h a l f b a k e r yVeni, vedi, fish velocipede
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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.
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]
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Tasty, tasty microplastics [+] |
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Not a problem, make it out of asbestos. [+] |
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@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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Microwave pressure cookers are a thing, although they're a bit of an engineering challenge and largely an unnecessary overcomplication. |
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//Pressure cookers only get to ~121°C// |
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That depends on the pressure, which depends on how much ill-advised aftermarket modification has been done to the safety valve and pressure regulator. |
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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? |
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//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.// |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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With the cost of good beef these days I will probably not alkalize and reacidify unless the flavor is proven to be unreproducibly delectable. |
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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? |
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