Sous vide cooking with liquid marinades

I've experimented with cooking sous vide with marinades a few different times.

In general, if the sous vide time is less than the marinade time then I'll just cook the meat with the marinade in it. This seems to work fine and the flavor comes out really good most of the time.

If the sous vide time is greater than the marinade time then I'll marinate it separately and then cook it sous vide after removing it from the marinade. Otherwise it seems to come out too strong.

Jewel

How do you apply vacuum with liquid?

Steve

There are a few options for applying vacuum with a liquid for sous vide cooking.

The first is to freeze the liquid first, then put the frozen liquid in the bags to seal it. The sous vide process will melt the ice and introduce the marinade.

You can also use a chambered vacuum sealer but those are very expensive.

Another way is to use Ziploc Freezer Bags to seal the liquid instead of a vacuum seal. They seem to work very well for sous vide cooking.

You can also take the meat out of the marinade and wrap it in plastic wrap to seal in the marinade. Then the liquid will not be sucked up and
mess up the vacuum seal. Seemed like such an simple fix when you vacuum
seal but I have never seen anybody else recommend this trick.
Good Luck

Jewel, I don't think there is an easy answer to your question. Marinades can be used to flavour but can also change the protein itself, particularly if the marinade contains a very salty component. The other aspect is actual cooking time which can be 1 to many hours and cooking temperature ie the higher the temp the more pressure(?) there is pushing liquid out of the protein. In this case you are more likely to be flavouring the liquid rather han he meat, though here may be some absorption as the temp cools.

Sorry no simple answer

after paying particular attention to the food network, regarding sous vide; I have started using oils as a marinade with great success. Granted I am cooking a lot of fish, and hot chili sesame oil seems to be very pleasing to my guests. Know that the sous vide process seems to calm the heat quite a bit. Also, know that I am very pleased with my Vacmaster 112, which is a chamber type vacuum device that retails for about $500, which is a fraction of the cost only a year ago for devices of this type.
I don't cook much chicken. But, when I do, I use a low sodium marinades. so far, I don't get complaints... er, other than from myself.
I do cook a lot of beef and game; both lean. I am again finding a taste preference for oil based marinades. This is a recent trial, so I will be trying more experiments into the holidays.
I do like a mint paring with lamb, and I have had recent luck with a bit of "Fernet Branca" in the bag. But again, this is not freezable, so a chamber type vacuum has been an incredible convenience to me.
I heard a rumour that Vacmaster may soon be releasing a complete sous vide system that includes a chamber vacuum packer.

The whole system has been released and sells for just over $1300

http://myvacmaster.com/cgi/ary.wsc/product.htm?p-item-num=VPS101

almost twice the price of a VP112 and an Anova circulator

for what?