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Pressure-Cookable Sous-Vide Bag

High-temperature Bag for Sous-Vide and Pressure Cooking
  (+6)
(+6)
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against]

Mylar is nylon that's spray-coated by metal. Suppose we instead a bag made from a higher-tempreature and higher-strength polymer that's spray-coated with metal, so that we have a better-than-Mylar bag. Or suppose we have something like those reusable bags that can be used to microwave chicken inside of. And we use it to make a useful cooking vessel of sorts.

This bag will be used as a Sous-Vide bag to cook food Sous-Vide. But afterwards it can be pressurized to a decent amount of pressure (probably significantly less than a traditional pressure-cooker), so that the food inside can be briefly pressure-cooked.

Sous-Vide is a very healthy form of cooking that's especially good at making tough cuts of meats more enjoyable, since it can cook at a temperature targeted at breaking down tough collagen to make the meat more tender. But Sous-Vide cooking temperature is too low to achieve flavor-producing chemical reactions like the Maillard reaction.

For this reason, we want to follow up with some pressure-cooking for a short period of time, as a finishing process, since this can achieve the high temperatures of the flavorful Maillard reaction. As an analogy, you may have seen these newer multi-cooker appliances like the Ninja Foodi, which for example can pressure-cook a leg of chicken and then subsquently air-fry it as a finishing process to give a fried texture -- all within the same appliance.

The bag would be seated in a pressurizable vessel, of course, with cooking starting out with the Sous-Vide process. Then after that's done, we can then go into pressure-cook mode, to pressure-cook the food for a short period of time to produce the better flavors of the Maillard reaction.

This would allow us to achieve the desired benefits of Sous-Vide cooking, while also achieving the desired Maillard flavors from pressure-cooking as a finishing process.

As an alternative to the pressure vessel, it would also be nice to have a version of this bag that can work in a microwave. Obviously that version can't use any metal like Mylar does, since that wouldn't work for a microwave. The bag would have to reliably/safely hold pressure, even if only for a relatively shorter period of time, perhaps with the aid of some kind of clamp that goes over the mouth of the bag. That clamp thing would have a pressure release valve, so that pressure would release from it when it goes over a certain level. The clamp thing would also have a built-in temperature probe which could poke into the meat and provide temperature feedback to the microwave appliance, which could even cook at lower Sous-Vide temperatures, before doing the higher-temperature cooking inside the pressurized bag. Hmm, maybe this last paragraph deserves a separate submission post of its own, since it would require distinct engineering. Bleh, whatever.

sanman, Apr 13 2025

Microwave Chicken Bag https://www.youtube...watch?v=8YAfvpA3caM
Cook Your Chicken in Microwave [sanman, Apr 13 2025]

QuickCusine Bags https://www.youtube...watch?v=KknI3RAEhXQ
another microwaveable chicken bag, but without the previous annoying music [sanman, Apr 13 2025]

Retort Pouches https://www.youtube.com/@Steve1989MRE
Virtually every MRE has one. [minoradjustments, Apr 14 2025]

[link]






       Smells good. [+]
pertinax, Apr 13 2025
  

       Tasty, tasty microplastics [+]
Voice, Apr 13 2025
  

       Not a problem, make it out of asbestos. [+]
doctorremulac3, Apr 13 2025
  

       @Voice: well, the Mylar would have the metal foil coating which would be what contacts the food, not the plastic side. For the microwave-friendly version, we' could use food-grade silicone for the bag.
sanman, Apr 14 2025
  

       Pressure cookers only get to ~121°C. So if Mylar were nylon (commonly PA-6) then it would be fine up to 200°C or so. It's not nylon though, it's PET which starts glass transition at 100°C or so. All the other common food vacuum bag materials are similar, it's the low melting temp that makes them quick and easy to seal.   

       The pressure in a pressure cooker is also not a problem in this setting, since you've vacuumed all the gas out, the contents is essentially a liquid-solid mix. In a pressure cooker you get maybe a couple of atmospheres of pressure acting on the bag, but the contents compresses minimally leading to no net forces. A bit like how fish don't crush at large depths, it's only us gas breathers that have problems.   

       In a microwave, the pressure DOES become a problem. You microwave in a sealed bag and some of the water boils and generates steam. That steam pressure will rise until you stop adding energy or something fails.   

       Microwave pressure cookers are a thing, although they're a bit of an engineering challenge and largely an unnecessary overcomplication.
bs0u0155, Apr 14 2025
  

       //Pressure cookers only get to ~121°C//   

       That depends on the pressure, which depends on how much ill-advised aftermarket modification has been done to the safety valve and pressure regulator.
pocmloc, Apr 14 2025
  

       If you leave it in the sous vide bag you may get some Maillard at higher temp/pressure but you will never get a char or a sear. I don't know; there may be an invisible Maillard reaction to enhance flavors, but even overlooking the char/sear loss of deliciousness, wouldn't everything come out like super well-done pot roast?
minoradjustments, Apr 16 2025
  

       //If you leave it in the sous vide bag you may get some Maillard at higher temp/pressure but you will never get a char or a sear.//   

       The clever way to do it is by manipulating pH. You can get a frankly absurd crust on steak by alkalinizing it with baking soda first. Just remember to re-acidify it after, with the possible exception of saurkraut, humanity is unusually united on it's preference for acidic vs alkaline food.   

       I sous-vide steak all the time, mostly because I live in a city and society has fallen to the point that meat simultaneously reasonable in quality and price isn't available fresh within walking distance. So I drive out to Costco every couple of months and vacuum-pack/freeze a bunch. Throwing those into sous-vide defrosts and cooks them with almost no time restrictions, anything from an hour to a day would probably be fine. Then I open all the windows & throw it on the hottest skillet I can make and hit the top with a blow torch. It's cheating, but it works.
bs0u0155, Apr 16 2025
  

       It's damn delicious is what it is. Throwing it over charcoal instead of the pan/torch would be my only mod to add a bit of smoke to the char.   

       With the cost of good beef these days I will probably not alkalize and reacidify unless the flavor is proven to be unreproducibly delectable.   

       Could the lining of the retort pouch be sensitized to a different frequency that would sear the outside of the perfectly medium rare steak with an instant, blinding heat blast that wouldn't cook the inside any further?
minoradjustments, Apr 16 2025
  
      
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