Sous Vide, Time and Temperatures

Short list of different ingredients with their cooking times.

In recent years I have really enjoyed cooking things sous vide. It is easy to get the food perfectly cooked and at the same time it is also easier to plan meals. Nowadays I often buy meat, cut it into pieces and cook it sous vide (max 500g per bag) and then freeze it. The meat keeps for a long time and can easily be added to e.g. stews and Indian dishes only to be reheated as the last part of cooking. You are guaranteed to get well-cooked meat without much effort, just planning.

French fries

As much as I like sous vide, there are of course some disadvantages as well. You need equipment that can possibly take up space. However, it is quite cheap nowadays so it is not a financial loss. Another disadvantage, however, is that you need to use special heat-resistant plastic bags that are used up after you use them once, which feels a bit wasteful (and costly as that type of bag costs more than regular plastic bags). However, ordinary plastic bags can leak plastic into the food, so only use bags that are specially adapted for sous vide cooking - if you are unsure, don't take the chance.

I intend to populate this page over time so it will be updated at irregular intervals. After I've tried cooking an ingredient a number of different times and then found what I consider to be a good combination of time and temperature, I add it to the list. It will take some time though so don't expect constant movement on this list.

Chicken breast

Chicken breast can become really juicy with sous vide. You can let the chicken lie a little longer in the water bath and lower the temperature for extra juicy meat without risking poor food hygiene.

I usually divide the chicken into small pieces and have a maximum of 500 grams in each bag. If I'm cooking an extra large chicken breast, I often let it sit for an extra half hour to ensure the meat is cooked all the way through.

Turkey breast

This, together with chicken breast, is a very good candidate for cooking sous vide. The meat can be quite dry if you cook it in a normal oven (especially if you cook the whole bird), but sous vide it is often very juicy instead.

Filet of lamb

Lamb fillets are small and therefore I place 2 in a bag. However, they should not touch each other in the bag. Depending on how you intend to serve the meat, it is also good to put a clove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary in the bag as well, but I often just choose a little salt.

When the meat is cooked according to the times below, it should be dried thoroughly and then given a short time in a frying pan just to get a little color on the surface - no more cooking. So it goes quite quickly.

Potato

It may not be the most common, but I have cooked potatoes sous vide a few times. Often it has been about preparing instead of getting perfectly cooked potatoes. I peel and divide the potatoes into 1-3 cm pieces and make sure not to put more than 500g in a bag.

No matter how well you pack the potatoes in the bags, it is highly likely that the bag will float to the surface, so some kind of weight is often needed to hold the bag down in the water.

*"Drygast" is a combination of temperature and time that I have tried a few times myself and think has given good results. You might not agree, but this is what I choose if I have to cook the same thing again.