Sous Vide Chili?

[Phillipsdo]

I have been wondering about using sous vide to make chili. I know, the scandal!

I recently took 2 lbs of stew meat and seasoned like a steak and sous vide for 12 hrs. I then browned it in an Instant Pot and put all of my usual spices (no beans, thank you - I am native Texan) and pressure cooked it 30 min. It was great. Beef falling apart. Good flavor.

I think next time I will brown the meat first and try just putting everything in the sous vide bag and letting it cook at 140F for a few hours.

Has anyone tried this method? Have good recipes? Advice?

I am trying to do keto/carnivore. Especially if you have any suggestions to stay in compliance!

Thanks

[Polarbear777]

I don’t know that SV provides any advantage of you are going to pressure cook it (high temperature) anyway.

maybe I’m missing something?

[bbqLuv]

A new twist on an old dish.

[Mojo0209]

Not sure, maybe it would be a good thing to let things come to a simmer. It sounds like an experiment. May workout great. Some things in SV don’t seem together for me like traditional cooking does. Maybe only SV the meat, but add the browning bits to the base?

[Nuke em]

I checked out serious eats website for sous vide chili and nothing popped up. Then I got to thinking. Chili in a weird way would be classified as a soup.
I don’t know, haven’t had a full cup of coffee yet but maybe cook it as a soup in a sous vide bath?

[Old Glory]

Not sure what the advantage is over Instant Pot or even a slow cooker or even just cooking in the oven.

[pkadare]

I'm with the others who have questioned why you'd want to do this when you've already got an Instant Pot but here you go:

sous vide chili - Google Search

[shify]

Not sure what is to gain by SV in this case. I have started using the Instant Pot for my Texas chili and it’s a game changer but have no reason to try the same in the SV

[rickgregory]

I think this is a solution in search of a problem.

The advantage of Sous vide is in precise temperature control. Chili doesnt benefit from that.

[Potkettleblack]

The problems, as I see them (having thought through this problem before).
1- The veg in the chili, even if it's just chile and onions, will want to cook at 182*F. And generally pretty short, like half an hour. The beef, or other meat, will not get any real benefit from being cooked at that temp, rather than just braised at 210 or so or pressure braised at 230 or so. It's all hot and wet, with the pressure cooker offering a time advantage.
2- There's no vent in SV. The onions in a chili will generally give off some gas when being cooked, which might make your bag float. Would require a large adjustment to the amount of liquid, moreso than the pressure cooker.

I think you could maybe make a case for sous viding the meat separately from everything else, preparing the chili base, and then combining at a later date, but I don't really think there's much edge to that. Even the toughest meat you'd want to use, brisket or short rib, would break down in the time in the pressure cooker. But, if you were determined, I think you'd prepare the chili base, including cooking it down, bag it with the meat, sous vide, and serve.

Even then, I don't think it will be as good as the pressure cooker or traditional cook method.

[MBMorgan]

For the most part, sous vide (at least as it applies to meat) is really only good for three (unless I'm forgetting something ) situations:

1. Safely pasteurizing something you want to cook to a "lower-than-safe" temperature without making anyone sick - Like medium rare hamburgers (I do it all the time ).
2. Tenderizing (and safely pasteurizing) something that would normally be as tough and inedible as shoe leather if you failed to cook it for the necessary amount of time in the sous vide hot tub - like ready-to-slice medium rare chuck roast or brisket.
3. Pre-cooking a whole bunch of stuff that you want to be able to serve quickly when the crowd arrives - Like a dozen medium or medium-rare steaks that are tender and safely pasteurized and are ready to sear&serve when your guests finally show up for dinner.

Anything else and you're really just attempting to drive nails with a screwdriver ... saw logs with a wet noodle ... etc., (you get the picture). That's not to say that sous vide won't eventually get the job done for your chili ... but as others have already pointed out, there are better (and likely more effective) ways to go about cooking chili.

[Potkettleblack]

For the most part, sous vide is really only good for three (unless I'm forgetting something ) situations:

1. Safely pasteurizing something you want to cook to a "lower-than-safe" temperature without making anyone sick - Like medium rare hamburgers (I do it all the time ).
2. Tenderizing (and safely pasteurizing) something that would normally be as tough and inedible as shoe leather if you failed to cook it for the necessary amount of time in the sous vide hot tub - like ready-to-slice medium rare chuck roast or brisket.
3. Pre-cooking a whole bunch of stuff that you want to be able to serve quickly when the crowd arrives - Like a dozen medium or medium-rare steaks that are tender and safely pasteurized and are ready to sear&serve when your guests finally show up for dinner.

Anything else and you're really just attempting to drive nails with a screwdriver ... saw logs with a wet noodle ... etc., (you get the picture). That's not to say that sous vide won't eventually get the job done for your chili ... but as others have already pointed out, there are better (and likely more effective) ways to go about cooking chili.

I think this is selling SV short by a bit.

Custards are simple in SV, and something that folks regularly screw up on Great British Bake Off. I dunno if those are the best home bakers in the UK or not, but none of them are incompetent, and many regularly break custards. You cannot break a custard in SV without actively trying to do so. The precision might fit with the pasteurizing things, but there are times when that precision comes easy with sous vide and more difficult with traditional cooking. Custards can range from flan to creme pat to SV egg bites, to pot de creme, and beyond. Nailing the right texture is much more easily accomplished with SV than with stovetop cooking.

Unique textures which I guess is covered under tenderizing. Med rare chuck roast/brisket/short ribs cannot be achieved in an edible texture in any other method.

[MBMorgan]

Yeah ... I probably should have qualified my post that I was focusing on SV as it applies to meat (I'm not much of a custard guy ... nor am I overly fond of hard or soft boiled eggs).

[rickgregory]

I'd argue that SV really shines in applications where precise temperature is desired. Want to recook medium rare steaks? Fine... you can do that and nail a perfect 133 if that's what you want.

For me, chili just doesn't hit that mark. It doesn't matter if the meat simmers at one temp vs another as long as it's a simmer (not a rolling boil, etc).

[Old Glory]

For me SV adds convenience. It hits the targeted temp and then can HOLD it there without overshooting. If you are reverse searing on a grill one distraction and you went from medium rare to medium....or worse.

[phrogpilot73]

I think if I was going to involve souse vide in my chili, it would be because I wanted to try a traditionally very tough cut of meat that had big bold flavor. Like beef cheeks or tongue. I would cook the beef separate from the chili, probably to medium or medium well, sear, cube/slice/pull and then stir into a completed batch of meat-free chili.

Too much work if you ask me.

[Old Glory]

Plus braising in the chili will do the same thing in less time.

[phrogpilot73]

Like I said, too much work. The only benefit to using sous vide in the method I described, is controlling the finished cook temp (medium rare/medium, etc) of the beef in a way that you can't braising it. That would literally be a shit-ton of work for little ROI.

[Phillipsdo]

So the final product did have very tender beef. The stew meat had some connective tissue that was fully broken down. My biggest mistake was I put too much salt in the final product. I tend to agree that it likely drug out a process needlessly.

[Mr. Bones]

Interestin experiment, appreciate yer doin th work, an sharin yer findins

Meat looks plenty tender, an succulent, I'd haveta say!!

Nice Job, all round!