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Botulism and Vacuum Sealing
Plastics Leaching Chemicals
Concerns about cooking food at low temperatures can be justified, and it has to be done properly. If food is left for more than a few hours at danger zone temperatures, bacteria can grow and result in food-borne malady.
And what about all that plastic?
Food does no longer need to be fully pasteurized in order to be considered safe for most human beings (pregnant women and those with immune issues being two major exceptions). If it did, we could never enjoy a medium-rare steak or an over-easy fried egg. So while sous-vide cooked food isnt always fully pasteurized, neither are many foods cooked in more traditional ways.
You desire to be sure that your food is safe to eat, regardless of how you cook it. This is no more difficult with sous vide cooking than with any other system. You just have to preserve your food out of the Danger Zone. If you do that, it will be safe to eat.
But plastic is a complex substance, and it may still have potentially harmful chemicals in it that can break down under high heat conditions.
Also, all sous vide bags--at least from reputable manufacturers--are BPA-free, so even if they did break down, they wouldnt leach harmful chemicals into your food. (But they wont break down, so no worries there.)
1. Cook food at 131F and above, giving it enough time for the internal temp to reach this point and keep there for at least 30 minutes. Use a probe thermometer to be sure the internal temp has been reached.
Yet some human beings have misgivings about cooking sous vide. Theyre concerned that cooking sous vide isn't safe. Using low temperatures to cook food seems like you're just asking for food-borne illnesses.
In fact, there are no known cases of botulism from sous vide cooking.
Reusable Bags
Concern #3: Plastic
If you combine food sealed in an oxygen-free environment with cooking at warm-but-no longer-hot temperatures, aren't you just asking for botulism?
1. Low temperatures
2. Vacuum sealing, and
3. Using plastic bags for cooking.
Here's an excerpt from a cooking forum discussion about it botulism as it relates to sous vide cooking:
Cooking in plastic bags is maybe the least attractive thing about the sous vide system. After all, aren't we all attempting to cut down on our plastic use so as to reduce waste and decrease our carbon footprint? Of course we are!
Again, there can be cause for concern. If youre going to use plastic bags for cooking food, you have to know what youre doing. But once you educate yourself, youll to find that using plastic for sous vide is actually quite safe--as long as you employ the correct plastics. And one could even do it in such a way that you reduce your plastic use rather than increase it.
Also of concern is the safety of cooking in plastic bags. The biggest concern with using plastic bags is that when they're heated to certain temps, they can leach harmful chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA).
For More Information
In fact, these are the three primary safety concerns with sous vide cooking that seem to get brought up on food forums and modernist cooking blogs over and over again:
I have been a fan of sous vide for several years now. Along with some of the world's best chefs and scientists, and founded on the most compelling learn, I believe that sous vide cooking is safe. I encourage you to do your own learn and draw your own conclusions. I hope this article will help with that.
In reality, the chances of contracting a food-borne malady from sous vide cooked food is about the same as from any other cooking system, as long as you follow danger zone precautions. And as with all cooking, safe handling is crucial: wash your hands before handling food, avoid cross-contamination, wash food before using, and preserve your work area clean.
3. If you cook at 140F or above--such as for chicken, pork, and tough cuts of meat--you pretty much don't have anything to worry about as long as the entire piece of food reaches temps of 140F or above.
For more info on vacuum sealing, check out my article Why Every Kitchen Needs a Food Vacuum Sealer.
The Danger Zone is the temperature range at which bacteria grow most rapidly on food and cause it to spoil. This temperature range is 39F-130F (4C-54C).
This explains the state of affairs very clearly. So if you follow the rules for the danger zone, botulism is totally unlikely to be an issue with sous vide cooking.
There is undoubtedly proper truth to improper sous vide cooking and botulism. Clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic organism - it grows when there isn't oxygen - like in sous vide vacuums and canned goods.The threat is that sous vide cooks every single without oxygen and at temperatures so close to the perfect reproduction rate for the organism. If you cook it a little lower than suggested, you could be creating a perfect place to reproduce. Clostridium botulinum dies around 126 F - so most sous vide won't go lower than 130 F. The opponents state that the temperatures in standard are far too low and if we were cooking for a few seconds, it would be. Luckily, pasteurization is a function of temperature and time. This is element of the sous vide magic. Bacterial death is because of the warmth and time - if you have a high heat you may only need it for seconds. If you have lower, but sufficient heat, then as long as you cook it long enough (see suggested reading below) - then one could still pasteurize the food. Sous vide usally cooks foods for hours and hours - either for taste and/or pasteurization sake. (excerpted from: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/18632/are-the-claims-legitim...)
Food should no longer be left at danger zone temperatures for more than 2 hours. (And yes, this includes thawing frozen meat, which is safest to do in a refrigerator.)
And isnt heated plastic supposed to be terrible? Cant it leach nasty chemicals into our food?
Concern #2: Vacuum Sealing
Here's why: all sous vide is done at temperatures below boiling, and boiling temp (212F) is the temp at which plastics begin to break down.
Also, here's a brief article from Modernist Cuisine about plastics and sous vide. This article is from 2013, so it also may no longer contain the newest info. But in all of the learn I've done, I have no longer observed any indisputable concerns with cooking food in BPA-free plastic at sous vide temperatures. And I believe that the folks behind Modernist Cuisine, who are scientists first and food lovers second, would be up-to-date on the concerns surrounding sous vide cooking.
Sous vide--sealing food in plastic bags and cooking it in a constant-temperature water bath--is becoming a more and more popular cooking system. Its reputation for making perfect steaks, meltingly tender pork butt, and juicy chicken breast has made millions of human beings eager to try it. They haven't been disappointed.
What Is The Danger Zone?
So in reality, using sous vide bags does no longer really add that much to our overall carbon footprint. But if you're concerned about it, as I become, there are some things one could do.
Vacuum sealing creates an anaerobic environment, which is the surroundings preferred by one of the most toxic and dangerous food-borne pathogens known to man: botulism.
There's no getting around it: if you're gonna sous vide, you're gonna use plastic. But using excellent practices CAN minimize your plastic use.
That's easy. Just follow these rules:
Reusable bags are new on the scene, but they be offering a fantastic solution to the plastic problem. These bags can be used thousands of times and are dishwasher safe. Expect to see more and more of these as sous vide cooking earnings popularity. (Some are already for sale on Amazon for a very reasonable price.)
In precis: food should be stored at temperatures below 39F, cooked at temperatures of 130F and above, and no longer left at anything in between for more than 2 hours.
How justified are these concerns? Let's look at every single one and see what we give you.
Once again, that depends mostly on how careful you are about danger zone issues. If youre careful about food handling, have a clean working environment, and make sure the foods core temperature reaches 131F or above, your threat of getting botulism from vacuum-sealed food is nearly zero.
Here's what I've done to reduce my plastic use in sous vide cooking:
Having said that, nearly all food-grade plastic is now BPA-free, particularly plastics designed for food storage and microwave heating purposes. This includes vacuum sealer bags and zip-type food storage bags: every single are BPA-free and every single are considered safe for sous vide use.
Ways to Reduce Plastic Use When Cooking Sous Vide
I use the bags for storage after cooking if there are leftovers. I always try to seal as close to the top of the bag as imaginable so I can re-seal it for this purpose. You must be sure to chill quickly and make sure the food stays below 40F until ready to eat again--differently the anaerobic environment could be a problem.
For this explanation why, it's crucial that home chefs understand what the danger zone is and how to avoid it when cooking with sous vide.
How Do I Make Sure My Sous-Vide-Cooked Food Is Safe from the Danger Zone?
Concern #1: Low Temperature Cooking
The truth is, whether you employ sous vide or no longer, you are going to struggle through a large number of plastic in the kitchen. Almost all of the food we buy comes in some form of plastic wrap or container. We freeze food in plastic, we store food in plastic bags and containers. Plastic wrap, plastic bags, Tupperware, and Rubbermaid are all parts of pretty much everyone's kitchen landscape.
I use the same bag for freezing as I do for cooking. When I freeze meat, I pre-season so it's ready to just pop into the sous vide for a couple of hours. (Bonus: This also hugely simplifies meal prep!) Now, some human beings say it can toughen meat to freeze it in a bag with salt, but I haven't noticed any issues with it. If you do, just salt it after the sous vide cook and before completing.
When imaginable, I use mason jars for sous vide. This doesnt work for many foods because the water has to reach as much surface area as imaginable. However, it's imaginable for making foods like yogurt and creme brulee, which every single cook really well sous vide. Eggs are also great for sous vide: they come in their own hermetically sealed package deal, so they don't require any container at all.
Here's a great website online with a brief video about sous vide and plastics. This is a scientific site, and it also goes into some aspect about courses of plastics and what to know about them. This is from 2012, so it's a few years old, but still excellent info.
That's it; that's all you really need to do to avoid food-borne malady from sous vide cooking.
Foods most prone to bacterial growth at danger zone temps encompass meat, seafood, eggs, sauces, raw sprouts, and cooked vegetables, beans, and pasta.
If that's a concern for me, then why am I no longer worried about using plastic bags in a sous vide cooker?
2. Or, if you cook food below 131F (such as salmon, which is going to be dry and overcooked at 131F), be sure to no longer leave it in more than 2 hours.
Botulism is certainly imaginable under anaerobic, low-temperature conditions. However, if you follow the precautions for avoiding danger zone issues, then you are most maybe safe from botulism, as well.
I re-use bags when imaginable. Sometimes bags dont get terribly dirty, so theyre easy to wash, dry, and re-use. I do this with vacuum bags and food storage bags. If a bag had raw meat in it, or something sticky that doesnt wash out easily, I throw it. But I re-use bags that are easy to wash out.
People have gotten very savvy about this in recent years. Theyve stopped using plastic containers in the microwave or re-using plastic containers for food storage. Many have even stopped using plastic water bottles because they can degrade over time, especially if left too long in the sun.
