Sous vide

[jonumberone]

Originally Posted by CigarNut

A different Sous Vide question:

When looking at cook times and temps on the internet I see huge variances -- some will say to cook at 135* for 2 hours and others will say 138*/140 for 45 minutes. I've seen this beef, lamb and now pork (1" pork loin chops). How do you know which time/temp combination to go with?

I just select a temp that I want my meat to be cooked to.
I already know that I don't want my beef cooked above 135° and my pork above 140°.
From there I use the minimum time, and if I cook it a bit longer; no worries.
Using a 1" Pork chop as an example, I don't think there would be any noticeable textural differences between a chop cooked for an hour vs one that has been cooked for 3 hours.
With that big of a window, I don't see any reason to really worry about the cook time. As long as I hit the minimum, I'm fine.
If using a more delicate piece of protein, like fish, I would pay more attention to the time.

As for the pasteurizing the meat, I read the min temp is 130° and the food needs to be held there for 112 min to completely kill all bacteria.
As the temp goes up, the time needed to pasteurize comes down.
When I did the rack of lamb, I cooked it at 130° for this reason.
I prefer my lamb at 125°.
I am finding with the sous vide method, since the doneness is edge to edge, I can actually cook meat to a higher temp, since I don't have to worry about the outer portion being overcooked while trying to reach the desired temp in the center.