Sous vide means cooking things in warm water in vacuum bags. You need to vacuum the food for that. The advantage is that all the taste stays with the food and nothing gets lost. Besides that the meat stays juicy and gets soft. Compared to boiling the meat is not taking any additional water and also the flavor stays in the meat. You can use sous vide with all kind of meat.
Cut the breasts out of the frozen willow grouse. If it is too difficult to cut let the willow grouse defrost a little bit. Place the breasts in a vacuum bag. You can use the rest for soup. Take a very sharp knife for that to not damage the meat fibers too much.
You can marinade the willow grouse in the vacuum bag. Be careful to not use to intense or too much spices or herbs! You can also use herbs from nature like needles from juniper, blueberry leaves or labrador tea leaves. It is good to test the marinade with some samples before. Place oil and the spices or herbs together with the breasts in the vacuum bag and vacuum it. If you do it the first time better leave the marinade away.
Place the vacuumed and marinaded breasts in the fridge for 24 hours. If you did not marinade them you can make them immediately.
Warm water up to a minimum of 57°C. Place the vacuum bag in the water and leave it there for 35 to 45 minutes. It depends how thick and frozen or cold the meat is. You can also warm the water with the meat. If you are unsure you can keep it longer, it will not change a lot. Keep the water always over 57°C by leaving a thermometer in. To be on the safe side you can go up to 65°C. Most electric plates are too strong on the lowest value. It is good to experiment before with other heat sources like a candle. They can keep the temperature pretty well and you can adjust the distance from the candle to the bottom of the pot. If you use more water it is easier to keep the temperature.
After the time the breast are done and you can get it out of the vacuum bag. Cut the bag in a way that you can wash it and use it again. Don’t throw the marinade away, you can use it for the dish or frying. The breasts did not get any browning (maillard reaction) which gives additional flavor. For that heat up a pan very hot with oil and fry them very short and hot to get a brown crust.
You can use the breast now for a lot of different meals, for example you can cut it into thin stripes and make a fresh salad with it. It fits also very good to mushrooms.
Hint: If you do not have a vacuum machine you can place the meat directly into water to get a similar effect.
