I'm quackers about sous-vide!

So, I built a little sous-vide cooker using a Cuisinart 4-cup rice cooker (that I'd scratched the "non stick" bowl on, thus making it bad as a rice cooker as a little rust leaches into the rice during cooking). Adding a PID coupled with a platinum RTD and a solid state relay were all that were required to turn this into my new sous vide cooker.

So how well does this setup work? It works pretty well all things considered, although the temperature stability isn't as good as a Polyscience thermal circulator for sure. That said, I generally get +/- 0.2-0.3C stability and the temperature of the PID generally matches my "instant read thermometer". Given this setup cost me $50 in parts, I'm not complaining!

I've done some egg experiments with my MacGyver setup already, but due to the scale of that experiment it'll be posted later. However, I did buy some duck breast (Canadian of course, from the nice folks at Aux Champs d'Élisé in Quebec) and this posting is about cooking that sous-vide.

I must admit I'm a Philistine and don't like my duck breast completely rare; a bit pink is just fine and with that in mind I set my cooker to 54.5 celsius.

One of the advantages of sous vide is that you can cook the target (in this case: duck) "en situ" with spices, marinade or what-have-you. For this dish I included three whole star anise, a few fennel seeds, cracked black pepper, an orange slice, and some Welsh salt and a little bit of red wine in the bag. Below you can see how things looked pre-cooking and "vacuum packed" :)

My vacuum is provided by a cheap Rival unit right now and you can tell. While the bag is formed around the duck, there's not enough suction to totally remove all the air. the star anise still have air around them which is disappointing. I will acquire a FoodSaver shortly and the world will be a better place ;)

So, what did the sous-vide duck taste like? Actually, it was very good and I kind-of "get" the buzz about sous-vide after this experiment. Duck meat is very rich in myoglobin and the super-saturated red in the picture below shows that. However, also note that the red almost perfectly borders the meat that's gone through the Maillard reaction.

That said, I must admit I had reservations when the duck first emerged from the impromptu sous-vide device. First off, my crappy vacuum sealer meant that the bag actually expanded due to trapped air. Secondly; sous-vide meat comes out looking particularly unappetizing (see pic). I'd heard this little titbit before, but I can tell you I was uber worried about killing both myself and my girlfriend at this point as the meat almost looks the way it does when you leave it out on the counter for a few days.

So, I seared off the duck and something almost magical happened. The outside after a bit of searing with olive oil and a hot pan was beautiful, but that's almost to be expected. After letting the meat rest I carved it and was actually quite surprised that the grey exterior was a decoy and somehow the inside was a beautiful haemoglobin-infested protein-rich meat-fest. It was good. I liked it. My girlfriend liked it. See more below.

That's whole star anise and fennel seed. I have to tell you that star anise is my new favourite spice!

My vacuum sealer sucks. Or doesn't, as the case may be.

Sucking from a different angle. Note the scores in the fat and then look at the pic below.

This doesn't look like something I'd want to eat. Note: the fat didn't actually "melt", but did rescind somewhat.

Seared and served. Note the very thin delineation between the seared and rare meat. We served it on a base of saute'd red chard and nutmeg-parsnip puree.

More fun with sous-vide shortly. ;)

Comments

[logicalmind]

Good info. I've done a number of sous vide tests with my setup. One of which was duck, which I actually didn't like as much as my pan seared version. But I loved my sous vide chicken and fish. Keep us updated with more of your experiments!

[rob]

That looks great, Marc. Most people tout the textural benefits of cooking with sous vide. Do you agree? Was this the tenderest, juiciest duck you've ever tasted. And how do I get my hands on one of your $50 contraptions?

[Eric Bernhard]

Hey Marc,
Great Post! Can you explain a little more about how you built the sous vide cooker from the rice cooker, i have a rice cooker that is pretty much useless for rice and i want to turn it into something i can sous vide in.

Thanks

[Marc Nicholas]

There's more about my sous-vide contraption coming shortly!

-marc