Air Sous Vide Question - Safe to Cook Frozen?

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hawknoah

Assistant Cook
Joined
Nov 28, 2022
Messages
3
Location
Frederick, MD
Good morning,

I'm new to this forum but I'm guessing someone here might have an answer or thought on this subject, since I can't find this addressed anywhere else.

I have a Frigidaire Gallery electric wall oven with the Air Sous Vide feature, which I've been enjoying greatly and the recipes for traditional sous vide under water have all turned out great using the oven's air sous vide feature.

I know you can safely cook frozen steaks/chops/etc through traditional sous vide by adding 25% to the cooking time. What I'm trying to figure out is whether it's safe to cook frozen items through the Air Sous Vide method (when properly vacuum sealed, of course), or is this only safe to do through the water method? It strikes me that defrosting frozen items in water seems to be considered safer (I think?) than letting them just sit out at room temp, so I'm wondering if there may be a difference safety-wise.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the matter.
 
Welcome to DC. I have never heard of air sous vide. I don't want to award a guess. I have concerns that since water is MUCH quicker in heat transfer than air, it could be an issue.
 
Thanks for your reply. That was basically my concern too really, although you expressed it better. Maybe I should err on the side of not trying it, if no one can vouch that it's safe.

As far as air sous vide, it's a relatively new feature being added to ovens. Here are some articles that talk about it:

This is Lowes' link to the oven I got that offers this feature. I can tell you it works extremely well on the things I tried: steaks- sirloin, New York strip, tomahawk/cowboy type ribeye, center cut pork chops, and I even tried hamburgers.
 
Welcome to Discuss Cooking.

You mentioned cooking steaks and chops from frozen, using conventional water sous-vide, by adding 25% to the time. This seems to imply that it is smaller pieces of meat that you know are safe to do this with. So, if it is smaller pieces of meat, they aren't going to take a long time to defrost in cold water. My guess is that the amount of time to defrost them in water wouldn't be much more than that extra 25% of cooking time. If it were me, until I had a reliable source telling me that it was safe, I would stick to defrosting the meat before cooking it by air sous-vide.
 
The safe zone for sous vide is actually a combination of time & temperature. As long as you are working at temps above 128-130, holding it there long enough will pasteurize it.

There are 2 experts on this topic, Jason Logsdon and Doug Baldwin. Both have written books on the topic, and both have internet & facebook presences. I hesitate to put out any specific numbers because I am not a food safety expert, but they are. Look them up on the internet or in your library for a definitive answer.

By the way, I have an oven that cooks sous vide without the water bath (the APO), but I've never heard it called Air Sous Vide. Mine works with steam.
 
My Frigidaire (and the essentially similar rebranded Electrolux) oven can work with steam but you have to add water to the base of the oven for this to work, so this must not be the principle by which its "Air Sous Vide" works, since it doesn't call for the water to do this. I think Air Sous Vide is just putting a new name for something many ovens have long had the capacity to do, but it certainly caught my attention.

I was wondering if the temp was holding at 130 or more for pasteurization, then it might be safe to cook frozen. I will look into the experts you mention to see if they can shed some light on my question. Thanks for the resource and the thoughtful replies.
 

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