I currently work in a restaurant that uses sous vide style cooking quite a bit. We have our food safe tickets at what not and have done the research to know at what temperatures things can be cooked at and for how they need to be cooked before they can be considered pasteurized. Our health department, however, has no idea. We recently had an inspection during which we were using the Sous vide at 132.5 degrees F (which is TECHNICALLY in the "Danger Zone") to cook out flank steaks for 14+ hours. The Inspector, seeing temperature and time without foreknowledge of how pasteurization works, called us on it and we're now technically required to sous vide our meats at AT LEAST 140 degrees F. Unfortunately or menu states these steaks come Medium Rare.
We have a plan in place to institute Log Books that detail pasteurization times for product thickness and temperatures and intend on using this to educate our health inspector.
What I'm wondering is if there are any other industry personnel here using the same record keeping techniques or others and how effective they've been. I really don't want to be limiting my sous vide to 140+ degrees if it's not necessary. (Hint: It's totally not necessary)
