In a nutshell: A large pot, a small burner, a thermometer, and some plastic bags. That’s all the equipment it takes to do up a batch of sous vide chicken breasts.
The bags have to be food-safe. I used heat-seal bags and a vacuum sealer. But I’m told you can use Zip-locks.
Background
On my last trip to Safeway, they had boneless, skinless (tasteless, soulless) chicken breasts on sale. Cheap.
I bought a pack, even though this is not a cut of meat that I prefer. Seems like chicken breasts always turn out dry, no matter what.
I got the notion to cook them sous vide, that is, cook them in sealed plastic bags immersed in hot water. Sous vide has a reputation for cooking meats perfectly, and for preserving both tenderness and juiciness. Given how difficult is to get a juicy cooked chicken breast, this seemed like a good approach.
There were a few little drawbacks. First, sous vide is French (under vacuum). Second, it’s trendy. Third, it’s the sort of thing that “foodies” do. Whereas I just want a decent-tasting chicken breast, however arrived-at. Just not in my wheelhouse, generally speaking.
But the biggest drawback is that I don’t have a sous vide cooker, and I wasn’t going to buy one for just one meal. For sous vide, you need to keep the water at whatever temperature you want the fully-cooked meat to be. In the case of chicken, that’s going to be somewhere around 140-145F. A sous vide cooker automates the task of temperature control by combining a thermostat, a heating element, and a small water pump in a single unit. Stick it in a pot of water, dial in the temperature you want, and it’ll do its best to keep the water at that temperature.
Martha Stewart to the rescue. She says that one may do perfectly acceptable sous vide cooking without the fancy equipment. Just use a large pot of water, a small burner, and a thermometer. On a gas stove, regulate the flame to maintain a constant temperature in the water bath.
So here goes.
Sous vide cooking: First, do no harm.
Job 1 is avoiding food poisoning. See the section on cooking times, below. The sous vide chicken recipes I looked at were not specific about times and temperatures, giving broad ranges. If I had just naively used the shortest time, that might not have turned out well.
In short, food safety considerations put firm minimums on the time and temperature. No matter how loosey-goosey any particular recipe is written. Anything beyond that the minimum dictated by safety is at your discretion. But safety first.
That said, I’m using quart vacuum seal bags and a Nesco vacuum sealer, below. Martha Stewart assures me that I could do this with Zip-lock bags instead.
- Place a large, shallow pot of water on the stove to heat.
- Turn down a “cuff” at the top of a one quart freezer bag (to keep the eventual seal area from getting dirty).
- Place your dry spices of choice in the bag. Here, I’ve used a variety, from classic Italian herb mix to curcumin. Plus a bit of salt.
- Slip the chicken breast in the bag, grab the top with a clean hand (or paper towel), and shake to distribute spices.
- Seal. Even though the raw breasts are a bit wet, they can be sealed on the normal (dry) setting.
- Regulate heat so that the water temperature is what you want. In my case, about 145F for chicken.
- Place the bags in the water.
- Briefly turn up the heat, to return the water bath to the desired temperature.
- Move the pot to the smallest burner on the stove.
- Turn burner to low, to maintain desired temperature.
- Check temperatures every ten minutes or so, adjust burner as needed.
Here are those five chicken breasts after the shake-and-seal step:
And in their hot water bath, circa 145F.
How hot, how long?
One unexpected aspect of sous vide chicken recipes is the wide range of suggested cook times. For example, Martha Stewart gives a range of 1.5 to 4 hours.
Is that optional? Can I pick any time within that range? Is that the possible range, given how well I want it cooked?
In short, what does that broad range of times represent?
I’ve read at least four completely different explanations for choosing a particular cooking time, within that broad range.
One possibility is that the thickness of the meat determines the required cooking time. So the stated range is for a variety of thicknesses of meat cuts. The thinner the meat, the shorter the cooking time.
A possible alternative explanation is that it’s difficult to overcook meat with sous vide. Thus, the range of times shows you the point at which the meat is done (i.e., safely edible), and the longest you can leave that fully-cooked meat in the cooker without damaging it.
A third possibility is that the longer it cooks, the more tender the meat gets. Functionally, this is similar to the last one, in that the lowest listed cooking time is the time to the point where the meat is done. The only substantive difference is that the meat becomes more tender, the longer it cooks.
The fourth is a straight-up food safety argument, that a certain cut of meat, at a certain temperature, will require some minimal time in order to be pasteurized properly. That is, for any bacteria on or in the meat have been killed. Note that this argument isn’t about the mouth feel of the cooked meat. It’s a straight-up food safety argument. (See this reference for a detailed chart of times).
Apparently, there’s some truth to all of the above. You need to cook the meat long enough so that it’s done (i.e., tastes right). You need to cook it long enough so that it’s safe to eat (pasteurized). For both of those, thicker cuts do in fact take longer than thinner ones. And the longer you cook it, beyond those minimums, for some cuts, the more tender the cut of meat gets.
All said and done, I like the chart from the reference cited just above, which would suggest that my roughly 1.75″ thick chicken breasts ought to cook for a minimum of 2.5 hours, at 145F. That’s a straight-up food safety limit. Anything less than that, and you are not guaranteed that all pathogens in the chicken will have been killed.
In this case, I get the feeling that the chicken breasts would have tasted perfectly fine after the minimum of 1.5 hours. But based on the pasteurization chart, they would not have been completely safe to eat before 2.5 hours.
On second thought, let’s make it three hours even. Just in case.
Three hours later …
Note: I’ve now looked at this on my phone, and it looks terrible. In person, it actually looks appetizing.
There’s the end result. Chicken breast with Italian herb stopping. I snipped off the top of one bag, dropped it on a bed of rice, and cut off a small piece.
The results are good, by my humble standards. The chicken breasts remained moist.
Pretty much everything else needs work. All of which would be solved by a good marinade, I think.
Unexpectedly, with Shake ‘n’ … to distribute the dried spices, followed by sous vide, the spices stay right where you left them. That’s because the juices mostly stay in the meat, leaving next-to-no juices available to redistribute the spices within the packet, during the cooking. Whatever got coated during the Shake ‘n’ Bake step remained coated. Anything missed at that stage remains uncoated.
In particular, the entire interior of the chicken breast is uncoated, and so tastes like grocery store chicken breast. Edible, but clearly a flaw from the outset, if you’re going with dry spices. Yet, isn’t the whole point of the spices (or bbq sauce, or marinade) that you taste something other than bland industrial chicken breast?
If there’s a next time, I’ll cut the breasts in half and marinate. Probably have to switch to Zip-locks at the same time, as vacuum sealing wet stuff is tricky.
Having successfully sous vided once, I understand the joy of having an actual sous vide cooker. Much like a slow cooker, or a rice steamer, there’s something to be said for setting up an appliance to cook something, and having that appliance do the rest. Rather than test and adjust every ten minutes or so.
So, while I can do sous vide on the stovetop, if I did it regularly, I’d spring for an actual sous vide appliance.
On the final plus side: No cleanup from the cooking. Toss the plastic bags and you’re done.
Summary judgment.
I’m glad I didn’t buy the machine first. So, thanks due to Martha Stewart. Because this is probably still not in my wheelhouse.
Decent end result, too much of everything else. Too much:
- clock time. Have I finally finally found a chicken-cooking method that takes longer than barbeque?
- fuss. Unless I move to Zip-locks and a dedicated sous vide cooker.
- fossil fuel energy. I get to keep the water warm, then air-condition that warmth out of the house.
- single-use plastic. For long-term storage, sure, I’ll use those bags. For dinner, frequently?
- prolonged intimacy between hot food and hot plastic. Food safe plastic notwithstanding.
And, to be honest, at the end of the day, it’s still just a grocery-store chicken breast. Seems like if I’m going to all this trouble, I ought be cooking something nicer.
Extras for canning experts.
If you’ve done some canning — and in particular, if you’ve ever done low-temperature pasteurization of pickles — surely you have to be asking yourself “are unopened vaccum-sealed sous-vide-cooked packages shelf stable?”.
Or words to that effect.
In other words, what would happen to these if I didn’t stick them in the fridge?
First, I’m sure they would eventually be unsafe to eat. Why? Because chicken can be canned at home and the UDSA Complete Guide to Home Canning says that chicken, already partially cooked, needs to be processed for 90 minutes in a pressure canner. They don’t even give a time for open (water-bath) canners.
So that’s about 90 minutes, at about 250F, for safely canned chicken. Compared to which, three hours at 145F clearly doesn’t cut it. There’s no way these are shelf-stable food. And, in fact, by direct testing, botulism spores survive sous vide treatment (reference), which means these are not safe to store on the shelf.
Second, that said, sous vide may provide a longer life on the refrigerator shelf. USDA says storage up to four weeks, at refrigerator temperatures (reference). But other references disagree, and suggest that sell-by dates for commercially-prepared and refrigerated sous vide products may not be conservative enough (reference).
Bottom line: It’s best not to count on this as being any sort of food-preserving technique. Store it and consume it as you would any cooked meat.
