SOUS VIDE FAIL

I enjoy sous viding cooking and I tried something new this weekend. I wanted to sous vide a lamb shank. Normally, I put my sous vide ingredients into a re-usable silicone food grade bag. The lamb shank, unfortunately, was too big for this bag. Instead, I had this bag that you could use in oven, rated for temperatures greater than 350 degrees F. It was also waterproof and large enough to hold a small chicken, which easily fit the lamb shank I had.

I dunked the whole bag with the lamb shank and fixings into the water bath and sealed it with some clips. Now, for this enterprise, the recipe called for sous viding the lamb shank for 24 hours, way longer than anything I’ve made with the machine. I was hoping the bag would hold its integrity.

I watched it for the first ten minutes and everything seemed fine. An hour later, I returned and I could see oil spots appearing on top of the water bath. I immediately knew the bag had sprung a leak somewhere. I had to take the bag out right away, lest more of the gunk got messed up inside the sous vide machine’s internals.

There was no real way to rescue this operation. I didn’t have anything else to put the lamb shank in. I’m going to buy a larger silicone bag that can fit larger cuts of meats and try again.

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