What are you doing this weekend?

[Gameface]

Sous vide turkey breast is very good. It didn't turn turkey into some amazing thing that I've never imagined, but it was very tender, moist turkey breast.

I used what I think was a 40qt cooler and the ANOVA 800W precision cooker. It was nice having it in the kitchen instead of the garage. The unit was super quiet. I put 9lbs (2 x 4.5lb full breasts) of fridge temp turkey breast into the water bath and it dropped from 145F to 143.1, within 5min it was back to 144 and in less than 10 min back to 145. So it seemed to perform really well. Better than I would have expected.

I will use this technique again.

 

[LogGrad98]

How long did it take total? I'll throw 4 breasts on my smoker for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, at a low temp until the internal hits 150 then I hold it at 150 for about 20 minutes, which is long enough at temp to kill all the baddies. Of course brined it beforehand normally. Never had better turkey breast.

 

[Gameface]

3hrs in a 145F water bath and 10 min under broiler. I made 2 full breasts, each tied into a cylinder.

It was really very good but I suppose I was kind of expecting next level turkey and it was just better than most. I've done a brine and had some pretty amazing turkey. I can't say it was better, texturally and flavor, than this. But I'd eat either one for sure and depending on other factors it'd be easy for one to be better than the other on any given day.

So with turkey breast I'd say sous vide is a solid option. Not like thick pork chops where it's the absolute, no questions about it, best way to make them. Making perfect 2" or more pork chops is stupid easy using sous vide where I've found it to be very difficult any other way. Just too hard to cook the center without overcooking a huge part of the outer edge. With sous vide it's perfect edge to center. So where that's the case with oven cooking a turkey using sous vide has advantages. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing (like you) other methods can deliver pretty phenomenal results as well. Sous vide just offers a huge margin for error while delivering very wonderful meat. No brining of the turkey but results every bit as good.

Sous vide often takes a lot of time. But it's completely hands-off time. You get the water to temp, you vacuum seal your meat, drop it in the water bath, come back a few hours later and brown the outside quickly before serving. I guess a big part of it is the ease of getting excellent results without having to perfect a technique. That could be a turn-off for some. It's not really a skill or experience based process.

 

[LogGrad98]

I've been interested in sous vide for a while now, especially when entertaining. I'm thinking about getting a volume set up where I could drop like a dozen steaks a few hours before a party, then remove them and chuck them on a stack of hot coals for a quick 700 degree sear, then serve. Right now what I do in that case is fire up the smoker, get a dozen or so steaks on it at a very low temp, like 150, and let the meat slowly come up to temp with a couple probe thermometers in a couple of the steaks. When they hit about 120 internal I dial back the heat, cutting nearly all the oxygen, then start pulling steaks and cooking to order. A quick hot sear leaves them rare, add just a bit more time to get to medium rare, etc. on up the scale. It works pretty well but prepping the smoker can be a pain, and is a messier clean up. But the results are usually phenomenal and even eating last I still get my steak perfect medium rare.

 

[Gameface]

A major issue you'd have with that is cooking steaks to different donenesses. You'd quickly lose a lot of the benefits taking a med-rare steak to med or med-well, but of course, the people getting their steal med-well probably don't appreciate the differences anyway.

It'd be a much less labor intensive way to go.

You can use one of the standard sous vide cookers, like the Anova models, in very large containers if that container is an insulated cooler. If I was looking to make one for the type of of application you're talking about (making 20 steaks) I'd build my own. You could get a good 1200W element and connect it to whatever type vessel you'd like. If you wanted to get really crazy with it you could do a 30A 240V outlet and run a 5500W element.