I have had a few items float a little in my sous vide supreme machine. Mostly veggies. How do I keep them from floating up and stay submerged?
How to keep bags from floating in a sous vide supreme
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The definitive source for Sous Vide information on the web at the moment is Douglas Baldwin's wonderful A Practical Guide to Sous Vide. It has wonderful safety information and goes well beyond the 'recipe' side of Sous Vide. It's pretty much the bible (since Modernist Cuisine is too expensive).
Based on the information he has on pasteurizing eggs, I would suggest trying a shorter period of time. He says that 75 minutes at 135F will be sufficient. If you read through his stuff, you'll see that he doesn't play fast and loose with safety / times, so I would trust that time / temp. That's significantly shorter period than you are doing them. Hopefully that's your issue.
I'm not sure how much your white is coagulating, but this is what he has to say about it:
While the properties of the egg yolk are unaffected, the egg white is milky compared to a raw egg. Whipping time is significantly longer for pasteurized eggs, but the final whip volume is nearly the same
Update: There was a culinary research paper released in January that I think resolves this issue (or see this blog post for a more accessible overview). It turns out that the protein coagulation in eggs is a function of temperature and time, rather than just temperature as was commonly assumed. So leaving your egg in to pasteurize for longer than the minimum required time will affect the texture. So use the minimum time of 75 minutes and you should see a significant difference.
I would recommend using Whiskey Stones. They are used in whiskey instead of ice cubes. So they should be heavy, won't rust, and are supposed to be immersed in liquid that you'll consume. I think that probably meets all your criteria.
Another alternative is to use a rack. This comes with the Sous Vide Supreme and I find it quite useful for keeping meat submerged. It does however only accommodate certain sizes of meat. It works quite well. You can buy it separately online for $12.
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Best Answer
Two things cause bags to fill with air during low temp cooking. The expansion of air that already exists in a product (typical in vegetable cookery), and gas that results in bacterial growth (a problem with some cuts of meat). For vegetable cookery weighting helps, but this is almost always an issue unless you compress a really hard vacuum with a commercial machine. For most home cooks, the best solution is to use zip lock bags, monitor, and then release the air and reseal as it builds up. For meat cookery, try pre-searing for 20 - 30 seconds per side...or dipping in boiling water to kill off any surface bacteria prior to bagging and cooking low temp. Also the sous vide supreme comes with a rack to aid in keeping items submerged. That can help too.