Turkey Breast Sous-Vide

No more Dry Turkey Breasts thanks to Sous-Vide!!! 

Set water temp at 145 degrees. If I could only find a Turkey breast that was organically raised and not frozen. It made a difference with chicken. 

De-bone your breasts and save for stock

Liberally apply your favorite herb blend

Sous-Vide your breast which means Vacuum seal them.

Submerge in water bath. As a technique I usually set the water temp up a few degrees higher to compensate for the drop in temperature when cold meat is placed in water bath. After meat is submerged I set the temp I want and in this case it was 145 degrees. The Breast cooked for 4 hours and 13 minutes. The breast was fully pasteurized. I used the Sous-Vide APP.

Breast all cooked at pretty drab looking due to lack of Maillard Reaction. 

A very quick sear in fry-pan remedies this situation.

Gorgeous

A picture is worth a thousand words.

While the Turkey was spending some alone time getting a water bath I used this time and make a Stock. I broke up the bones and proceeded.

A simple stock that I used for homemade gravy.

Dinner served.

Update- 2/15/2015

I was able to purchase a higher quality turkey breast and after doing this several times I have landed on the temp of 140. If you are going to Sear or smoke the breast 140 is the magic number for SV. 

I was able to buy the breast bones intact and unfrozen.  A huge difference in quality. 

Update 11/26/15

Thanksgiving 2015 was a hit! I have made 12 Sous-Vide Turkeys to date. I think I have finally dialed in what I think is the best temp and time; for both the Dark and White meat. 

Turkey Breast Sous-Vide at 140˚ƒ for 4 hours is perfect. 

Dark meat came out perfect at 150˚ƒ for 6 hours. 

Let me give this caveat: All these temps and times are designed around how I want to finish the Turkey. In this case, I planned on smoking the Turkey for about 90-120 minutes at 180-190˚ƒ. When the smoke dissipates, I will crank the heat up to about 225˚ƒ to give that mahogany glaze we all love so much. 

What preceded the smoke is important too. After the Sous-Vide process I shocked the Turkey in an Ice-Bath and refrigerated overnight. If I had taken the turkey out of the SV and proceeded directly to the Smoker, the Turkey would have overcooked. Starting out with temps much lower helps mitigate the possibility of overcooking the Turkey. I also know if I placed a Turkey on my smoker with an internal temp of 34˚ƒ, it would have taken forever for the meat to come up to temp too. So what did I do?  I cranked up the Sous-Vide to about 125˚ƒ and set the Turkey in the bath for about 40 minutes. The Turkey hit the smoker registering 90˚ƒ internally. The Turkey was removed from the smoker when an internal temp of 140˚ƒ was reached. These are all techniques. If you miss one of these steps the outcome will be different. Let's say I wanted to finish the Turkey in a frying pan instead of an oven or smoker. I would have made sure that the meat was at least at 120˚ƒ before the meat would have hit the pan. Again these are my techniques.

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