Sous Vide in Cryo from butcher

[bmillin]

So I got lazy..had some cubed rump steaks that just didn't cook up well. They came with a 1/2 cow. Threw one in last night and left it in the cryo bag it came in for 24 hours to see if it would tenderize. It came out looking like it had a heavy layer of pepper on it - not black, but almost black. IIRC the chuck I did for a loooong time came out the same way but it had a lot of pepper on it and I attributed the color to that at the time. The chuck was awesome, by the way.

What am I missing? I just figured I would pull it out and throw it in a ziploc with some salt and an ice bath, then grill it. Thawing to get out of the cryo seemed like an unnecesary step.

[fzxdoc]

I've never sous vided meat in their cryo bags because I don't know what those bags are made of. And I've never had a meat turn black pepper-black from sous viding. You may be eating part of that bag on your meat, I'm guessing.

Have you ever had meat turn peppery black when using ZipLoc or sous vide bags? If not (and I haven't, but YMMV) you may not want to trust the black stuff.

Here's what ChefSteps, the developers of the Joule say about bags:

According to the latest research that we're aware of, the safest plastics are food-grade high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene, and polypropylene. Virtually all sous vide bags are made from these plastics...

...other plastics that may be in your kitchen, such as inexpensive, bulk plastic wraps (still commonly made from polyvinyl chloride or polyvinylidene chloride), can contain harmful plasticizers that have been shown to leach into fatty foods such as cheese and meat. We do not recommend using these, ever.

So the safest thing is to contact the butcher or the manufacturer to verify that the bag material used is food safe for sous vide use.

On one of the sous vide sites I go to, someone did just that, asking the manufacturer whether their cryovac bagged boneless turkey tenderloins could be placed directly into a sous vide pot and got this response:

The plastic packaging that our Shady Brook Turkey Tenderloins comes in does not meet the requirements/standards for heating, and could be very toxic if used for sous vide cooking

So it never hurts to ask, I guess.

Kathryn

[DaveD]

And not only what Kathryn said, very often there are small tears or holes in the shipping packaging that may not be readily apparent, but which the SV bathwater will find in a heartbeat... I would never do this personally.

[Attjack]

Autopsies Show Microplastics in Major Human Organs

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/...man%20cadavers.

[WillTravelForFood]

Autopsies Show Microplastics in Major Human Organs

you're not kidding!

[jfmorris]

I personally am with the others on this - I don't think I would trust that plastic as food safe. I always take food out of the original cryovac, and even if frozen you can do that by cutting the plastic and running a little water over it in the sink to get it loose. No need to thaw the meat all the way.

I would personally toss a piece of meat that turned black in the sous vide without spices on it. Any meat I have EVER sous vide'd looks pale and pasty aside from any spices stuck on the surface.

The question is - did the other piece of meat you say did this also get cooked in the cryo?