So I love sous vide meats... and i love braised stews and pie fillings (I'm British... I think its inbuilt) but have always struggled to find a convincing way to combine the precision of sous vide meat with the unctuous thickness of an "all in one pot" stew like my mum used to cook.
Does anyone have anything to share on this one?
I've looked for previous discussions but if this has already been done please feel free to tell me!
Various ways I've tried or thought to try are:
1. Cook meat separately in a bag, when cooked add to some sort of pan sauce
Results: perfect meat and nice enough sauce... but seemed to lack that great "one pot" thick lovliness. I feel like cooking the meat together with the sauce for too long after bag cooking will spoil the texture of the meat?
2. Use an immersion circulator to cook a stew in a pot over a precicion controlled bain marie. Chefs at a restaurant I used to bartend at used to do something similar by putting stews in a pot on top of the industrial oven (not in it) and braising long and slow for 48 hours. This was in days pre sous vide. The results were fantastic but Ive never seen any evidence of anyone doing this with an immersion circulator?
3. Ive always wondered about "starting" a stew in a pot on the stove and then transferring to a bag for the cook but have never come across any real evidence of anyone doing this until i just found this:
which seems to use this method... are there any pitfalls to beware of?
Thanks guys.
Tom
