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How many of you use an air pump with a crock pot sized sous vide?

mrmcdowe said:

How many of you use an air pump with a crock pot sized sous vide?

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Well, you see that I do. I'm not sure it is completely necessary, but everything helps when trying to hit a consistent temperature. My probe is located dead center in the lid where the handle was. The furthest distance from the element in the bottom and the crock side walls. Some water turnover can only help.

[ame]http://youtu.be/YA3L9TUUvYs[/ame]

mrmcdowe said:

How many of you use an air pump with a crock pot sized sous vide?

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I do, even a crock pot is going to have hot and cold spots, since the heating element is usually in the bottom of the outer shell. Moving the water around will help balance out the temp through the whole vessel. They're so cheap to buy and you can pick one up at any big box store these days.

This is the setup when I'm not just using my crockpot.
The heatstick works well but I have the GFCI outlet between the heatstick and the temp controller, not the temp controller and the wall. Only problem is every time the temp controller powers off the heatstick it flips the GFCI and when it powers back on you have to reset the GFCI.

I am afraid if the GFCI is at the wall, if the heatstick gets a surge it will fry my temp controller. Does anyone know if this is true?

i'm in charge of a 5 course christmas dinner for 14. the star of the evening is going to be a duck breast with a tawny port and cherry sauce. i can get either farmed or wild duck, so i started some trials with the sous vide. i did 2 hours at 57 degrees, then pan fried the skin side. the wild duck is really gamey, with not much fat under the skin, but it did crisp up well. the farmed duck is soft as silk, makes the wild stuff seem almost chewy. you could just about cut it with a spoon. didn't quite render the fat as much as i'd like to. will get it right on my next practice run. the wild one was cooked perfect; red in the middle. the farmed one was a tiny bit overdone, going to reduce the sous vide time and fry a bit harder. but i'm going with the farmed duck for the soft texture and fat layer. on the night i'm going to sous vide all of them together in my speidel braumeister, with the mash recirculation on! wish me luck. first pic is the wild, second is farmed (i didn't really rest them, so they released a bit of liquid, i will rest them on the night).

The adventure continues. Thought I'd try another idea. I'm doing three slabs of 24 hour Pork Belly Confit for tomorrow, and didn't want to use the cooler and have it take up most of my counter space in my tiny kitchen while trying to cook other things, same with my crock pot. So I pulled out my 4 dollar salvation army coffee urn that I use for heating sparge water for stovetop small batch brewing. Even with the temp controller next to it, it takes up less space that either of the other options, fits all three slabs in there, and has held temp beautifully for the last 22 hours.....



I'm thinking this my be my permanent sous vide setup.

post-christmas report! dinner for 14, but the duck breasts i got were twice the expected size, so only cooked 7 (it's a 5 course meal, there was a crapload of other food!). cooked the duck in its original shrink-wrap packaging. 55 degrees (for non-celcius users, that's 328.15 kelvin!) for 2 hours, scored the skin, and then seared the skin side in very hot, completely dry frying pans. flipped and cooked the other side for 10 seconds or so. the sauce was tawny port, peppercorns, malic acid, homemade turkey and veal stocks, cherry jam. cooked in the braumeister, in the malt tube with full recirculation on! for those unfamiliar it pumps water/wort up from the bottom of the tube, over the top, over the heating element and thermistor, computer controlled.

also served braised kale, fondant potato, and a tempura nugget thingy filled with cider gel (agar, apples and cider, cooked, solidified, and cut into cubes), a cube of sous vide wild duck, a cube of sous vide farmed duck and a cube of roasted shallot. the duck was served atop a bit of homemade red cabbage zuurkool (saurkraut for you germen readers!) to balance out the sweet sauce, and it was all very tasty. the final picture doesn't do it justice, that was the last plate of the 14 and was the one i threw together for myself very quickly, and then just remembered the camera. oh well

forgot to add, rested the duck at least 5 minutes after frying. during frying i was sure to set off every smoke alarm within earshot. luckily the epic amount of wine already guzzled largely kept me from hearing it

Looks great dinnerstick.

I didn't post this the other day, but this was my Sosu-Vide Christmas Eve dinner for myself.



Cooked the duck breasts for 2 hours @ 135 in my coffee urn sous-vide with some garlic, thyme, and a couple of orange slices in the pouches. The crisped them up in pan, then glazed them with a cherry wine and spices reductions. Served it over rice with grilled asparagus.

DANGIT MAN... STOP!

LOL... Your pix are making me hungry and it's not even 10AM here in Texas yet!

Some good looking meals prepared in the home sous vide rigs. This year for Christmas I decided we weren't going to have the traditional dinner and opted for country ribs and pork tenderloin sous vide in bacon drippings. They were a smashing success!

I'm using my electric boil kettle to sous vide a standing rib roast for tonight... I'll post pics if it works well....

I finally setup my control products temp control which replaced the brains of an old deep fryer I had sitting around. I added an old fountain pump and wired it so I can move the controller to my turkey fryer when I have a large amount of food to cook. I've cooked a couple duck breast in it to test it out and it works perfectly. I just finished cooking duck confit for 12 hours. I think this is going to be my new favorite kitchen toy.

VERY cool idea! I bet these old deep fryers could be found at goodwill pretty easily as well... Was it pretty easy once you got the case opened up? And you said it was removable? COOL!

I see a lot of them on Craigslist. My turkey fryer was free. But yeah you should be able to find them at a thrift store too. The mechanical types are the easiest to work with. The digital ones will require a lobotomy.

Yes it was easy. The hardest thing was wiring it so the power is coming into the fryer itself. The controller was wired internally with 3 wires tapped in..., common ground, 120v and heating element. I am going to add a dpdt switch to allow me to bypass the controller and boil when needed. In case I want to actually fry something. Then another switch for just running the pump, this way I can use it for quickly thawing frozen stuff.

Just one more reason for me to get my Brutus 20 going.

Question, At what temp does duck fat render? Are you able to render the fat whilst Sous Vide...ing? A properly seared duck breast is exceptional...while one with a lot of fat left is well...medicore.

Also Revvy will you post your pork belly technique?

For the duck breasts I followed J kenzie Alt-Lopez's recommendations. 135 degrees for 2 hours.

By cooking it at 135°F for two hours, much of the fat under the skin begins to soften and render out while the proteins in it begin to set, making it easier to crisp without shrinking on the stovetop just before serving.

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It was beautiful, and I have a nice jar of rendered duck fat.

This is what I went by for the 24 hour pork belly.

Ok, sold and thanks.


Ill be almost as excited to sous vides with my new set up as I am to brew.

The duck fat is a double bonus.

My plan is to do the duck breasts, use the fat for duck fat potatoes and a roux to thicken whatever sauce I plan to make.

Then use any leftover duck fat for a few of the pork belly confit packages.

duck breasts- my 2 cents- i've been cooking them a lot lately. 55 to 57 deg C (57C=135F) 2 hours as revvy says doesn't render the fat but makes it very very easy to do so. i go with the slightly lower 55 if using soft farmed duck and 57 if using gamey wild duck, which is smaller, has much less fat, and requires much less time in the frying pan. but make sure after sous vide you get the skin very dry; paper towel it, and it's best to cut a few slits in the skin, this will let the fat render out evenly. then get them into a ridiculously hot, bone dry frying pan until the skin is browned. you will still have a little layer under the skin but it won't be oily tasting against the crisp skin. i then flip them for a few seconds to sear the non-skin side, mostly for aesthetics.

Here is my ghetto sous vide. It's a crock pot which is controlled by my fermentation temp. controller and the fountain pump that I used for recirculating ice water in the summer is recirculating the water in the pot. This was just a test run to see if I wanted to build a more permanent solution. F'ing delicious!

TacoBrew said:

Here is my ghetto sous vide. It's a crock pot which is controlled by my fermentation temp. controller and the fountain pump that I used for recirculating ice water in the summer is recirculating the water in the pot. This was just a test run to see if I wanted to build a more permanent solution. F'ing delicious!

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This is what I want to do. I have a crock pot, but it is programmable, so if the power shuts off it never comes back on until you reprogram it. I need to just go to Salvation Army and pick up one like this for $4.

pabloj13 said:

This is what I want to do. I have a crock pot, but it is programmable, so if the power shuts off it never comes back on until you reprogram it. I need to just go to Salvation Army and pick up one like this for $4.

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Mine was $5 at goodwill. We too have a fancy digital crockpot that wouldn't work.

Sometimes simple is better!
Lots of guys try using fancy space heaters to heat their ferm chambers... only to find out the little 10 dollar job at wally-world actually do the job best. For the exact same reason. Just a manual on-off switch.

Huaco said:

Sometimes simple is better!
Lots of guys try using fancy space heaters to heat their ferm chambers... only to find out the little 10 dollar job at wally-world actually do the job best. For the exact same reason. Just a manual on-off switch.

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I do like the programmable one for normal food because we can cook on high for a few hours and then just keep warm until we get home from work, etc. But yeah for this simple is way better.

Definitely the best steak I've ever cooked in my life, and so incredibly easy!

Does anybody use their Brutus 10 or recirc setup for sous-vide? Was thinking of trying it on my B-10 but the temp does fluctuate a few degrees.

headbanger said:

Does anybody use their Brutus 10 or recirc setup for sous-vide? Was thinking of trying it on my B-10 but the temp does fluctuate a few degrees.

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I bet it would hold close enough to do the job. Try it out and see if it works. It's not like you are losing any major investment by just trying it. After all... you still get to eat a steak in the end! lol...

Huaco said:

I bet it would hold close enough to do the job. Try it out and see if it works. It's not like you are losing any major investment by just trying it. After all... you still get to eat a steak in the end! lol...

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Very true. So you like steak Med Rare? So what if its Med Rare + 3 degrees?

Huaco said:

I bet it would hold close enough to do the job. Try it out and see if it works. It's not like you are losing any major investment by just trying it. After all... you still get to eat a steak in the end! lol...

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Right on, I'll give it a go.

See, there could be a use for doing it in your brew hardware like on one of the earlier posts where he was cooking up multiple racks of ribs. But, otherwise, it seems terribly efficient to use the whole setup for a steak or two.

So this thread inspired me to break out the homebrew gear and try Sous Vide. I have not been brewing as I rebuild my brewery so the old temp control panel and the aeration pump were not getting any use.

Grab a nice fresh top sirloin to try for a first outing. Salt, pepper, a small bit of garlic powder, just a light mix of seasoning I put on all red meat, and I planned on throwing just a bit of fresh rosemary in the pouches.



Broke out the Hopsaver, I mean foodsaver, and sealed them up.



Slipped them into the crock pot filled with preheated water held at 131 degrees.



Temp dropped with I put the pouches in of course. Setup is my old temp and pump control panel set at 131, crock pot plugged into that on high, and my aeration pump bubbling in the pot for water circulation.



75 minutes later I had a perfect mid rare edge to edge. I pulled them from the pouches and tossed them in a near smoking preheated cast iron skillet to finish



Made a quick pan sauce/saute of baby portabella mushroom slices and served it with a baked potato and broccoli.



Final verdict... One of the best steaks I have ever made, very good first attempts. Nearly perfectly cooked, very tender, and very flavorful. I missed a little on the seasoning/herb/aromatics blend as the rosemary was just a bit too strong. Next time I will try a different blend and possibly a different cut of meat. I am sold on the method even after just this first attempt. I just need to dial in the recipe and flavor profile. Tomorrow I think it will be chicken for lunch.

Most importantly the wife loved it.

J Kenzie Lopez-Alt at foodlab has done a lot of interesting experiments with sous-vide in terms of searing first vs searing after, using fats in the pouches to flavor transfer herbs, use of aromatics, etc. This article I linked is his primer on steaks, but search his blog for sous vide and you'll find he's done a lot of interesting things.

Revvy said:

J Kenzie Lopez-Alt at foodlab has done a lot of interesting experiments with sous-vide in terms of searing first vs searing after, using fats in the pouches to flavor transfer herbs, use of aromatics, etc. This article I linked is his primer on steaks, but search his blog for sous vide and you'll find he's done a lot of interesting things.

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Ya, I found that site very helpful when I did mine. I chose to no fat in the pouch and sear after. Think I'm going to try again tonight and do a skirt steak.

I've got a pork loin I'm going to do sous vide tomorrow. I just made sort of a "pesto/tapanade" stuffing for it by beating the heck out of some anchovies, rosemary, green onions, roasted garlic, raw garlic, parsley, allspice berries, black olives sea salt, and juniper berries in a mortar and pestle til it was a green and amazingly fragrant paste. I butterflied the loin, spread the paste over the surface, rolled it and tied it up. I stuffed it into a vacuum bag and sealed it up. Tomorrow I'll do it for 2-3 hours at medium rare, then brown it up. Should be incredible.

Revvy said:

I've got a pork loin I'm going to do sous vide tomorrow. I just made sort of a "pesto/tapanade" stuffing for it by beating the heck out of some anchovies, rosemary, green onions, roasted garlic, raw garlic, parsley, allspice berries, black olives sea salt, and juniper berries in a mortar and pestle til it was a green and amazingly fragrant paste. I butterflied the loin, spread the paste over the surface, rolled it and tied it up. I stuffed it into a vacuum bag and sealed it up. Tomorrow I'll do it for 2-3 hours at medium rare, then brown it up. Should be incredible.

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what time are you serving this, and what's the closest airport?

Well dangit. I've had luck drilling holes in glass bottles before. I guess this lid was under some sort of tension? I had only started the edge of my hole when it popped. Anybody have an idea for a replacement lid? Super cheap. DIY is an option.

I thought this would be a fun mid-winter project. I built a clone of Revvy's timer and am at this moment trying it out with a London Broil in a big crock pot.

Be careful with the ziplocks they have failed on occassion. Some folks double bag.

But ziplocks aren't the only ones. I actually had a foodsaver go after an hour in the bath on Sunday. The only reason I noticed was that I started to actually something cooking, which in a sealed bag in a water bath, you shouldn't smell anything. But I started to notice a garlic/rosemary steam smell. I caught it in time and the dish came out fine.

Cool. Thanks for the tip!