A Half Baked Idea: Sous Vide Cookie Dough
You crazy ESers asked for it, and you got it. After playing around with my SousVide Supreme and being rather underwhelmed cooking just meat and veggies, I asked you for some crazier ideas. My partner in crime gansie had a stroke of genius:
What about cookie dough? But don’t cook it long enough where it actually turns into a cookie, just so it heats through and kills any harmful crap. so it could be one gooey, warm, doughy, chocolaty, gushy thing. (Confession – i used to heat up purchased cookie dough in the microwave).
Hmmm…what about cookie dough? Honestly, I can never resist the temptation to lick the bowl, salmonella or not, but it does always scare me a little bit, and I know I really shouldn’t be doing it. So could we use the SousVide to cook the dough to just high enough temperatures where it would be safe to eat but still gooey and delicious? Well, we could certainly try…
For the record, let me clearly state that I have no idea if this is really a safe way to cook cookie dough, and Endless Simmer takes no responsibility if someone else tries this and gets sick. Seriously. That said, here’s what I did.
I mixed the chocolate chip cookie batter as instructed by Nestle, then vacuum packed four invidivual packages of it. I set the SousVide Supreme to 160 degrees, because I read online that it’s the temperature you must cook eggs to in order to kill any bacteria. I submerged them all in the water bath and let ’em soak. My idea was to cook them for four different amounts of time, to see what the difference would be, but after a half-hour, additional time didn’t seem to change the consistency of the dough.
The first serving was not a success. I made the mistake of emptying the hot dough from the bag straight into a bowl and giving it a little stir. The melted chocolate chips mixed in with everything and gave it a rather unappetizing color, and the texture was just all kinds of off. I quickly declared disaster on this batch and threw the dough into the oven.
This batch ended up turning into some tasty (although definitely not chocolate chip) cookies. But back to the dough…
Because the 160-degree water made the dough just too-too melty, I decided to take the next packages out and throw them in the freezer before eating. After about an hour, they had taken on a consistency much more like regular cookie dough, and we enjoyed it chopped up with some vanilla ice cream and brandy.
Now I’ve got two packs of cookie dough left in my freezer, vacuum packed so that I can eat them whenever I want. So….what do you think, science-y ESers? Is this really a safe way to get rid of potential salmonella? Would you eat sous vide cookie dough? Am I completely insane? Is anyone listening?
Great way to preserve you cookie dough! And the temperature of 160 degrees F. is typical for modern pasteurization methods.
Bon appetit!
CCR
=:~)
I feel like this is genius. I’m unclear as to what the problem with opening the bag, getting a spoon, and just eating it straight out of the bag with milk? That’s what I do with a roll of cookie dough from the grocery store anyways, this is just warmer and sans possible death. Riiiight???
You know you can make cookie dough without instructions from Nestle? Try http://www.google.com#q=chocolate+chip+cookies+recipe
neat stuff looks interesting….yea we’re listening, no not crazy
Ok so if you now thaw the froxen dough and bake how is the quality of the cookie compared to freshly mixed dough?
Can’t you just make cookie dough without the eggs? I’m sure you would have to add something else in or mess with the recipe, but in the end it just seems easier.
@Roger…sorry for the delay – but I do have a report…the frozen cookie dough worked just fine, although the cookies were a little greasy…it was like all the butter slipped to the outside of the dough…kinda amazing actually, although don’t think I would go through the trouble to do this again. Fun experiment though!
You know you could try cooking only to 135 F, but for 2+ hours. That will be enough to pasteurize the dough without affecting the texture much at all. At 160 you have cooked the egg proteins, so the texture is altered. It could be a good thing, though, so maybe do a side by side comparison?
See charts here for safety:
http://www.cookingissues.com/primers/sous-vide/purdy-pictures-the-charts/
So I just ran in to this and I know it’s been a while, but Sous Vide has progressed a bit and I agree with Colin you are able to cook it at a lower temperature. My suggestions would be to separate out things more rather than doing it all at once. I will be experimenting with this immediately. I think it’s a great idea.
One would be to separate the eggs and pasturize them BEFORE mixing the dough. That way no baddies in, no baddies out.
Two for appearance I wouldn’t have included the chocolate chips in the mix, in the end you just got chocolate cookies. I would have just left those out, taken the dough after the bath and rolled the chips in then.
This could work! It’s gonna be a thing!
Two nights ago, I had sous vide’d cookie dough… Caramelized: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodforthoughtmiami/7850766176/in/set-72157631222133052
It was AMAZING. Trying to figure out how to do this myself now. 🙂
More pictures can be found by googling Lazy Bear Sous Vide Cookie Dough
But so far< I haven't been able to find out *how*. Anybody have any ideas?
Very inspiring! In order to preserve the cookie dough texture, I think I will try cooking the eggs separately, cooling them, and then making the dough.
If your crazy so am I. I came across your post because I was thinking of sous vide cookie dough too. However I wanted to actually cook it into a soft cookie.
Careful with just cooking the eggs – the flour is a possible source of contamination as well. It’s not commonly a problem, but it can also carry any contamination into the dough.