nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Adapting recipes that call for a steaming step to sous vide

Brendan_Lee_56950

So Chinese new year is fast approaching and I'm going to embark on my usual new year foods of roast pork belly, turnip cake, moon cake, and probably dumplings this year.

I already have a solid recipe for my turnip cake and moon cake but they both call for a steaming step which is a real pain in the ass in large quantities. The turnip cake in particular is destined to be sliced and pan fried after it cools anyway so my thought is to bag the mix after sauteeing and mixing with rice flour/tapioca flour, rolling it into a thick sheet in the bag a la the CS chicken noodles and then cooking SV instead of steaming.

My question is, how should I go about converting the steaming step to a proper time/temp step in the circulator? My initial research leads me to believe that there is a pretty wide range at which rice flour gelatinizes depending on the type and the % of flour to water. I'm not super interested in textures like many of the books i'm looking at are detailing since I'm not in a baking application and I actually want it to be very viscous. Is there an upper limit by which any starch will be gelled?

At the moment, I am leaning towards a bath set to 88C and testing after 30 minutes for viscosity but would love input from @Chris_Young_80640 or @Grant_Lee_Crilly_63791 et al. if you guys happen to know the answer.

Find more posts tagged with

Recipes Q's

Comments

bkeene12

Hmm, trading steam for SV? Seems like a chemically uneven trade (from a reaction stand point). Very curious to hear if you got what you wanted. Let us know how it goes!

Brendan_Lee_56950

How so? Most of the time a steam step is used for gentle yet high heat which makes sous vide cooking seem like a great replacement for making large portions without needing the space that a steaming apparatus would require.

ajcampelli

I've had the same question - in fact I thought about it while making a Chinese chive cakes from one of David Thompson's cookbooks. I'd love to hear more about this too.

bkeene12

I was hoping you'd answer this for us but my curiosity got the best of me...

Above: This is a pic of the batter, it had the consistency of rice pudding.

Above: I got the test batter into the package. Note: I did not vacuum it, just pushed out the air and sealed it. I was not sure how you planned on handling this part.

Above: I set up the sous vide and ran it up to 88c. (I got a skirt in the other one to make the tacos I read about here).

Above [Side Bar] Another experiment I am testing- Sweet potato chips with Bonito flakes and togarashi (just thought I throw it out there)

Test batch out of steamer, I was surprised by how dense it was (I cut off a piece to taste)

Above: I fried up a piece of it and found it to be quite good! I am going to let the piece destine for the sous vide to set up over night to see if there will be any interaction between the ingredients over night considering the dried shrimp are in there.

Anova is taking forever to get to 88c. I am five glasses of wine into this thing so hence my decision to let the sous vide batch to set up over night. When I started thinking about your questions my main question was what effect the cooking environment would have on the flavor and consistency. I have to imagine with a "sealed" environment, you'd either have the batter fall apart as the rice flour cooked the outside and did "something" to the interior. Tomorrow, we will find out. I am hopeful, that after a night in the fridge, a lot of the flavors will bloom and then after applying the heat from the sous vide, it will make for a more tasty cake. What I am really interesting in find out is if the consistency will suffer from the lack of steam and the air interacting with the cake. Stay Tuned!

PS. How come your avatar shows up as a pic and mine is a "shaded" head?

Brendan_Lee_56950

I have a chamber vacuum so sealing isn't an issue for me.

I'm still not sure what you mean by interaction of the steam and the food as it's not like the steam is passing through the food, rather it's heating it just like any other heat source but it's more effective because of the heat capacity of steam AFAIK.

Excellent work on running the test so quickly though.