Sous-vide Cooking Temperature and Cooking Time

Edgardo_P_Corral_II_62034

Done some reading regarding sous vide and getting confuse regarding temperature and cooking time.

Because if I follow HACCP, Temperature Danger Zone and 2-4 hour rule. I must cook food more than 60 Celsius and cook it not more than 4 hours.

I also read that meat can be pasteurized at 56 Celsius for a minimum of 2 hours is this true?

There's also regarding salmonella prone foods must have a temperature of 75 Celsius?

Is there a chart or reading material that can explain and guide which temperature and time of cooking is appropriate to use for food i.e. beef, lamb, pork, poultry, seafood.

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Comments

DiggingDogFarm_65362

For a nice crash course, check out Douglas Baldwin's A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking and his article in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science.

http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Top

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878450X11000035

HTH

~Martin

Edgardo_P_Corral_II_62034

Thanks will check it out

Johan_Edstrom_5586

He has an app (iPhone/iPad) with common basic starting temps for simple cuts as well, I utilize those charts quite frequently.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

If you get the Polyscience app you can calculate the correct times and temps for pasteurization and food safety.

Edgardo_P_Corral_II_62034

Thanks for the additional information will look for the polyscience app

Leigh_Jones_66597

Because this question is about food safety, I'd imagine that the chef_steps people would prefer both that you study the best information available before you chose a cooking temperature and that you depend on an outside expert rather than the web site. It's just a sensible way to treat the subject.

But sous vide is not so different from any other cooking method that one might use. You must follow all the rules of food safety so that your meals will taste fresh and be healthy. These include preserving perishable food by refrigerating it, and in restaurants especially foods must be served shortly after preparation.

In your home you'll often depend on your nose to decide whether food still has the freshness needed to be healthy. This must still be true when cooking sous vide.

The details of the Baldwin piece suggest that somewhere above 126F and below 130.4F the multiplication of the most heat resistant bacteria ceases and a stasis is found where food is preserved. Above 131 F the number of dangerous bacteria begin to be reduced so that if the coldest part of the food is still above 131 F for 2 1/2 hours the number of these live bacteria is reduced by a factor of a million to one. At 132F this level of reduction occurs in less than 2 hours. Less resilient bacteria perish faster.

When you cook food by traditional means, relatively calm air and heat radiation or perhaps direct contact carry the heat to the core of the meat. For a medium rare roast, you might leave it in the oven for, as an example, four hours until the very hot air heats the core to perhaps 122 degrees. Then the meat is left to rest for several minutes until the heat stored in the surface layers of the meat has conducted. to the core and briefly raised its temperature to 131 F.

Clearly, this brief heat exposure does little to kill bacteria at the core. Most bacteria that are killed by cooking in an oven will be at the surface, which is, coincidentally, where most of the live bacteria dwell. Usually, a roast will also be seared prior to the hours in the oven, reducing the surface bacteria to a tiny number even before roasting starts.

Cooking fish, or cooking rare beef, by sous vide involves cooking temperatures that provide environments that allow bacteria to breed. To cook safely at these temperatures, a few important rules are followed: the food should be fresh and wholesome to begin, the room temperature exposure times and cooking times should be short, the meat or fish will benefit from searing briefly at high temperatures, perhaps both before and after the water bath and it should be served quickly after cooking completes..

In this regard cooking fish sous vide and by more traditional methods are extremely similar time-critical operations and with searing a part of the recipe they provide very similar protections against bacteria.

But foods prepared at 131F and above receive very significant levels of Pasteurization in excess of the protection of traditional cooking levels because long cooking times are used.