Slow cooker sous vide supper eggs – by Emma Stirling APD |

It’s good to be back. I missed Recipe Redux last month. My first time ever in history. And it made me sad. But I’ve been busy with exciting new challenges, including teaching food chemistry pracs to dietetic university students. So I had my kitchen chemistry hat on for this month’s slow cooker challenge. Ready for a lesson?

Sous vide 63 degrees eggs

It’s been said that slow cooking using a water bath under vacuum, known as sous vide, has been one of the biggest revolutions in modern cooking history. And one of the culinary tricks we’ve seen at restaurants around town in the last few years, is the slow cooked egg. With this pursuit of excellence in egg, has come the minute study of how nutrients, specifically proteins in this case, change with every increasing degree. In eggs for example we now know that ovotransferrin unfolds at 63 degrees celsius but ovoalbumin not to 80 degrees. Manipulating these differences brings about the most amazing structural and texture qualities as the different molecular weight proteins coagulate at different temperatures. Not to mention enhancing the organoleptic qualities (see I’ve got my big words down pat). Legendary kitchen chemist Dave Arnold likes his eggs at 63 degrees Celsius. So that was my aim of this kitchen experiment.

Source: Hoerup – jump across for larger view

I had to drag my KitchenAid Slow Cooker out of it’s Summer hiding spot – you may like our archived post of 40plus slow cooker favourites. But I’m so pleased I did. Google around and you will find that you need to buy special thermometers and equipment to turn your Slow Cooker or Rice Cooker into a Sous Vide. But with a some lengthy mucking around to achieve equilibrium my trusty candy thermometer maintained a 62-63 degree Celsius window for the required 60minutes. And the egg shells more or less created their own vacuum. Good enough for this girl’s, slow cooked supper, at least.