The suggested temperature range for the roast beef was from 60 °C for a pink interior to 68 °C for grey meat. I settled on 63 °C. I was a little optimistic regarding the timing, so when our guests had arrived and I checked the meat (after 1h 30m) the core had only reached 53 °C. First lesson learnt: meat is a poor heat conductor. I quickly figured that my guests would become very hungry if I were to wait for the core temperature to reach that of the water bath. I therefore turned the water bath up to 68 °C, and put the meat back into the water bath – this time in a normal plastic bag and with a temperature probe at the core. This worked surprisingly well, the pressure of the water pushing out all the air. After another 45 min it had reached 62 °C and I removed the meat from the water bath, saved the juices for the gravy, rubbed the meat with salt and pepper and gave it a quick pan sear with plenty of butter. Despite my bad timing the beef came out extremely moist and tender – I dare say that I have never before achieved such a result with a roast beef in my kitchen! And being my first attempemt at sous-vide with my immersion circulator it was extremely satisfying.

Today I prepared the chicken breast, and I figured that 1h 30m should be sufficient for 700 g of meat. The chicken came out very nice as I served it with fresh pasta, a curry sauce and some salad. Again the meat was moist and tender – and so different from most of the chicken I’ve prepared both at home and been served at restaurants.

I should also mention that I made 68 °C eggs this morning. I left them in the water for 1h. The egg white was very soft – almost runny – whereas the yolk had set but was still very pliable. Comparing this with the eggs over at Fooducation it’s clear that even with constant temperature time does play a role. My 1h @ 68 °C eggs had a white that looked more or less like the white of Erik Fooladi’s 6h @ 65 °C eggs. The are probably several reasons for this, but I guess that the kinetics of protein coagulation are mcuh more complex that one might expect at first. But that’s a different story.

Several comments to my last post asked about pricing and where to buy immersion circulators. Basicallyl any laboratory supplier sells these. And even the simplest models have temperature stability of +/- 0.1 °C or less. Amazon also has a couple of models available from Fischer/Thermo Scientific ranging from around $900-2000.

It sure looks fancy, but I doubt that these eggs can rival the texture of those prepared by the low temperature methods I have described. The reason for this is that the halogen lamps heat up the eggs above the temperature required for the white and the yolk to set. This gives the white a rubbery texture. And even though the BEM has a timer, you still have to figure out (by experimenting?) for how long to cook your eggs…

I think the best part is the cutting ring with a 125 g mass which is raised and dropped to create a crack around the top of the egg. But there is no need to buy the BEM, because a similar egg cracker can be bought separately here for instance! You place the cup on top of the egg, raise the steel ball and drop it. The energy is transferred to the egg, creating a perfectly circular crack. This is actually very neat!