[Sous Vide] Eggs

A Sous Vide Supreme machine found its way to me yesterday and I get to play around with it for a few weeks. (Thanks for the hook up Matt!!)

The Sous Vide Supreme

Initially, I wasn’t going to do anything with it right away – instead, I opted to actually watch the DVD and scan through the instruction manual. Although I was without any food grade vacuum bags (FYI – Food Saver is storage safe, but not food grade), it wasn’t long before curiosity got the best of me…

I am very fascinated by the science behind food. As a matter of fact, it really was watching Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” on the Food Network that got me really exploring around in the kitchen. I read a blog post about the “Perfect Boiled Egg” a few months ago and I had a few eggs in the fridge and a few people over playing mahjong, so I figured I could put a few eggs into the SVS and see what happens… After doing some quick research on my blackberry, I decided to set the SVS at 150F and leave the eggs in there for an hour.

Time for a bath!!

The Control Panel

After 1 hour...

After 30 minutes, I sacrificed one of the eggs in the name of curiosity. I’d describe the result as a very runny egg… The whites were just slightly starting to set, but the yolk was beautiful. It was almost like a poached egg with the whites a lot more runny…

After 1 hour...

An the end of an hour, I fished the eggs out of the SVS, stopped the mahjong game, and got everyone to try one… The results were interesting…

The Result...

While the egg whites were still runny (supposively it doesn’t solidify until 180F while the yolk would solidify at 158F) I’d have to say that I’ve never quite had an egg like this before… It was like the yolk was just right in between the liquid and solid phase. While I’m not sure how well you can see it from the picture above, but I actually cut into the yolk with a spoon and while the yolk didn’t burst, it wasn’t dry and flaky inside… Instead it was like a velvety texture… Needless to say, I’m a fan…

After my quick experiment, here’re a few thoughts…

1. From my understanding, the biggest selling point of sous vide cooking is that you can’t overcook things since things are cooked to a precise temperature. Yet throughout my quick research and a few times in the instruction manual, there were mentions that timing is actually a factor in things. Why is that??
2. I wonder how consistent of a result I would get if I were to do this again…

Stay tuned for more SVS experiments I’ll be doing in the next few weeks!!! If there’re any questions you have about the SVS or maybe something you’d like me to try, please leave me some comments!!!

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