Steam to sous vide

I have a recipe that calls for steaming in a bag at 100C for 5 hours. If I don't have a steam oven and want to use a circulator how would I convert?

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Chris_Young_80640

Need to know more about the recipe. But I would use a circulator if it's steaming. Just use a covered pasta pot with a steamer insert. Set the bag in the steaming basket, cover the pot, and let the water boil for 5 hours. Good news is that as long as the water is boiling, you know that the temperature is 100 °C / 212 °F (or slightly lower depending on your altitude and current barometric pressure ;-)

trev_teich

A chef I worked for did his octopus in a bag with olive oil and steamed it for 5 hours. It turned out very tender. I'm trying to replicate this.

Chris_Young_80640

Yep, 5 hours at 100C will certainly hydrolyze a lot of the marine collagen. Pressure cooking will do the same even faster.

trev_teich

Is there an equation for that?

Chris_Young_80640

You can still use the rule of thumb of half the time for every 5 °C increase. A pressure cooker, properly vented after reaching pressure, will raise the boiling point of water to 120 °C or so, which means you're cooking about 20 °C higher than steaming, so 5 hours goes to 0.3 hrs so my first attempt would be something around 20 minutes.