What about sous vide vegetables?

I love doing endive sous vide. Halve the endive and put in bag with olive oil, salt, sugar, and a few sprigs of thyme.

I've just started experimenting with vegetables in the sous vide. Here's what I've tried so far:

carrots
green beans
sweet potato
asparagus
corn on the cob

I didn't add any seasoning or oil in the pouches just so that I could see how the flavors would turn out. Pretty much all of them turned out excellent and very flavorful. The asparagus turned out a bit soft and had a dull green color, but overall still tasted good.

Well,

To be honest, we were a bit disappointed. We were just going to do the broccoli spears, but I remembered we had some lovely young carrots, so we scraped 4 of those, roll cut them and added them to the bag. We had a lot of trouble keeping the temperature about right on top of the stove (the steak was in my proper water bath) but probable were able to maintain 81° to 84°C for the whole time. In the event I gave it 1¼ hours. The vegetables were only JUST edible, being hardly even al dente. I think an hour and a half at 85° might have been better. The flavour of the broccoli was OK, though hardly anything to write home about. We reckon that cooking the carrots in a little chicken stock in the microwave gives a better flavour than using sous-vide.

We will try again with carrots, though, because it could be very useful as a way of separating the moment of cooking from serving and eating them.

The steak was good, but perhaps less tender than I expected. It was also cooked to what I'd call medium, despite setting the 'stat for 53°C


Bert & Johnny, did either of you note time and/or temperature for your vegetables, by any chance?

I've cooked all vegetables at 85°C (185°F) for around 35-50 minutes, with exception to sweet potatoes at 80°C (175°F). This was all done in my Sousvide Supreme Demi oven.

Aside from the convenience, IMO vegetables are neither special nor worth the effort. Flavourwise, seems much the same as conventional. I've had similar issues with texture and think at 'recommended' times and temps they are for too firm for my liking.

I have cook-frozen a few bags of things and the convenience of lobbing them in the water bath for 20 mins at the end of a cook cycle is quite good, particularly with some large gatherings.

I am otherwise standing firm and steaming or roasting veg.

Thanks very much for your answer, Bert. I'll try again with the carrots a bit hotter then, but they'll need to be a good bit better than the last time to justify the hassle as compared with microwaving a few minutes.

> Davey, It seems as if we're in broad agreement (so far).

I have found that root type vegetables (carrots, turnips, etc.) do better when cooked above 183 degrees. I cooked carrots with frozen orange juice, a spoon of brown sugar and a small piece of ginger for 4 hours. They were wonderful. Our vegetarian friend was here for dinner the next night and he put them on his pizza. They were actually quite good.

I tried out rossinhawaii's carrot recipe and 4 hours later, it turned out great. Thanks for tips!

I would have to say that I have cooked a variety of veggies and without a doubt they have been the best things I have made sous vide. The best were the red potatoes (cooked with some butter, salt, thyme, and black pepper for 1.5 hours at 84C and then seared off in a pan with some EVOO), the carrots (45 min at 84C with some butter, sugar, and salt), and the yellow squash (harvested from the garden, cubed, sous vide with butter and tarragon for 30 min at 84C). For the root veggies the key was to cut them evenly and into small pieces. The squash was in bigger pieces and ended up with the most amazing flavor and texture. For me, definitely worth the effort (which is minimal).

I did some turnips sv with just a bit of salt & butter, and they were without a doubt the best I've ever had in my life! I cooked them at 185 for 50 minutes, sliced and bagged.