How To Cook Sous Vide From Frozen | The Tool Shed

How To Cook Sous Vide From Frozen

Aside from the fantastic flavour and texture, sous vide cooking also allows you to make your meal planning a lot easier, meaning you can prepare large amounts of food to be frozen and easily prepared later.

This is especially useful when you’re trying to work cooking around a busy schedule, and means that you can simply reheat your sous vide cooked meals in minutes when you get home from work.

We’re going to look at the ways which you can cook sous vide from frozen and offer up some tips.

Why Cook Sous Vide from Frozen

There are a number of reasons why it makes sense to cook sous vide from frozen, but the main one is definitely the convenience.

Freezing means that you won’t have to worry about food going out of date and making sure to use up all of an ingredient before it goes off.

Instead, it gives you the freedom to use whichever foods you want, and be a lot more creative with your meal times.

It also allows you to bulk buy ingredients, meaning you can have a stock of ingredients ready to use at a moment’s notice, even if they’re out of season.

Freezing Before Cooking

Season and vacuum pack ingredients.
Label pouches and freeze for up to six weeks.
Cook using your sous vide machine either defrosted or straight from frozen at the required time and temperature, adding on 60 minutes if cooking straight from frozen.
Sear as usual if desired.

Freezing After Cooking

Season and vacuum seal food and cook at the specified temperature and time.
Quick chill the vacuum pouches in ice water for about 30 to 45 minutes.
Label and freeze for up to a year.
Defrost and reheat using your sous vide machine for 45 minutes per inch of thickness, allowing an extra 30 minutes if cooking from frozen.
Sear as usual if desired.

(Bear in mind when you are reheating using the sous vide machine, you can cook two ingredients alongside each other, even if they initially cooked at different times.

For example, some frozen veg which was cooked at 85˚C can be reheated alongside a piece of meat which was cooked at 60˚C, as long as you use the lower of the two temperatures when reheating.)

Quick Chilling

If you do wish to freeze your food after you’ve cooked it, be sure to quick chill it to quickly bring it down from the cooking temperature beforehand. You can do this by:

Prepare an ice bath in a container (should be roughly half water, half ice)
Submerge your vacuum packed pouches in the water
Chill for at least 30 minutes, more for larger packets
Add ice if needed, ensuring that the water stays below 5˚C
Dry the pouches out and place in the freezer

Taste

Many people worry that cooking their sous vide meals from frozen won’t result in the tender and flavoursome dishes that sous vide is known for.

However, this isn’t the case! The reason that frozen food often comes out looking a little bit limp and sorry for itself after cooking from frozen is that the freezing process snaps and breaks the protein strands in the food, leaving them flat and flaccid.

However, cooking the products sous vide before freezing sets the protein strands, so that there’s no loss of size when they’re cooked from frozen.

We would recommend that you take your frozen food out the night before to allow it to defrost before cooking, rather than doing to straight from frozen, to ensure maximum flavour.

Safety

Another worry is that cooking frozen food sous vide may not be safe, but it’s exactly as safe as it would be if you were cooking from fresh.

Of course, you will have to ensure that you cook the food longer to make sure that it’s safe, but once it’s cooked, it’ll be just as healthy and just as tasty as any other piece of sous vide meat!

Post by Chris Holland

Our Chef Director Chris Holland worked as Head Chef at the prestigious Alderley Edge hotel before joining us. He has a passion for using the best produce and never compromises on quality. Author of our best selling book Sous Vide The Art of Precision Cooking, Chris is a expert on the sous vide technique.During the later part of my school days at Wardle High School Rochdale I always wanted to be a chef . I knew from the very start that my path to work was never going to be academic it was always going to be something practical and hands on.

As a young boy growing up I was inspired to cook with my Grandma who was and still is an inspiration to me . I have memories of helping make the cakes that she always had made for visitors and family alike . She made the most amazing cakes and I loved nothing more than eating the sweet raw cake batter straight from the bowl . We used to fight over who got to lick the bowl/spoon after the cakes were made. My grandma’s philosophy for cooking even on a shoe string budget was always to use fresh and seasonal ingredients either home grown or bought from the market.

School was somewhat of a drag for me as I was itching to learn to become a chef.

I started at Hopwood Hall college as a chef and instantly fell in love with it .To me it was the only real time I excelled in something and this inspired me to really get my head down and put in the hard work. College was the first time I really excelled in something and gave me the opportunity to laugh at the teachers who said I would never make something of my life!!!!

During the three years at college I also took on a part time position in a local hotel working the bar and restaurant first and then the kitchen. These were great days and gave me the opportunity to see how the industry ticks. I learnt a lot from those days both good and bad !! But I have to say I was itching to work only in the kitchen but it was a good insight into the catering world .

After completing college I moved away from Rochdale for a full time roll at one of Cheshire’s most talked about Hotel restaurants The Stanneylands Hotel. This was the school of hard knocks for me as I quickly realised that although excelling at college meant nothing in “The Real World”.

I loved every minute of the 18 hour days 6 days a week on minimum wage . Although difficult I feel that without this grounding I wouldn’t have achieved what I have today. After 18 months of hard graft I left Stanneylands and went with the Head chef to open a fine dining restaurant at Mere Golf and Country Club. The opportunity to work alongside Matthew Barrett was too good to turn down. I learnt so much from the ex-Ritz chef and working in a much slower paced role helped me develop a much better understanding of how to organise and run a kitchen. We were a very small team and teamwork was and still is the only way to go for me.

After 2 years at Mere I got the opportunity to go into The Alderley Edge Hotel as Junior Souschef. The Early days at the Edge were all about learning new styles of cuising which is invaluable in any role as a chef. I got the opportunity to grow and learn all aspects of every section which was inspiring . I was offered the opportunity at the age of 29 (2004) to take the role of head chef. For me this was when I really started to develop my own style of food.

After 9 years at the top winning Cheshire restaurant of the year , Chef of the Year and appearing on GBM amongst many highlights including cooking for many celebrities and famous people I decided to move on into development with Sousvidetools.

The main inspiration for this was to train and educate people . I always had a great passion for education but could never really see myself at a college . The job is super rewarding and I am proud to say we have become the leading light in sous-vide education in the UK . This is something I am very proud of . Food is my biggest passion and this is what keeps me interested the most . I love to travel and try out other countries cuisines. I am constantly inspired by ingredients and the pursuit of getting the best out of them without destroying their natural flavour .It is super important to me to continue to try and be at the forefront of the food scene this is what inspire me and the team to keep driving forward .

Technology is now widely used in the industry and I am super proud to say we have been a big part of spreading that message.

I am very lucky to be in the position I am and the drive to constantly improve our training and links to the next generation of young budding hospitality chefs.

TI feel that my experience over the last 25 years really enables me to get close and educate the “next generation” of chefs .

The industry which I love is really struggling to bring through new recruits and if I can help that process I will be immensely proud.

The food seen in the Uk has improved dramatically over the last ten years and I feel this will continue with the correct education. What happens next only fate will tell us...

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