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I have a hard time finding hints on how to sous-vide guineafowl breasts properly. Traditionally in an 140-165°C oven they’re really hard to get right. Some of the few recipes i’ve found place them in a bath of ~65-70°C for some 30-120minutes. This feels a bit short for my taste, as i’m not sure whether the breastmeat will reach the desired temperature at its core in such a short time. So the time-temperature for this cut in sousvide would be one point i’m interested in.

Furthermore, i’ve often heard that poultry especially contracts muscle fibers when “temperature shocked”. So i guess i’d start the bath with cold water and cold meat, to get a slow heat-up.

The last question is for sauces which could go well with it. The meat itself should be way more aromatic than many other poultry meats. Due to this i’m not sure if using the liquid from the sous-vide-bag as a base for sauces (i.e. fruity riesling butter sauce with caramelized onions and some mushroom bits? Maybe others?) is a good idea. On the other hand, if not using the meat-juices there’s pretty little base you can make a sauce of … right?

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    Hello NebuK! Even as a new user, you might have noticed that recipe requests are off topic here. Your actual question is fine, as it is not of the unanswerable "which is the tastiest recipe ever for lasagna" type. But because many users here would react allergically to the word "recipe" and maybe even vote for closing without paying attention to the question body, I reworded your title to not produce such a knee-jerk reaction. Good luck with your guineafowl breasts, I hope somebody will have a nice answer for you!
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 12:44
  • Hi, thank you for your clarification! My question was in-between, so i thought it might be okay enough. I’ve tried to keep most parts of the question as generic and open as possible, so that the answer can be used by many cooks in many recipes. I hoped that this is okay enough for here :-).
    – NebuK
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:47
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    As a rule: questions about "what steps to take to achieve <effect>" is a good question. What we don't accept is "I need a recipe for <dish>". The second one produces a type of question known as 'big-list', where we get dozens of answers, everybody posting a random recipe. In the end, nobody cares to read the list, and voting picks out the earliest posted recipes, not the qualitatively better ones. Also, voting on subjective questions like "tastiest recipe" has no predictive value, because you personally don't have to like what most people like. I hope this make it clearer how we work.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:58

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One of the benefits of sous vide cooking is that you cannot cook food over the temperature set, if you set the temp to 70 degrees it's physically impossible for it to go over that. This means that if you cook it longer than it needs to get up to the desired temperature you won't dry it out. I would think for guineafowl that 120 minutes would be enough. As for temperature shock you'd have to go much higher than 70C to run into that, so I'd start with the water at your desired temperature.

As for sauces guineafowl is very rich and savory, so something with acidity would help to balance it. I like your sauce idea and think it would work fine. Riesling is a good choice if you get one with a more mineral character than a sweet bomb, although a squeeze of lemon can supplement the acidity if needed.

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  • Hi, thanks for your answer! Thanks also about your opinion on the temp. shock again (i was comparing to the reverse steak-off-a-grill-must-rest-a-bit thing). I’ll not heat up slowly then. Also — you now mentioned 70°C, is this some value you have experience with yourself, or randomly picked as an example? Could the chicken-breast-guide at seriouseats also be used for guineafowl: seriouseats.com/2015/07/… — or is the bird much different in its cooking characteristics?
    – NebuK
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:55
  • The safety guidelines for guineafowl and most other wild game are actually to cook to 74C, whereas most chefs go below that. 70C seems to be in the middle of the two.
    – GdD
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:59

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