Topic: Sous vide lamb tikka and chewy base

[PaulP]

Yesterday I had quite a marathon in the kitchen. I cooked some lamb tikka sous vide and made the Chewy Tikka 3 hour base (for the second time) then I made a curry.

First photo lamb in marinade in plastic bag. Note the jar of Mr Huda tikka paste. I wasn't sure how this would turn out so used the instant stuff rather than a blade type marinade.



Second photo shows the basic sous vide setup: A cheap rice cooker controlled by the Sous Vide Magic temp controller. Ignore the white elephant Panasonic bread maker!



The third photo shows the bag vacuum sealed. I put the bag into the freezer to make sure the marinade was frozen to stop it getting sucked into the vacuum sealer. I was a bit impatient and you can see how some marinade has worked it's way up the bag before it finally sealed. That was close!



The next photo show the chewy base on the go in my 17 litre stockpot:



The next photo shows a close up of the lamb in the water bath (rice cooker). You can see the temperature probe in the water.



Next is the base sauce ready to blend. You can see my huge blender and small dog:



I ended up with about 6.5 litres of base sauce:



The next photo shows the lamb taken out of the water bath before going into a conventional oven:



And the next photo shows the lamb after 15 mins in a hot oven:



I finally got to cook my curry:



The lamb tikka turned out quite well. Unfortunately all Tesco had was packs of pre-chopped lamb like I normally avoid. It was certainly tender and the tikka effect worked well but as is often the case with sous vide the meat was a little dry.

The base sauce tasted good. I made the mix powder according to chewy's spec and used the rajah madras gold curry powder that thomas.? kindly sent me and the garam masala that ifindforu sent me.

The curry was pretty good but I used 1 tablespoon of spice mix and will cut back next time.
It's good to be cooking curries again, I took a break of about 5 weeks.

Cheers,

Paul

[Tommy Timebomb]

Paul thanks for a great insight of this project mate.
I have been considering buying a vacuum sealer and that is a great tip of freezing the food before sealing it. I have read some reviews of these things and some claim to have a setting on them to add extra heat when freezing fluids etc.
What  type do you have and are the bags to be used bought from the manufactures only.
Just looked at google for a bit to get my head around sous vide.
Intresting post Paul.

[PaulP]

Thanks TT, I can't see my photos now, it looks like the imagehost server is not working. Maybe I broke it!

My vacuum sealer is this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-James-Quality-Vacuum-Machine/dp/B001HBE5Y8/ref=sr_1_1?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1339359979&sr=1-1

and I use the bags from the same company.

Cheers,

Paul

[curryhell]

I can't see your pics either Paul . And yes you appear to have broken the imagehost as well    :

[Tommy Timebomb]

My pics seem to of gone walkies aswell Paul... Have we broke something between us?

I'm off to research the Vacuum sealer link!

[PaulP]

Gutted about the photos.  They uploaded and displayed fine and were resized small enough.

Like you say TT it's not just my photos but all photos on that server. It probably won't get seen to until tomorrow at the soonest.

Cheers,

Paul

EDIT: Photos are back 

[curryhell]

The pics are back guys.  Very interesting report on the sous vide method Paul.  I like the look of your cooker (going green with envy)  Is it  a restaurant style range? Where did you get it?

[Stephen Lindsay]

That's also one mighty looking hand blender!!!

[colin grigson]

Interesting post Paul ... not necessarily something I would try myself but a good experiment none the less and great photos too , glad you're back on curries !!   

[PaulP]

The pics are back guys.  Very interesting report on the sous vide method Paul.  I like the look of your cooker (going green with envy)  Is it  a restaurant style range? Where did you get it?

Hi CH,

The cooker was in the house when I bought it about 4 years ago. It's a domestic Italian Smeg (!) 90 cm range cooker. It does have six rings which is handy as I like to use the front 3 rings together.
It would have cost about