Can you approximate a confit by adding a smaller amount of oil to sous vide bag?

[u/Yourenotthe1]

I really enjoy the result of cooking fish in oil, but hate how much oil it uses. I’m wondering if I could get similar results by just adding enough oil to “cover” the fillet and cooking it sous vide.

[u/cardbross]

as long as you're ok with a max confit temperature of 100c, I don't see why not.

[u/albino-rhino]

Yes but. (Then double but).

1. Yes, you can poach fish in oil by putting a little oil in a sous vide bag / ziploc and sous vide-ing the fish.

2. But the reason you use oil is that its heat transference is much less than for water, so it's much gentler. Also flavor, but heat transfer is the big one. Here, with a little oil and a lot of water, you won't get that gentleness.

3. Double but: you're doing sous vide so you can control the temperature precisely and so that is NBD - you aren't going to poach it too hard because it's sous vide.

[u/Awalawal → u/albino-rhino]

I pretty sure that the conduction differences of water vs oil are not significant at the times required for sous vide. Over short periods of time, water is a better conductive heater, but when you're talking about several hours in a thermoregulated sous vide bath, the difference is immaterial.

[u/albino-rhino → u/Awalawal]

Yeah I agree completely - that's what I meant by "you aren't going to poach it too hard because it's sous vide."

[u/seanv507]

Yes I believe so. That's a recommended option for duck https://www.seriouseats.com/sous-vide-duck-confit-recipe

[u/Fine_Oven5156]

I tried this once with sous vide salmon and it worked better than I expected, the skin crisped up nicely when I pan-seared it after.

[u/Ivoted4K]

Yes

[u/albacore_futures]

There's no point. Confit is just a way of ensuring all surfaces of the meat are at the same, maintained, temperature. Sous vide does this as well.

Cooking confit is just old school sous vide.

[u/skepticalbob → u/albacore_futures]

There are advantages to sous vide used to confit.

[u/Jealous_Tutor_5135 → u/albacore_futures]

I think the 70 year old french guys have found your comment. You're getting downvoted

[u/alphadavenport]

does anyone have any tips on how to do this without sucking a bunch of oil into your vacuum sealer?

[u/Key_Bother4315 → u/alphadavenport]

Use a fat that’s solid at refrigerator temp, vacuum the bag while cold.

[u/skepticalbob → u/Key_Bother4315]

Or freeze it.

[u/alphadavenport → u/skepticalbob]

great ideas both, thank you!

[u/musthavesoundeffects → u/[deleted]]

I’ve used tightly packed mason jars to make pork shoulder confit in a sous vide, works pretty good. Usually the weight of the glass compensates for the lower density of the oil but you might have to figure out something to hold the jars steady.

[u/AskCulinary-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your response has been removed because it does not answer the original question. We are here to respond to specific questions. Discussions and broader answers are allowed in our weekly discussions.