 Hey y'all, welcome back to the fire and water cooking channel. I'm Darren and this is the third part of the series of sous vide basics that I'm going to do and this video is probably going to be a little bit longer than the other ones just because we got a lot more to go into in the more detail than the other two that I've done so far. This one is going to be all about how to use sous vide the best. Next video I'm going to do is going to go deeper into using sous vide with barbecue in particular but this one is strictly going to be how to use sous vide the basic way the best way. The first topic we're going to cover is what works best with sous vide. One of the things that comes up a lot on the Facebook groups and questions that I get on YouTube are what can I sous vide pretty much anything and you know if you watch YouTube you know there's a channel out there called sous vide everything. I'm not a big believer in sous vide everything. I believe that there's a lot of things that sous vide can help and work really well with. There's just some things that you can sous vide but it doesn't really make sense or it doesn't make them any better. Just for an example I just had a question on one of the sous vide Facebook groups asking if sous vide eating meatballs would make a better product which really in my mind it can't because with sous vide what you're trying to do you're either trying to pasteurize the meat that's undercooked or in the medium rare type range like with a burger if you're doing a big thick hamburger and you want that burger medium rare from end to end and you want to use sous vide to pasteurize it I can see doing that but with a meatball you're pretty much going to cook all the way through no matter how you cook it. I don't see where sous vide can actually benefit it you're not trying to tenderize it because it's a ground meat that's already tender you're not trying to pasteurize it because you're going to cook it to well done no matter how you cook it so something like that where it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense you can do it you can cook just about anything sous vide but does it make sense not really to me the things that make the most sense are steaks where you want to get you know medium rare from end to end and then sear it up and get that perfect perfect cook all the way you know gray areas in it roasts where you want to cook a medium rare and you want them very tender like a top round or a chuck roast you really can't do that any other way except through sous vide where you cook it a lot longer at a low temperature to produce that you know medium rare with the super tender out you know the output so so lamb fish shrimp that all works real well there's like I said some things that work better than others people do sous vide bacon I can see a need to do that if you are par cooking it so you can use it to let's say wrap shrimp in to do a barbecue grilled shrimp you can park cook that bacon using sous vide to where you you render a lot of that fat down so that you're not overcooking your shrimp while you're waiting for the bacon to cook when you're doing kebabs or something like that but not everything needs to be sous vide not everything works good with sous vide but there are a lot of things that do so like I said you know there's a lot of those questions will always come and one of the things I always tell everybody is you know if you have doubts try cooking it look up youtube videos see if somebody else has done it see what their result is and then try it on your own and then you can kind of see on your own but some things makes you know a lot of things do make sense with sous vide but there are some things that just you know don't if you're cooking your hamburgers well done like you're doing smash burgers or you like you cook your hamburgers well done no matter what they don't make sense to do them sous vide because you're not trying to pasteurize them to put that medium rare so another thing is the time and temp guides there are a ton of places out there on the internet or you know elsewhere on apps on your phone you can buy books that have time and temp guides one of the first ones that you probably will get is if you buy your sous vide unit a lot of them will come with a manual with a time and temp guide in it this one happens to be the one that gourmia has and I think I've mentioned this to you before in another video that the person who wrote this for gourmia is the guy that runs exploring sous vide facebook group his name is jason logston and he has written a whole lot of books on sous vide and so he actually wrote this time and temp guide for gourmia it's got some recipes in it as well but I use it mostly for the time and temp guide in the back it's got pretty much every every meat that you can imagine in here and it's a quick reference for me instead of having to pull it up on an app or look it up online I can just grab that book and and look it up and see what um particular meat time temp a lot of them like on the apps for um jewel or anova you know you can have right on your phone where um you can just pull it up and it's got them in there um those are usually pretty good one of the things I've found with time and temp guides though is that they can be very they can vary a lot you know I can pull up the jewel app per se and put you know look for a um chuck roast that I want medium rare it will give me a totally different time it might give me the same temperature but it might give me a different time than let's say the anova app or the the guide I pull up with amazing food made easy or serious eats or chefs or any of the others that are out there so one of the things I found to do if I have a very wide margin or disparity between the times or temps from app to app or from different place I kind of shoot in the middle and then kind of go from there and on my next um cooks kind of learn on my own what works best so those are great when you're first getting started but once you cook something you know a number of times you really don't have to go to the guide anymore but um if you go down look at the description down below I have links to some time and temp guides especially the one from amazing food made easy it's a really good one because he's got pretty much every meat and different cut of meat in there that you would want but there's tons of places um online for those and there's some links down below get the apps like the jewel and the anova app you don't have to have their particular sous vide unit to use it uh just to get the time and temp guides you know you can actually download the jewel app and it's got pictures of the meat showing you what the doneness is it's a pretty extensive app but you don't need to own a jewel to actually use it so that's another good uh good thing to uh to do okay so some of the basic steps you need to know or need to figure out when you start cooking sous vide um there's a few basic things you want to know um once you get your equipment down you know what sous vide is you got your time and temp guides you got the meat that you want to do you want to figure out how to do your basic setup so your basic setup is going to be your container with your lid and your sous vide unit and you want to make sure you got your trivets pot holders or something to put down on the counter so that you don't fill in up your water container is one of the simplest things that people probably mess up the most because a lot of people what they'll do is they'll fill their water up or their filler container up with cold water and if you do that your sous vide um circulator actually has to work a lot harder and longer to get the water in the container up to the temperature you want to start cooking at so one of the first basic things you need to do and understand is use hot water out of your tap to fill up your container it just makes more sense because it takes less time for the water to get to the cooking temp that you want and it's uh you know less you know less stress on your sous vide unit the second thing is make sure that when you have if you're using a uh circulator like this that you fill it pretty much that's got a minimum all of them will have a minimum and a maximum fill line make sure you're almost all the way up to the maximum fill line if you're especially if you're doing a longer cook have it all the way up to the maximum fill line um just because it's better for the circulator the heater in here a heating element it makes sure that the heating elements all the way under the water at all times it makes sure that the little fan in there that's circulating the water has something to circulate at all times but it also will when you're cooking for a longer periods of time especially it will make sure that you have um less evaporation so if you do have some evaporation you don't want it to be halfway down and then you have some evaporation and it gets you know drops another inch in volume and then now it's now it's affecting your heater on your sous vide unit so just make sure that you are aware of the minimum and maximum line and just push it to the max no matter what another question i get asked is do i use fresh you know steaks or you know thawed or can i throw them in frozen from the freezer and one of the things i i mostly throw my meat in from the freezer directly i usually when i buy meat i buy it in bulk and i'll cut up steaks myself i'll buy the whole new york strip and cut them into steaks myself that way i can pick the size that i want them to be and then i'll vacuum seal them i'll season them and i'll throw them in the bag freeze them and then when i'm ready to cook i'll heat my water bath up grab them out of the freezer you can do them in you can do it frozen i find for convenience sake i i do them from frozen and they work fine so there's also a lot of people will ask should i on certain meats um should i pre-sear it before i throw it in the bag or should i wait to sear it after the fact um you know some of these things are going to be personal preference you gonna you know some of the things you're going to try it yourself and see which way you like better because you can ask that question in a in a forum and get 18 different answers because everybody likes their thing you know their own way um seasoning in the bag is another one i prefer to season in the bag um you know there's others that you know swear that they they'll never season in the bag that doesn't do anything well i i feel that seasoning in the bag uniformly seasons the meat whether you lose a lot of it in the um purge in the bag or not you're gonna season the meat it doesn't have to soak all the way into the meat you know some of the people go well it doesn't soak into the meat doesn't go in all the way deep into it well that's not why i season in the first place i season to you know season the outside of the meat and when you do that and it's cooking in it it's actually actually going to cover the entire surface of the of the meat or protein uniformly no matter what yeah you might have to add a little bit more when you take it out of the bag to sear it and finish it but it's not going to hurt anything to preseason and if you don't like to preseason you want to season it after it comes out of the bag you're more than welcome to it's not going to hurt anything either way it's just personal preference in cooking there's not a lot of things that are right and wrong you know it's going to be personal preference sous vide is no different than that one of the things i tell people to do especially when they start with sous vide since they're it does involve uh longer time periods for cooking is to make sure you plan ahead sometimes days ahead and a lot of people that's the thing that they can't get their minds around they don't understand that if you're doing let's say a chuck roast and you're going to cook it for 48 hours you know that's you know a dinner for two days down the road so you're planning out your meals maybe in a longer you know stretch than just what am i going to have today there are some proteins that will work that way chicken breasts and pork chops and stuff like that that only take a couple three hours steaks of course fish shrimp any kind of seafood but if you're doing a longer type cook where you're cooking you know a top round roast or a chuck roast or ribs brisket pork but you know those are you know 48 hours or longer you know sometimes so you got to plan out your meals a lot longer in the in the long run and for that so just make sure another question that gets asked a lot is how do i prepare um if i'm cooking steak how do i make them two different donuts my wife likes some medium rare i like them medium well and one of the easiest things to do is when you're cooking a sous vide especially is to um take the water and and cook the higher uh temperature one first so let's say you're wanting a medium well steak so you want to cook it like you know 145 or so um cook that one first at the 145 for your two hours or so and then bring the temperature down to your 132 that you want your medium rare at and as soon as the water is down to 132 you can keep your other steak in there because it's not going to overcook it's just going to sit in there and and stay at that you know 132 temperature it's not going cook anything over that so then throw your steak in there that you want medium rare so you cook the higher temperature one first and then throw cool the water off and then um throw your your lower temperature one in there to cook like i said you know the meat storage you know preparing you're getting prepped for sous vide one of the easiest things i i find to do is to buy in bulk like i said before and prepare them all at the same time my wife will buy the big pork loins at Costco and i'll cut some of them into a roast some of them into pork chops um i'll get the you know big new york strip full new york strip and cut those into steaks by hand and then season them up throw them in a vacuum bag and throw them in the freezer so uh chicken wings same way i'll prepare them i'll cut them all up season them throw them in a vacuum bag throw them in the freezer all that prep work gets done beforehand and it usually doesn't take a whole lot of time usually it's you know when we got a Costco run day it takes maybe an hour to prep all that meat vacuum it up season it vacuum it seal it up and throw it in the freezer but it sure saves a lot of time when you're ready to cook you got your you know your sous vide water is all up the temp just grab your vacuum bag out of the freezer and toss it in the in the water and let it go um so some people don't like doing that some people want to you know use fresh meat you know they want to thaw it out first and then you know pre-season or not season it but i found that for me that's that's the way to go and one of the last things i want to get into is finishing your meat okay once you uh you know you've got the basics down you know how to sous vide you know what you want to do you got your uh equipment already you've got your first cook in you've got it in the water you're ready to take it out and finish it how do you do that what's the best way um and it all depends on what you're cooking okay if you're cooking steaks and you want to get the you know sear them up to finish them up the best way to do that is to take them out of the bag pat them really dry when you're searing anything and you want to get a nice hard sear on it whether it's steak chicken breast uh pork chops anything you want to get a nice crispy you know good my art reaction sear on it you need to dry the meat off really well even before you season it again so take it out of the bag take the pan take all the juices that were in the bag and if you want to make a sauce out of them you can or you just get rid of them it's all up to you but make sure you put those steaks or pork chops or chicken breast on a rack take some paper towels and dry them off really well that's going to really help you get that hard my art reaction sear that everybody can spray it with you know some olive oil spam spray whatever you can use butter you can use um any kind of avocado oil people use all different kinds of oils you know to uh you know in a pan or what have you to cook it on or spray it throw it on the grill after the fact but you need to remove all the moisture first if you don't you're not going to get a good sear and you want to make sure that that pan or grill or however you're searing is very hot before you throw it on the meat on there so don't turn your grill on and then five minutes later throw the meat on and it's still not hot enough you know you got to make sure that fire if it's on a grill make sure your fire is going to good 15 20 30 minutes sometimes and it's up to over 500 degrees before you throw it on there if it's not hot when you throw it in it's not going to get a good sear so if you're throwing if you're doing it on a pan on the stove crank the heat all the way up make sure that pan is smoking before you throw that meat in there okay I've seared many different ways you can use a searsall you know with the torch and all that I find that's probably the worst way that I I found to sear the guys on sous vide everything do it because they're in an office and they can't have a grill or stove or anything like that they have to do it outside with the searsall that works for them but I found that the searsall is probably one of the worst ways to sear in my opinion it takes a lot longer doesn't get the meat done as well as throwing it on a grill but you got to make sure you have it you know hot enough I've actually finished up in my convection oven or I've done like a chicken breast you know or a whole chicken and it was raining outside or something I just didn't want to fire the grill up and turn my convection oven on over 500 degrees make sure it gets up as hot as it can get before you throw the meat in and then that works just fine but that's the number one tip is make sure your meat's dry when you're searing something make sure that it's hot enough now there's some things that you don't want to sear but you want to get a good crust on let's say pork butt if you're doing pulled pork or brisket you know if you're wanting to get a you know do brisket like a traditional barbecue brisket or a roast I usually will throw those in the smoker but since those are not I'm not really looking for a sear and I'm wanting to get some smoke and I'm wanting to get some kind of you know bark from the seasoning I leave those wet and I put some more seasoning on them and then since they're going in the smoker in their wet they're going to attract more smoke and since I'm not looking for that hard sear myard reaction like on a steak I'm wanting that wetness or moisture to attract some of the smoke and then dry off and then I'll put some more moisture on it because with smoke it's not really going to penetrate the meat too much it's mostly a surface seasoning just like any other seasoning you have on top of the outside of the meat so you want more smoke to stick to the outside of the meat and one of the best ways you can do that is by spritzing the meat getting it wet again every half hour or so and then more smoke will stick to it you'll you'll you're like painting layers looking for a totally different result than a myard reaction crust on a seared steak I'm looking for more of a bark more of a smoky you know flavor to the meat so that's two different ways to finish and that's about all I have for this video guys I hope you guys learn some stuff from these videos the next video we're going to talk about getting more into smoking and how to how to do the sous vide and barbecue together it won't be as long as this one hopefully but we're going to go into some things some tips and tricks and stuff that I do when I'm when I'm smoking some of the stuff we answered here but incorporating the barbecue and the smoker into the sous vide is there's a lot of different things you can do with it and we're going to go into some of that in the next video I hope you like this series I hope you can you know get some knowledge out of this make sure you follow us on Facebook we have a Facebook group that's very interactive it's growing every day fire and water cooking and then we have a Facebook page as well fire and water cooking channel and the youtube channel which is fire and water cooking channel and well we have a website that has a lot of information as well fire and water cooking dot com and then make sure you like this 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