Today we got this question about sous vide pork belly where the OP has explicitly said they're not looking for recipes, just times/temperatures.
Of course, times/temperatures are often given as part of recipes, but they can also exist independently of recipes. So, can we take things like this, with some clarification to explicitly request only the time/temperature, and not associated recipes?
I had a quick discussion with rumtscho in chat, arguing for allowing this sort of thing. She at least partially agrees!
My overall view is that we should take questions like this, and clarify that they are asking for time/temperature ranges with descriptions of the results and not recipes.
As a simple example, the table in this Serious Eats article for salmon provides 5 temperatures with quick descriptions of the resulting texture. (It also warns that they're below the pasteurization temperature, another thing that'd be helpful in answers to questions like this here.) While I've found things like that for some common things, for other things it can be difficult to find anything beyond single recipes (often without a clear description of the resulting texture).
So, there's very useful information to be had here, and I think it can be fairly objective and focused rather than a broad recipe poll. We can always flag and handle answers that try to provide recipes instead of sticking to what was actually asked.
If it's possible to create a table for it, it might be better served by having something similar to our canonical How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer? question. This gives users some basic time/temp guides - and could include other methods other than sous vide - without needing many questions for each food.
For example, the question could have links to each "answer", which could each be a type of cooking - sous vide, roasting, slow cooking, etc... These questions come up often enough that we could work together to create a canonical post that lists types/cuts of meat, temperature and cook time (per lb, if it affects the outcome).
If users have more specific questions than this, such as adjusting cooking time for multiple foods, or they're looking for a specific outcome from the cooking time/temp they can be their own questions, but if the question is simply "which cooking time/temp should I use... there are often a variety of "correct" answers, which result in slightly different products.
I see that we have provided time and temps for sous vide in the past. Just search "sous vide time and temp". You will find a few examples. I am on the fence here, primarily because there are some well known, and easily accessible sites that provide this information (serious eats...chefsteps...). The canonical question referred to above by rumtscho is applicable, but would need too much deciphering for someone who just wanted to know how to cook pork belly sous vide. It's certainly possible to produce the kind of table that Cascabel is calling for...but then do we do that for other items and methods as well?
....What are all of the possible time and temperature variations for cooking a pork butt in the oven? ...on the grill? ...sous vide? ...in a pit?
Sorry...not sure how meta works...maybe this should have been a comment.
