to me. I do have some concerns about the plastic (and who doesn't use THAT in a microwave?), but really, putting food under a mild vacuum is such a minor physical effect compared to bombarding it with radio-frequency energy. In my mind, the most significant "modern" aspect of sous vide cooking is precise temperature control. If anyone has a problem with that, I'd be very curious to hear about it.


I can't remember what the claims are against microwaves. I'd have to look it up and I'm supposed to be working right now.

I guess the reason that sous vide makes me more nervous than microwaves is because the visible result with microwaves is ordinary, whereas sous vide produces food that is strange and different - altered texture, altered density. The microwave just heats things.

Of course this is a shallow perspective since microwave heating is quite different from oven heating. I should at least look into it, I guess - after I finish what I'm supposed to be doing.

I never use plastic in a microwave - never. I always transfer the food to glass first.
Reply With Quote
  #179   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 14:51
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
Experimenter
Posts: 25,842
 
Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
Default

Quote:
There is no technology available to stone-age people that could give watermelon the texture of meat, as the NY Times article said sous vide does.
Sitting on a slice of water melon would exert similar sorts of pressure, except the juice would squirt out.

I think you got a very odd view of how we use sous vide in home cooking from only reading that one article. It was the first article I saw on the topic and posted it because I was excited over the possibility of doing very accurate, low temperature cooking, not because I'm using industrial strength vacuum sealers (can't afford one and don't have the room for it) to change the texture of watermelon.

If sous vide is scary because I can take a rather tough piece of meat and make it really nice and tasty then you'd better get an oven that only cooks things only at 500 degrees because it's time and temperature that changes the properties of food to make them more tender, or turn them into inedible rubber. The advantage of sous vide is that you have total control over both and the flavors don't dissipate into the air, they stay in the bag with the food.

Last edited by Nancy LC : Mon, Nov-02-09 at 15:02.
Reply With Quote
  #180   ^
Old Mon, Nov-02-09, 15:22
bekkers's Avatar
bekkers bekkers is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 556
 
Plan: Paleo/Primal
Stats: 270/210/150 Female 65 inches
BF:50?/VERY/22
Progress: 50%
Location: WA
Default

I see the sous vide as just another method to achieve slow cooking results, sans stew. So, if I would normally chop tough meat into chunks and braise it in the oven ~200 F for many hours to make it palatable, I can now (well, not yet, but soon I hope!!!) cook it in the shape of a steak, for only a couple of hours, at a considerably lower temperature (which many people think is a benefit nutritionally) and just finish with a quick hit in a hot pan. Seems much less "tampered" with than my regular cooking.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:14.


Copyright © 2000-2024 Active Low-Carber Forums @ forum.lowcarber.org
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.