Sous vide - so-so?

I must admit, I love the concept of sous vide: Lovely little packets done to perfection and awaiting to be plopped on a plate and served. Poached salmon you can set and forget, for hours.

But thank you, thank you David Hagedorn for testing out the home versions and being brutally honest about the results. (Read the Washington Post article here. The headline for the web version is much better than the ones on the paper version.)

One thing the story reminded me of was our camping eggs trick. You boil water, put the container in an insulated bag, put your beaten, seasoned raw eggs in a freezer zip bag and dunk it in the hot water. In a few minutes, put the bag out, squish the eggs around a bit, then put it back in the water until they are the consistency you like. Voila - scrambled eggs and no pan to clean. I think The Bee actually published this trick and got taken to task for a. the eggs may not get thoroughly cooked and could be dangerous to those with compromised immune systems (which begs the question, should sick people be camping?) and b. the bag could melt. Luckily, neither has happened on my watch, but I can see the point.

Pasta update

Tried some more sous vide pasta today (while cooking my first King Cake - more on that, later), using 2 ounces of pasta and 3 ounces of water. It was a lot firmer, even after an hour and a half cooking. (I checked it at 45 minutes; not quite to al dente. The starchiness was still a little too overwhelming, even after a rinse in fresh water. And those who have said that the salt intensifies too much in sous vide cooking - I don't think they've cooked pasta. Still pretty bland.

More experiments to come!

Sous vide pasta

Crockpots are good for things that need to be cooked for a long time, slowly, but often, the meals that are best with a slow-cooked sauce have elements to them that do not need to be cooked as long.

Case in point today: spaghetti.

The sauce went in around noon, and by 3 p.m., it was smelling pretty good. Next up, pasta. But heating up a big pot of water that will later just be drained seemed like a waste. Could there be a better way? I knew if I just threw in the dry pasta into the sauce, it would cook, but it would absorb all the liquid and the starch would leach into the sauce, making it gummy and not so appetizing.

But with the vacuum bags from the store, there was another option: Put the dry pasta, broken in half, in the bag with water; seal; then put the washed bag into the sauce to cook along with it until dinner time.

It worked - well, it sort of worked.

When I checked on it two hours later, it had more than doubled in size. And when I opened it, it was in separate strands, but it was overdone and very starchy. I rinsed it and got most of the starch off of it, then added it to the sauce. Topped with Parmesan, it was good, but not great.

From what I've read on sous vide cooking, the length of time shouldn't have been the problem, so perhaps I used too much water. Next time, instead of doubling the water to pasta, I'll just use a bit more than what's needed to cover it.