I love using the sous vide for several reasons:
- It’s basically start it and forget it.
- It uses so little electricity.
- It generates very little heat and I could easily take it into the garage and use it in there.
- There’s no mess!
I don’t use it as much as I should. There’s nothing I’ve made with it that wasn’t amazing but, I just don’t think about it as much as I should.
A couple of days ago I saw a post about someone using the sous vide for pulled pork. When we go to our favorite BBQ restaurant, I always, 100% of the time, get pulled pork. It’s the reason we have a smoker! I love pulled pork.
The recommendations were to use the sous vide for 24 hours at 165 degrees, then smoke it for about 3 hours just to get the smoked flavor. It is supposed to be perfect for pulled pork.
I mentioned it to Chad and he said he always does his that way but he smokes his first for about three hours, then puts it in the sous vide for 24 hours because he’s having to do it around his work schedule and he said it’s the best.
Tuesday I took everything out of one of our older freezers, defrosted it and turned it back on yesterday. I found a pork butt in there and put it in the fridge. Then Vince came home from shopping and said he had bought a pork butt. It was not frozen so I stuck the one from the fridge back in the freezer.
Yesterday I seasoned the pork butt, put it in a bag and vacuum sealed it. I put it in the sous vide at noon (Tuesday). My pork butt was boneless and fairly small so I figured 22 hours would have been sufficient but we wanted to eat around 3 p.m. yesterday (Wednesday) so I left it cooking about 23 hours.
I poured off the liquid that had cooked out into a jar and stuck it in the fridge so the grease cap would harden and I could scrape it off. I’ll make gravy or use the liquid to season beans. Sous vide enthusiasts call the liquid that cooks out . . “purge”. I don’t . . I don’t really like that word so I just call it the liquid that cooks out.
I took the pork butt straight out of the bag and put it in the smoker for about 2-1/2 hours. This is how it came out.
It was so perfect!! When I cook a pork butt totally in the smoker, I get good results but sometimes the meat doesn’t reach the required temp at the time it should. There’s a formula. X hours at X temp . . depending on the weight of the butt and if you want it pulled or sliced. I don’t like it sliced! It’s almost impossible, even with all the calculating, to get a pork butt done at a certain time using only the smoker.
Using the sous vide, I could have the perfect smoked pork butt on the table at any given time I wished, with no question about whether it would be done at the exact time needed.
My next challenge with the sous vide . . I’m going to research a bit and see if I can make Canadian Bacon using the sous vide and the smoker.
patti says
after you season the meat, when you vaccum seal the pork do you take all of the air out? and if so, do you keep it sucked down when in the sous vide? i’m getting close to trying sous vide in my IP if i can find a hack. my model doesn’t have a sous vide button.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Vacuum sealing should mean vacuuming the air out and then sealing the bag so no more air gets in. The bag, with the meat in it is immersed in water that’s pre-heated to 165 and it stays at that temp for 24 hours. I can’t help you with the IP . . have never tried it in there.
Bo says
Can you provide a link to the sous vide unit you are using?