Chicken Jook Made In An Instant Pot And A Traditional Pressure Cooker

After making a whole frozen chicken a few days ago using my Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker, I decided I wanted to see how different it would be compared to a frozen whole chicken made in an Instant Pot.

My wife said it would be good to use that chicken after my test to make Chicken Jook (Rice Congee) since we have not had Jook in so long.  Great idea!

The Instant Pot chicken was set for 1 hour, 15 minutes (so much faster than Sous Vide at 9 hours!) and that is after the pot comes to full pressure, so you need to add the time it takes to reach full pressure and then add the time it takes to do a natural release.  I decided after 15 minutes to release pressure manually... I didn't want to wait any longer.

Overall, the chicken in the Instant Pot was "fall off the bone" as expected.  But, the Sous Vide chicken breast was FAR SUPERIOR!  Sous Vide had very moist chicken breast even after spending a full night in the refrigerator.  But the Instant Pot chicken was a lot drier, even though it was fall off the bone tender.

In comparison, if you use the Instant Pot, you gain speed and ease, but if you Sous Vide a whole frozen chicken, it's texture and moistness is far better.  You use up more electricity with Sous Vide cooking as it takes 9 hours to finish the cook, but you gain a better chicken.

While the Instant Pot was doing its thing, I made Jook in a conventional pressure cooker.  I added about 1-3/4 cups of long grain white rice to water that was perhaps 70 percent filled in the pot.  We have noticed that this traditional pressure cooker from Fagor (top rated by America's Test Kitchen) tends to spurt out the congee when it achieves pressure.  Of course, you could fill the pot with less water, but then it's not enough to eat and have leftovers!

Once pressure is achieved, I turned down the flame of the stove dramatically and eventually turned it off.  Once the pressure was naturally released as much as I could stand, I manually released the remaining pressure.  The jook was still a bit watery and the rice was not fully disintegrated yet, but that made it the perfect time to add shredded chicken breast meat and also 6 Century Eggs.  Century Eggs are also known as 1000 year old eggs or 100 year old eggs.  Essentially they are preserved duck eggs that take on a dramatic change during the preservation process.  It grosses out most people who see it but if you are Asian, you are used to them in jook.  I personally love them in jook and can't have jook without them!  We also seasoned the jook with chicken bouillon, some ginger and a bit of salt.  That's all it needed.

Overall, the chicken jook was perfect.  Nice and smooth from pressure cooking and the chicken and eggs were great for the purpose.  I often add a bit of oyster sauce to my jook and a very small drop of sesame oil.  It's not needed, but I like it that way.  We'll do it again in the future!

Sous Vide - Frozen Whole Chicken in Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

I decided to make a Sous Vide chicken using a frozen chicken to see how it would turn out.

Using an Anova AN500 Sous Vide Precision Cooker, I followed Anova's suggestion of 9 hours at 150 degrees, but took the chicken out after 8.5 hours since it was about a 3 lb chicken.  About 3 hours into the cook, I added Sweet Baby Ray's Sauce and a bit of salt to the chicken (after the chicken was defrosted by the water temperature).

Overall, the chicken was very good.  The breast was nice and moist and not pink.  However, the chicken thigh when separated at the joint had a bit of blood still.  I figured this is because it was not cooked at 165 degrees.

I Googled the proper internal temperature for chicken and these two statements were found about the topic:

"The FDA Food Code recommends cooking chicken to 165°F (74°C). ... If you can hold your chicken at 145°F (63°C) for 8.5 minutes, you can achieve the same bacterial reduction as at 165°F (74°C)."

"For quality purposes, a chicken breast is properly cooked at 145 to 150 F. This temperature ensures that all pinkness is gone, but the meat is firm but still tender. However, the USDA recommends that chicken and poultry be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 165 F for at least 30 seconds."

Anova was probably trying to keep the breast moist so that's why they recommended 150 degrees.  Going forward, I think I would move that to at least 160 degrees to make sure the chicken is cooked better.  It may force a slightly less moist chicken breast, but I think I'd rather have that than to have a small amount of blood still on the chicken thigh joint.

Overall, I think the chicken tasted very good and was nice and moist.  Since I did not do anything to the chicken to try to make it more visually appealing by putting in the broiler to roast up the skin, the chicken looks a bit anemic.  That's actually ok with me as many Asian chickens look this way when cooked at restaurants!  The BBQ sauce tasted good, but was runny due to the water content of the chicken.  I did pour out any of the water from the bag before putting on the sauce, but apparently there was more moisture in the chicken than could be found after only 3 hours into the cook.

Still, the taste of the chicken was very good and it was easy to make.  Take the chicken out of the freezer, rinse it off, and then put it in the bag and suspend it in the water bath.  Set the sous vide heater to the desired temperature and set the timer to 9 hours.  The formula for frozen chicken is use the same time for non-frozen and add an additional 1/2 total time to that.  In this case, the proper time was 6 hours if not frozen, so 1/2 of that is 3 hours... total is 6 + 3 = 9 hours.

I served the chicken with white rice.

Two Pork Butts For Pulled Pork On The 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker

Two pork butts (13.4 lbs - no fat cap, bone in) of pulled pork on the 22.5” smoker today! If you add in the fat cap that I cut off and threw away that was an additional 2.5 lbs! Cut both pork butts in half to speed up the cook time.

Costco's Flavor Connections rub modified with a bit of cayenne pepper was used. I decided to cook it a bit hotter this time at around 280 degrees. I wrapped the meat at the stall after 2 hours and 45 minutes and cooked it another 3 hours at 310 degrees.

You can click here to see a video of the pork being pulled.