Temper Chocolate Using the Sous Vide

By stancec44

Ingredients

• Chocolate
• Chocolate
• Chocolate
• Sous Vide
• Sous Vide
• Sous Vide

Details

Adapted from seriouseats.com

Preparation

Step 1

Chocolate Tempering Method #3: The Sous Vide Circulator
I understand not everyone has a sous vide circulator, but with even the best model coming in at a modest $179, there's never been a better time to jump into the game. For my money, the sous vide circulator is the best, most foolproof way to temper chocolate, with the added advantages of being able to temper even small amounts perfectly, and to be able to easily store leftovers in a form that's ready-to-go the next time you need tempered chocolate. Here's how to do it.

Advantages: Almost 100% foolproof. Can be done with any amount of chocolate. Virtually no clean-up. Easy to re-store chocolate that isn't used for next time with almost no waste.

The Short Version: Vacuum seal any amount of chocolate in a bag. Drop it into a water bath set at 115°F and let it sit until completely melted, about 5 minutes. Set your sous vide cooker temperature to 81°F and add ice to the water bath until the temperature drops to 81°. Set your temperature to 90°F and let the chocolate heat up, lifting the bag out of the water once every minute and squeezing it around to agitate it as it warms up. Hold the chocolate at 90°F until ready to use. Snip off the corner and pipe or drizzle as required. Reseal the corner of the bag to store the chocolate for your next use.

The Long Version:
This method at first seems like a total no-brainer. Chocolate requires precise temperature control, and a sous vide cooker is designed for precise temperature control. My first thought was to simply vacuum seal some chocolate and drop it into a water bath set at 90°F. Theoretically, all of the crystals other than Form V should melt away, leaving me with a bag full of perfectly tempered chocolate.

Unfortunately, reality didn't pan out that way. Even after an hour of sitting in the bath, the chocolate was still just barely soft to the touch.

Turns out that if you're starting with well-tempered chocolate (and good store-bought bars are always in perfect temper), it takes a lot of effort to melt those crystals down to a workable consistency—further proof that even at the exact same temperature, chocolate can have a huge range of textures and viscosities depending on how it arrived. It's almost like chocolate has memory.

Instead, I decided to use the sous vide circulator to follow a more traditional tempering curve, starting by dropping my bagged chocolate into a 115°F water bath (because a water bath is an extremely efficient method of heat transfer, it melts the chocolate within minutes).

Next, I lowered the temperature of my circulator to 81°F and added ice cubes to the pot until the temperature dropped down to that level. Finally, I increased the temperature to 90°F and let the chocolate slowly heat up. Once it hit 90°F, I let it sit for five minutes in order to give my crystals some time to form.

Frustratingly, after piping some out onto a plate to test its consistency, I ended up with chocolate that hardened with streaks and spots. What's up with that ?

If I'd been wise, I would've read Scott Heimendinger's post on tempering chocolate sous vide. He had the same problem I did: spotty chocolate.

The issue, I figured, was that inside those sous vide bags, I failed to agitate my chocolate enough, an essential step for even crystal formation. The solution was obvious and simple: squeeze that bag as the chocolate tempers.

By removing the bag from the water bath once a minute and giving it a good, thorough squeeze to mix the contents around, I ended up with the most perfectly tempered chocolate yet, and what's more, I found that so long as you keep the chocolate in that 90°F water bath, it stays perfectly tempered and ready-to-use for a long, long time (I tested it up to 12 hours). Just take it out of the bath, give it a few good squeeze to agitate it, and you're good to go. Gone are the days of tempering your chocolate and having to use it within minutes of tempering before it has a chance to cool off too much.

The best part? There's almost no waste whatsoever. With traditional chocolate tempering methods, you end up with streaks of chocolate around the sides of your bowl or on your spatula, no matter how careful you are. With the sous vide method, all you do is carefully dry the outside of the bag (remember: water is the enemy of tempered chocolate), snip off the corner of your bag and it's ready to pipe or drizzle wherever you want to put it.

I squeezed a bit onto a thin slice of homemade brioche a friend of mine had given me recently. The chocolate pooled out into a thin, glossy layer that solidified to a perfect snap as I let it cool.

And I take back what I said about the best part. The best best part is that storage and clean up is so darned easy. You don't have to wash any bowls, food processors, or spatula. All you have to do is squeeze the chocolate away from the open corner of the vacuum bag, stick it back in your vacuum sealer, and re-seal the edge.

Your chocolate is now perfectly contained, will hold indefinitely at room temperature, and is ready to re-temper for the next time you need good melted chocolate.

Think about that: it completely solves one of the major problems people have with tempering chocolate using traditional methods, the fact that you have to temper a large amount and clean up bowls and tools. Add to that the fact that it's completely foolproof and I would say you've got yet another reason why a sous vide precision cooker should be in your kitchen's arsenal.