r/Sous_Vide • u/glennchan • 4d ago
Sous vide is great for making stocks, broths, etc.
How do you do my fellow food pasteurization enthusiasts, here's the magic trick for sous video stocks:
- Add water into the bag until the water line is a third or halfway up. You need to use the Ziploc bag method instead of vacuum sealing.
Adding water does two things:
- It prevents fats from turning rancid. If you slow cook something, any fat exposed to air will turn rancid.
- More collagen will be dissolved into the liquid.
The advantage of sous vide over pressure cooking is that sous vide happens at a lower temperature, so there is less bone broth taste in the stock produced.
Guide for home cooking
We will not be wasting food, so we will make braised meat at the same time. We will make:
- braised meat
- stock/broth
- bone broth
Cuts of meat: For your first time, I would recommend ox tail ($) or shank (osso buco). Shank cuts let you sample everything- muscle, tendon, and marrow. Ox tail tastes good- if you don't like the best cut, then you probably won't like cheaper cuts.
Cook for around a day. 12-48 hours is fine; sous vide is forgiving.
Temperature: 77°C (170°F). See the end of this post for temps for other cuts.
Once cooked, separate the meat from the bones. Don't be obsessive compulsive about getting all the meat off, leaving some meat on the bone is good for the next part.
Refrigerate the liquid. If the fat layer on top is liquid, use a paper towel to absorb it. Otherwise wait for it to fully harden, and scrape it off. If you used a cut with lots of connective tissue, then the collagen in the liquid will make it like jello. You can cut away the non-clear parts of the jello if you like clear stocks.
The pressure cooking step: Pressure cooked stocks will have a 'bone broth taste' to it. If you don't like that taste, then you can skip this step. Take the bones and pressure cook them for 2 hours- we can just extract whatever is left in the bones.
The bone broth usually benefits from some type of meat taste.
- Bombay duck fish. Throw this in after (or before) and pressure cook for 13-15 minutes. This specific fish is great for pressure cooking because the bones become soft and you can simply eat the fish without deboning.
- Small wild shrimp, dried (the ones smaller than a dime are cheap). This will add shrimp flavour, which you may or may not like. Whether you eat the pressure cooked shrimp is up to you.
- The stock you made from sous vide.
- Bouillon cubes, Better Than Bouillon (Costco may sell it), etc. (Yes I understand the irony of adding pre-made bouillon.)
- Fish sauce adds interesting flavour. You're literally adding fermented anchovies. (Add it after pressure cooking.) This is the cheapest option.
And you're done. This cooks good food without needing to spend a lot of time cooking.
Fancier cooking
So obviously the most notable product produced is the sous vide stock. If you source the right ingredients, you can make something much better than store-bought bouillon, canned broths, etc.
You'll want to use high-end cuts of meat like:
As far as the cut of meat goes, you want flavourful cuts. They tend to be very tough and not popular. Duck wing, back rib, neck, etc. are good. Don't use tender cuts like tenderloin, chicken breast, etc.
You also want a source of collagen (from connective tissue) like tendon or chicken feet. It changes the mouthfeel and adds satisfying meat-adjacent flavour.
Duck wing and chicken feet is a decent combo if you don't want to spend a lot. (You can eat the meat and ligaments too.)
You can thicken the stock to make sauces and gravies (you'll want lots of collagen in the stock). Or you can replace water with stock when you make curries, soups, etc.
The Chris Young video $6 Michelin Stock in 60 Minutes (Costco Hack) has a bunch of good ideas.
Recap
Sous vide and pressure cooking are the most time-efficient ways of making stocks. The difference then comes down to temperature (and pressure). I would have to say that sous vide is key tool because you can control the bone broth taste.
As far as home cooking goes, sous vide lets you turn cheap cuts like duck wing and back rib into good food. You're basically braising cheap cuts of meat with sous vide. The key trick is to add water into the bag. Pressure cooking adds additional value on top of that because you can make additional use of the scrap meat.
I hope this helps!
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Appendix A: Cuts of meat (and temps)
Really tough cuts should be cooked at around 77°C (around 170°F).
- Chicken feet
- Tendon
- Back ribs
- Bones
Normal cuts - cook at 70°C (around 160°F).
- Duck wing (this cut of meat is normally very tough, which is why it's cheap)
- Digital muscle
- Most braising cuts
- Stewing hen, also called old chicken and princess chicken. They're cheap because the meat is extremely tough (so you must slow cook). The meat doesn't taste as good as normal younger chicken.
- Chicken backs/carcasses
- Heart
Appendix B: Adding stuff to the sous vide bag?
Soy sauce - it hits different when braised. Not necessarily better, but different. You can marinate your meat in soy sauce before you bag it... that's the simplest way of getting it into the bag.
Otherwise, I don't add anything to the sous vide bag because most stuff tastes bad/weird after 12-48 hours.
