Sous vide

[T.G]

Thanks Greg.

Originally Posted by Chainsaw13

Adam, does the time/temp make this shelf stable? I know it's not recommended to store garlic in olive oil, the risk of botulism being an anaerobic environment.

You bring up an interesting point, one I don't have a complete answer for at the moment.

One point to make is that I'm not storing the garlic cloves in the oil, they are being strained out. The cook temp of 190 will break down the toxin if present, but won't kill any spores.

That leaves me some options:
1) Keep the oil in the refrigerator to retard growth if present and count on that botulism from garlic is pretty rare.

2) Acidify the oil - In theory it's easy to do since I keep a few different powdered cooking acids on hand and I would just have to figure out the needed concentration. Unfortunately, bringing it down to about pH 4 where botulism would be prevented could change the flavor. Another complication here is that taking pH readings of oil is a special lab process since there is no water involved, you can't just jab a pH meter probe in there and get a reading to see what my starting point is, since it might not be the same as the listed pH of the oil due to the cooking and ingredients. In short, I'd be guessing on how much acid to add.

3) I could pack the oil into a mason jar and give it a 5-6 minute process in my pressure canner. USDA says 3 minutes at 250F will kill botulism, I always figure an increased margin is needed for home equipment. This temp is well below the smoke point, so the oil should be ok. Not sure what will happen to the flavor here though.

Other treatments like irradiation aren't going to be achievable in a home setting.


So right now, I'm going with #1 on this test batch. If people have been making garlic confit in their SV setups for years and safely storing the cooked cloves submerged in oil in the refrigerator and they haven't died yet, I figure my odds of not having a problem are pretty good. And you are correct, I should have said "refrigerator stable" and not "shelf stable".

I probably will test out #3 soon enough though. Would definitely do it if I were going to ship a bottle.

I'll get back to you on the flavors once I've pressure processed a batch.