Crock pot Sous Vide braising

Here’s something your Anova Precision Cooker can’t do: you can’t dip it directly into your food. If you want to cook something soupy, you’ll still have to dump everything into a bag and cook the bagful of liquid in a water bath. This is where a crock pot trumps the water bath Sous Vide. Also, if you’re worried about plastic leeching into your food, then you can be free of worry if you use the crock pot method.

I had leftover pork vinegar soup and i was going to cook it with some pork and serve it with Mee Sua. I particularly dislike dry and streaky meat, and cooking meat at high heat for an extended time results in exactly that, so i was wondering, why not do it Sous Vide. And then i remembered that i do have a temperature controller sitting around.

The seriouseats guide to barbeque pork ribs gives a good estimate of the temperature and timing for cooking, and i set my cooking temperature at around 65 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, i don’t have the 24 to 36 hours of cooking time needed to arrive at the desirable tenderness. With only 9 hours of cooking time, the meat was meaty and still a little tough. Given the limited time i knew i had, i should have chosen a higher cooking temperature.

If i had left the crock pot cooking at the low setting, without the intervention of the temperature controller, the fatty parts would become melt-in-the-mouth tender, which is very nice, but the meaty parts would become streaky. I know because i tried when doing the Tonkotsu ramen broth.

Anyway, i will certainly try this cooking method again for braising meat.

Related posts:

Sous Vide Steak – Circulator vs Crock Pot Taobao product recommendation – Sous Vide temperature controller Breakfast chronicles – Mee Sua with rice wine chicken soup 2.5 days of food devouring in Kuching