OT - Sous vide

Hello,

I got Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide by Thomas Keller for Christmas. I know on the forum there are some hot tubbing fans. Here are some interesting facts I found in the book that I thought I would share.

Steak is recommended cooked at 139.5 F for an 45 minutes.
Pork shoulder is cooked 12 hours at 176 F for 12 hours.
Potatoes are cooked at 185 F for 20 minutes to an hour.
Fat is cooked at 185 F for an hour.

These cook times assume you either seared before hand or do not plan to afterwards. If you want to do it after, obviously you should stop at a lower temp or earlier cook time.

You can see a lot of this here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7IyI1jetwWUC&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=sous+vide+potato+keller&source=bl&ots=tMTKUQZvHE&sig=nxqwVCJup62kXHrLaK7SD9CWL2E&hl=en&ei=mTkeTavFHcH78AbkxuzFDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Page 278 is in the middle of it.

Another interesting note was that meats we braise tend to render collagen at 150, but at 160 they tend to start to release their juices. Because of this, when they cook them sous vide they keep the temp around 150. Also, when cooking things with seasoning or marinade, these become very strong in sous vide so they put the seasoning in a satchel off to the side in the bag. They also use less seasoning because of this than a traditional recipe would call for.

Lastly, you can still overcook meat at these low temps if you cook it too long. They describe a tough medium rare