Sous vide Bags "PE" safety & recycling

[Mr Gus]

Some of you may have a variety of of lower energy cooking devices, Sous vide is a handy component of our kitchen that works for us.

There is often a great deal on the BACO brand of double seal bags (medium 3 litre capacity) which I also used just recently for caramel toasting 7 kilos of cheap beet sugar for brewing & baking (very capable bags imho) @ 9pence per bag, the smaller capacity ones are often sold in Morrisons incidentally.

But they are "PE" (PolyEthyline) so less common for recycling although becoming more common when clean to be accepted as things change, not so bad.

Said to be safe by the manufacturer to 90c in a water bath down to -40c in a freezer (so again useful & pretty strong)
However the material is stable until around 65c (which suits most sous vide imho) but is a temperature used by some to reduce hours cooked, with increased temperatures comes gassing as I understand, just not why anyone i allowed to claim good to 90c ..would this be due to lamination processes maybe?

So far i've washed out what we have used for cooking meat & set aside for re-use (general stuff) so all is good for a while, however EU /Brexit has apparently caused a stinker pre brexit & since whereby the rules are making it problematic to recycle in anything other than an energy turbine powered by burning rubbish which isn't what anyone envisages when cleaning packaging to supposedly get back into the production stream.

Are there any brave souls who would reuse a PE bag as described for secondary FOOD use?

What therefore is a suitable alternative material anyone has found for re-use, bearing in mind a lot of brewers are very wary of silicone products which seem to be about the only alternative around.

Currently the pot is 26c room temp, & will be cooking steaks at 53c tonight, (1 hour) the lid (silicone ) is very useful for energy insulation & vapour control to ramp water up to heat dramatically quicker than without, I cut out a hole for the sous vide wand to fit through which remains snug & watertight, also helps hold bagged, immersed goods in place as the lip is deep.

Grabbed steaks from the freezer, defrosted them (bagged) in the water for a few minutes as the sous vide heated up around 2 minutes apiece.


Water is good for a while & then is used for plants & mopping floors etc.
Finish the steaks off in a hot pan with a bit of butter to brown super quick.

Hot evening, French stick & hearty salad to accompany.

[Stinsy]

I achieve a similar result by double wrapping steaks in foil and putting them in the oven on 50℃ for 6-8hrs. I prefer to do this in winter when the waste heat helps keep the house warm...

The foil goes in my recycling with the cans and bottles. I'm not sure what happens to it after that.

I do try to avoid single use plastic where reasonable.

[Mr Gus]

Only thing is an oven is a cavernous uninsulated box so that's a lot of air space to heat compared to Sous vide kit.

If you can borrow a sous vide stick (anova works well with the app & timer programming) do it!
Water circulation minimising +/- temp is good for the end result.

Incidentally, the value of aluminium a while ago typically went up x5 for every process along the recycling chain.