Sous-Vide precooking?

December 18, 2020 9:11 AM

For Christmas I want to make goose breasts and legs sous-vide. The recipies I found say to cook it for 10 hours at 80°C and also mention I could do that before and then store the parts in the fridge. This is something I don't get, if I store it in the fridge and then put it in the oven to make it crispy, say for 20 minutes at 250°C, it will still be stone cold inside, even if I bring it to room temperature before.

And if I let it in the oven longer for the whole piece to rise to an acceptable temperature, it makes the whole sous vide thing unnecessary? Or is the idea to heat the pieces to something like 60°C, below the isous vide temperature used to cook them?
How would you do that, leave them in the oven at 80°C for 2 hours, than turn up the heat?

posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Use the Sous vide to bring it back up to temp before putting it in the oven.

So if youre gonna pre-cook them, for say 9 hours at 80C (which seems way too high for me but separate observation) and then put them in the fridge, id take the out of the fridge and put them back in the bath for an hour to make sure the middles were back at 80c before blasting in the oven.

Youre not wrong that if you baked it long enough to reheat from cold it would defeat the purpose of SVing to begin with. It is also true that while the temp in your SV set up will not exceed whatever you set it to, length of exposure to even lower temperatures does affect the outcome. For example a chicken breast at 145F for an hour is edible if raw-seeming, but kept at that temp for 4 hours it would be cottony and gross.

Similarly id think that you would not want to cook a goose breast for that long (based on my experience sous videing chicken), but im definitely no authority on game cookery.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:15 AM on December 18, 2020

20 minutes at 250 C seems long enough to warm the middle to me. I often reheat leftovers in the oven for 20 minutes at half that temperature.
posted by muddgirl at 9:31 AM on December 18, 2020

Exceptional_Hubris is right. This guide also advises to retherm about 5 degrees lower than the original temp since the sear/crisp will raise the internal temperature to target.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:40 AM on December 18, 2020

Ok, thanks. I think 10h is also very long, I found recipies for a whole goose that used that amount of time. Maybe they just copied that setting? Though, it was recommended that way on three different sites. Hmm, I will start further inquiries. How long would you cook? The breast is with bones and ca. 1kg.
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 9:50 AM on December 18, 2020

10h is probably necessary. Here's a review from someone that did a breast at 2h and wishes they had gone 4-6.

Although it's surrounded by fat, goose meat can be pretty tough and you need that time to break down the collagen and make it tender.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:08 AM on December 18, 2020

You might not need the sealed bag and water bath. Confit under goose fat in a slow cooker for an afternoon in advance, then sear in a pan to serve on the day.
posted by k3ninho at 10:16 AM on December 18, 2020

I love my duck breast bleu but goose is a whole different story. It’s tough unless you cook it to a point that would be overcooked if it were chicken, duck, or even turkey. Like pork shoulder, you want it almost falling apart. In general, you can bring meat back almost to the point where you cooked it, without further cooking it. As noted above, you can dry it out. If it’s a big piece you might overcook the outside, but I typically aim to serve protein at about 115F 45C, which is probably not going to either dry it out or overcook it.
posted by wnissen at 10:24 AM on December 18, 2020

I did a version of this last year. Sous vide the legs and wings and then roast the crown. It was delicious. I actually find you don't need to warm the confit before crisping. Both duck and goose. I don't recc sousviding the breasts. Texture is bad to my taste.

I used a recipe in the St. John cookbook.
posted by JPD at 10:32 AM on December 18, 2020