So tonight was the infamous first chicken and whiskey night.  Every sous vide cookbook has this "hey don't sue me, but the low temperatures can kill you" obligatory message.  Fuck it, I've eaten pizza out of the dumpster at Crusty's in Pensacola just trying to make it back for my turn at Legend of Zelda, I'm good.

First step, acquire chicken after a long day's work.  Got to Dominick's and there were sheets of plastic over all the produce and meat.. fumigation perhaps?   Mexican guy says they lost power and I believe him... he's excited about the idea that everything looks "infected".  Check out with 5 items at one of the self kiosk things and have to wait because I bought cough syrup as part of my 5 item purchase.  Whatever.  She tells me 90% of all people that use the self checkout have alcohol.  I'm shocked its not 100%.

Cough syrup, Jack, good honey, and a squirt from the plastic lemon thingy.  On ice, with hot water for the mixer.  Drink is set.. time to cook.  I do an impromptu brine eyeballing it.  Actually feels good to taste the brine and have the too salty warm water sooth my throat.  Adjust with superfine sugar, toss in chicken, then bag up with brine using the crockpot liner in the sink where the hot water is warming it up to get rid of all the air.  Screw it, no vacuum packing tonight - straight up zip lock bags in hot water.

The tiny crock thingy is emptied of water, and reheated with the tap water (fall with radiator heat = good hot water).   Takes about 17 minutes give or take to come up to 140 with crockpot on high.  I plug in the crockpot at 137 and let the timer thingy take charge.   They say 2 hours, it's now 9pm and yeah, I have nothing to do except play PS3 and write this.  Update: Got my ass kicked because of too much whiskey so its easier to write this.  At least there's a backspace key.

9:38 and I check the meat.  YUCK!  Such nasty bags of chicken are brewing in there.   The fat is turning yellow, I take a few photos which remind me of the garbage pail kids.   I'm cooking what they would eat.

10:04 and the chicken is much more bland and white.  Not nasty, just white - reminds me of the frogs at Mother Hubbards, bet they wouldn't like to be in 140 degree water.  At least they are starting to look edible - white chicken can't be that bad. 

11:19 The result was pretty freaking amazing... perfectly cooked chicken slathered in a marsala and mushroom reduction.  I guess the point is the chicken isn't anywhere near the powdered type that we've all had.  Succulent and juicy with toppings.  Happiness.

  

And somehow it all turned out A-OK.  3 bags of chicken I could easily sell for six bucks a pop and I got to play with a blow torch and somehow didn't burn the place down.  Life really doesn't get any better than that.  And Bella got big leftovers like she's used to...

Update Leftovers:

The best part about all this experimentation is having the makings for leftovers.  In this case, I sliced the chicken and did a quick sear, and then finished off with a Picatta reduction.   It really is hard to describe how tender this chicken is - even after spending a day in the fridge...