Sous Vide Experiment #2

[coraa]

Eggs, today.


First I tried scrambled eggs -- just two eggs, well-stirred with a fork but not whipped, and with a very small splash of half and half and a pinch each of salt and pepper.

I tried them at 147F first, for an hour, which is what the sous vide booklet has listed for soft-cooked eggs in the shell. (It had no temperatures or times for eggs out of the shell.) After an hour, the egg was liquid -- not even begun to set. I left it another half an hour with no effect, then upped the temperature to 150F. I had to repeat this a couple of times; by the end, the temperature was at 153 or 154, at which point the eggs set very softly.

It was worth fiddling to figure it out, though. The scrambled eggs weren't actually scrambled -- they were more like a savory custard, very soft and light, without anything like a defined curd. To be honest, they were like a hybrid between scrambled eggs and creme brulee, only without the sweet. Yum.

I also tried cooking eggs in the shell at the same time, but I'm pretty sure I had the temperature too high on those. They wound up with a barely-set white but a pretty firmly-set yolk, which was peculiar. I'll try eggs again, and drop the temp for those back down to 147 to start.

The success with the scrambled eggs has also inspired me to try to make chocolate pot de creme in the sous vide.

Comments

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

If it takes hours to scramble an egg, how do they manage with those timed challenges on Top Chef? (Loving the foodie neep, btw.)

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I wonder about that myself! I think the scrambled eggs would have been done in more like 30 minutes if I'd got the temperature right the first time, but the lamb chops definitely needed 3-4 hours. Time depends on thickness, and increases exponentially, so maybe they just do everything with very thin fillets? If I'm reading right, a half-inch-thick piece of meat could be done in a reasonably short period of time, but a thick steak would take hours. (Also, fish and seafood probably cooks faster than land animal meat, and I'm betting chicken is faster than red meat.)

I'll have to pay attention to what kinds of cuts they use next time I watch Top Chef, though.

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

They wound up with a barely-set white but a pretty firmly-set yolk, which was peculiar.
Sounds like the egg version of Frozen Florida. A Baked Alaska is a cake with ice cream on top (both cold), and vaguely warmish meringue and hot chocolate sauce on the outside. Frozen Florida's the opposite: frozen ice cream and cake on the outside, gently warmed (via a short burst in a microwave oven) liqueur on the inside.

Someone should come up with a similar name for this inversely soft-boiled egg.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You can get that effect with scrambled eggs using the stovetop method, too; also generally takes about half an hour. The sous vide definitely sounds much more convenient, but the nice thing with stovetop is that you can also do omelet that way.

Separate eggs. Beat yolks until lemon yellow and foamy. Beat whites to soft peak. Fold eggs back together. Heat in several tablespoons of melted butter in a pan just warm enough to melt the butter, over the lowest heat you have the patience to stand there staring at. Gently scramble, or else wait for it to set as an omelet, fill, etc.

The eggs will be fluffy enough to try to levitate off the plate.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds lovely.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

In my ignorance I need to ask, what does sous vide mean? It seems like it's French? Under-something?

My in-laws introduced me to the notion of scrambling eggs in a pyrex jug in the microwave. You mix a little milk in, put them in the microwave, and cook for about a minute or so (or maybe I'm misremembering, but it wasn't very long). They come up very fluffy that way.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Sous vide is a cooking method by which food is vacuum-sealed in an airtight/watertight container and then immersed in water that's kept at a carefully controlled temperature. During the cooking, the food in the sealed pouch comes up to the temperature of the water -- but no hotter. This means that you can, for instance, perfectly poach a piece of chicken to the 'done' point without having to worry about overcooking; as long as the temperature is set right, it can sit in the hot water indefinitely and still be exactly the right level of doneness. (Also, the vacuum sealing means that fewer juices are lost.)

Until recently, the only way to do sous vide cooking was to buy some really super-expensive equipment -- an immersion circulator and heater, which ran over a thousand dollars. The one I have is the first sous vide cooking device for home cooks; it was still not cheap ($400) but I splurged on it as a finished-the-first-draft-of-the-novel-yay present to myself. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Cool!

Scrambled eggs

[(Anonymous)]

Your temps are a little low and your time a little too long. Here is a blog post on how to do perfect scrambled eggs.

http://www.sousvidesupreme.com/community/2009/11/eggs-scrambled-in-the-french-manner/

This is how we did them with Heston Blumenthal during our sous vide demos. Works like a charm every time.