In Thomas Keller’s “under pressure” sous vide cookbook, he states that, “The maximum time food sealed sous vide can safely remain in the bag in danger-zone temperatures (this includes cooking time if cooking below 60°C [140°F]) is 4 hours.”
I have seen recipes for cooking roasts in the 130s for 36-48 hours. Is there a consensus view on safe temps for long cooks?
by -CleverPotato
24 Comments
So sous viding picanha at 135degF for 5 hrs is now considered bad? Well that’s sad.
Did a chuck for 48 hours at 138, no issue at all. One of the better things I have ever made with my sous vide
So i could cook at 141 infinitly then?
Read modernist cuisine. Their short rib recipes are awesome. They explain that pasteurization basically occurs around 130d F and after that it’s a function of time.
Eh, I view this as “restaurant safety levels”. It’s more of a business decision / compromise than actual food safety guideline. 131°F is the actual minimum.
The consensus view is what TK states in the book as that is what follows generally accepted food service guidelines.
People cook longer at lower temps because the risk of getting sick is really pretty low. But someone like Thomas Keller is certainly not going to write that.
had to google him “**Thomas Aloysius Keller** (born October 14, 1955) is an American [chef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef), [restaurateur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurateur) and [cookbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookbook) author.” – does his opinion have more weight (value) than douglas baldwin’s results based on lab research? – [https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety)
What does T keller say about pasteurization ?
He’s probably just trying to not get sued tbh
I’ve seen this statement in several sous vide articles: *Steaks cooked under 130°F (54°C) should not be cooked longer than two-and-a-half hours at a time for food safety reasons.*
Following. RemindMe! 4 hours
Celebrity chefs who publish their recipes in cookbooks rarely publish what they actually make in their kitchens. They publish deliberately crippled versions; for example, a cream of cauliflower soup in a cookbook might rely on just a fraction of the amount of heavy cream that would be in the restaurant version.
This untruthfulness is especially likely if the version being published in a cookbook is for a dish that might use temperature ranges that would be out of line with the letter of the law on food safety. There is no reason for a chef to risk that kind of liability.
Google Pasteurization Chart… it will give you the times and temps
OP, just .. no. As others are telling you, there are more reliable sources.
130+ and the right amount of time is where you want to be. Check Baldwin tables, government tables .. even Kenji Lopez Alt.
I’m surprised I don’t see Douglas Baldwin mentioned in this thread. Has everyone forgotten about the SV Bible or something?
https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html
I would not cook anything under 135 for more than four hours , but honestly, most meats you’re cooking that long usually are better at higher temps anyway.
Very flawed statement , frankly the statement is dangerously worded. You would actually be creating additional risk by cooking below 140, and skirt g close to the 4 the window, but not ensuring you do so for long enough to pasteurize.
The dude named a book about Sous Vide cooking “Under Pressure”. I know how famous and successful he is, but given the way he named his book on this topic I would take everything he says in this particular book with a whole lot of grains of salt.
His book is beautiful, but not geared to home use. Restaurants have safety rules that go way beyond what is actually needed for safety
Now I understand why me, cooking in the danger zone all the time, never was a problem.
I also use aged meats, which have stabilized bacteria-wise.
125°F (51.5°C) for roughly 4hrs here. (2.5 to 4) Yeah yeah. I don’t sell food.
After eating at least one chuck roast a week on average cooked at 133 for 36-48 hours I would tend to disagree with him
If I was running a restaurant as he does and writing a cook book as he does I wouldn’t recommend that as if a customer of mine got sick from eating something else it could get blown back at me in a lawsuit
So if the customer got Ecoli from eating an undercooked hamburger at the drive through then ate at my restaurant they could sue me and I would have to say under oath that I left meat in the “danger zone” for 36-48 hours
the temperature abuse range was reduced after under pressure was released. the temperature danger zone is 41-135F. I think it changed, officially, in 2024, but I swear I heard about it earlier than that
remember that under pressure was released in 2008 and since then there has been much research and testing into sous vide cooking. modernist cuisine was 2011 for example.
Commercial and home cooking are different beasts, the risk tolerances are totally different.
If you cook a steak to a 1-in-a-million safety standard at home, you’ll never have a problem. If Thomas Keller rolls out a safety standard to his ~10 restaurants that are probably doing ~1000 steaks per week across all of them (conservatively?), after ~3 years in business he has served a million steaks and will have almost certainly found that 1-in-a-million case.
He has to bring that number down through sourcing, handling, preparation, and cooking. If he doesn’t put several more 9s between him and that bad steak, he’s risking his empire.
Thomas Keller doesn’t get to just ignore over a century of food safety research on a whim. Pasteurization is INCREDIBLY well studied and documented. The danger zone is below 130, not 140F.
Damn. Does nobody even care about what happened to the seven dogs?
Red Rocket alert! Poor choice for cover art…