Air Sous Vide

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frankcard

Assistant Cook
Joined
May 16, 2023
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4
Location
Florida
I have a new LG oven with Air Sous Vide. I've been cooking Sous Vide in water for a decade. When I removed a steak after 90 mins at 135, my instead read thermometer read the meat as 110 degrees. By all accounts this is dangerous. I've never had to test meat temp from a water bath before. I'm trying to contact LG but that's like pulling teeth. ANyone Help? Anyone with LG contacts?
 
Hi frank and Welcome to DC. Sorry I don't even have a water Sous Vide, with your post I've only just heard of Air Sous Vide. So all that to say I can't really help you, but I do agree, that is NOT a good temperature.
Also is 90 minutes a normal length of time for what you want?

I'm sure someone will be along soon to hopefully help.

I did google a bit but only LG seems to be answering any of the questions being posted there. Are there other manufacturers of Air Sous Vide Ovens?
 
The BIG difference between "air sous vide" and actual sous vide is that water is FAR superior to air for heat transfer. If you can do a chicken breast in sous vide in an hour, it would take much longer to do it with air SV.
 
Didn't someone here get a fancy oven that could do a bunch of things, like regular oven, steam bake, and air sous vide? Was it @Silversage ? I think it was in the past year.
 
Didn't someone here get a fancy oven that could do a bunch of things, like regular oven, steam bake, and air sous vide? Was it @Silversage ? I think it was in the past year.
Yeah, that would be me. It's the Anova Precision Oven, aka the APO. I LOVE it!

That said, safe sous vide cooking is a relationship between time and temperature. The lower the temp at which you hold the food, the longer it takes to reach safe pasteurization. There is a floor, and I am pretty sure that 100F is too low to pasteurized at any length, but you would have to check food safety charts for that.

When you use an oven instead of a water bath, the control is what's called 'wet bulb temperature'. Although I do it, I'm not sure I understand it enough to explain it. Usually, I still put my food in a bag and put that on the oven rack. When set to 100% steam, it works in the same time frame as a traditional water bath.

When you use the bagless method, there are 2 big differences. 1. It's usually necessary to use a probe thermometer to alert you when the food reaches temp. 2. Often, you can set the oven for a slightly higher temp than the target, which cuts the cooking time down.

It does work well - I'm just not sure of the mechanics. I cook beef to about 125F all the time. Seafood varies between 120 - 135, depending. I tend to like my food less cooked than average.

The APO does so much more than just sous vide. It is an oven, a convection oven, a steam oven, an air fryer, a dehydrator, a broiler, both a bag and bagless sous vide, a slow cooker, etc.
 
THanks for the replies. The rub here is that LG have boldly claimed to have cracked the temperature control via their Air Sous Vide oven. I'm sure I'm following the simple instructions to a tee! I am placing the chicken in the bag and vacuum sealing as I do with water. I am placing it on the right shelf level. I am not opening the door at any point until the end cooking time. Having cooked sous vide in water for so long with virtually no issues, this is concerning. I am now in communication with LG and will share findings. The oven has been out for a few years but I can find few articles or test reviews on it, apart from promotional. Sous Vide cooking is awesome but requires science to be applied correctly through time and temp. Any one of those goes wrong and you can have serious health consequences.
 
I have had NO problem with the Anova Oven. You might want to search facebook of an LG oven user group. They should be more helpful to your specific product.
 
I have a new LG oven with Air Sous Vide. I've been cooking Sous Vide in water for a decade. When I removed a steak after 90 mins at 135, my instead read thermometer read the meat as 110 degrees. By all accounts this is dangerous. I've never had to test meat temp from a water bath before. I'm trying to contact LG but that's like pulling teeth. ANyone Help? Anyone with LG contacts?
Sous vide is a different way of getting to "safe". It works with time and temperature. There are lots of "charts" available to help with this...but using a recipe helps too. The idea is that what it takes to "kill" off the bad stuff, if you will. It may "die" at 135, instantly...but it may also be killed at 110 held for X time...maybe 90 mintes is the key -- I do NOT know, just using the numbers you have above.

One of the nice things about Sous Vide is that once it has reached that "safe zone" time, one can leave the item at the lower temp for a longer period of time, without the risk of over-cooking it.

Does that help?
 
OK, I have found the source of the problem and to be fair to LG, a large part of this is USER ERROR (me !!).

In the manual, there are two sections together and appearing as one section (as the pages overlap) and this is my "excuse" for misreading these instructions. Though I'm still a little annoyed!

The FIRST section is instructions for changing a default (ON) setting (CONVERSION) that ONLY applies to AIR BAKE and AIR CONVECTION. This will subtract 25 degrees F' in those modes because they are assuming most people haven't used a convection over before. So if you set it to 450 per a recipe, it actually cooks at 425 since convection cooks faster. I have had convection for over 35 years so turned it off but the next section immediately following, for "calibrating" the oven, seem to be related, it wasn't.

This SECOND section describes how to ADJUst (add or subtract) degrees based on whether your oven is too hot/cold. i.e. it's to CALIBRATE the oven which to be honest, I have never had to do or even worry about. When I first used the SOUS VIDE option at 130 for steak, it came out after 2 hours at about 110. I freaked out and thought something was wrong. After talking to LG and realizing these 2 settings are NOT related and CALIBRATION does apply to ALL oven cook settings, I have found a +10 degree calibration seems to give me the right sous vide temperature. I went through a lot of cheap chicken meat to get to this "number" but feel I still need to play with it lest I let done friends at a dinner party if it decides to hiccup!

Overall, I think it's a little bit nuts, that for a $1700 oven, LG recommend (they did to me over support chat), that I buy a thermocoupler to correctly CALIBRATE the oven.

Time will tell if this is a 'shxt' investment. I like bleeding edge tech but this seems a little backwards now. I am sure I'll figure it out but if this helps other LG'ers, then good.
 
This was cooked in the 'steam sous vide' method in my APO, bagless. It was the butt end of a beef tenderloin. I set it in a skillet, seasoned it, then put the whole thing in the steam oven at 125F, set to 100% steam, rear convection. Inserted the probe thermometer, also set to 125F, and left it for a couple hours while I did some new wine tastings with a friend.

When it was done, I poured off the liquid that was in the pan, and set it over high heat on the stove. Seared the meat on all sides, then set it aside while I deglazed the pan and made a red wine mushroom sauce.

As you can see, we like our beef on the rare side, but those of you who cook sous vide will recognize the edge-to-edge coloration, It was wonderful!20230604_182230.jpg
 
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