testing waters

I recently received a suggestion from Chris at Bluezoo to 'check' my plastic vacuum sealer bags to make sure that they weren't imparting a 'plastic' flavor on our food.  The executive chef at his hotel had the incredible opportunity to take a 4 day class with Bruno Goussault at Cuisine Solutions.  Among the many great things that were discussed, Goussault said that people often purchase the wrong kind of bag inadvertently, and it isn't neutral in relation to the integrity of the flavor of the food within.

So, what's his suggestion for testing your bags...

Seal some water in a sous-vide bag, cook it in a water bath, and taste it.  I left some of the water in the bottle and chilled both to the same temp after the test for a side-by-side comparison.  Luckily, our bags are fine.

It makes a lot of sense, though.  Some sous-vide dishes take lots of time, attention, and hold expensive ingredients.  Why would you cook them in something that adds the flavor of a PVC pipe to it?

This brings up another good question about the Food Saver type sealers that a lot of restaurants use (since big commercial units are out of many independent restaurant budgets).  Are those bags ok for actual sous-vide cooking?

Comments

[Mark Swain]

Bags,

I will have to give your water test a try...but....

I'm a home Sous Vide cook and have used a foodsaver for a couple of years and have never tasted a PVC or plastic taste when using their bags. They are boil bags that go up to 212F. They claim you can vacuum store and reheat all in the bag.

I now have a Multivac chamber vacuum sealer and I use the Cryovac boil bags that are also heat safe up to 212 range (I rarely cook over 67C).

Cryovac calls these their cook and chill bags. It actually took me a while to find a good vender so If your looking to get some these bags a company called Plascon makes them to order in any size. Just a tip on bag size. I ordered a case of 10x12 bags, 12x12 bags, and a case 8x10 bags. I have used the smaller bags way more than the larger ones as they work better for single portion sous vide. Also a better seal for longer cook times. The large ones are however good for storage that is if your allowed to store anything in bags.

===SWAIN:::_----

[Richie]

Foodsaver bags dont work so hot....they usually will break, and in my experience, do impart a plastic flavor. We're using some German bags that can be exposed to temps beyond boiling. Santuaire sell them.

[Mark Swain]

Hmmm..

German bags. Sounds interesting. Temps beyond boiling? Do you mean since the bags can go hotter, maybe like fatta papper, they don't give off the plastic taste?

I'm always on the lookout for better stuff. Who makes the German bags, is it sealed air by any chance?

Here is the bags I'm using now. Has anyone had issues with this type of Cryovac plastic? They are rated up to 210F.

http://www.sealedair.com/products/food/foodservice/c5000.html

Also I'm not defending the FoodSaver bags by any means but I've never had one break in two years. And the bags are only rated up to about 70-80C. Not the best but overall the FoodSaver was a good learning step for me before buying the massive and expensive Multivac.

Anyhow...if someone has a better bag please share as I do need to order more soon. Thanks for the help in advance.

Thanks....SWAIN::_----

[Dany]

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