New sous-vide equipment options
It looks like there are now a host of DIY water batch controllers on the market (one was demoed at Maker Faire in New York) for $80-$100, and even some pre-assembled ones for $120. If anyone has any experience with these and wants to post a review, that’d be great!
Sous-vide Pork Shoulder, e.g. Pulled Pork
Building on the technique I’ve used for ribs (posted previously) I did the same thing with a pork shoulder. Rub & rest overnight, smoke (2 hours, low temp, to get a smoke ring & flavor), sous-vide (48 hours at 146 degrees in this case) and then pull & shred.
Unlike a traditional pulled pork, it didn’t fall off the bone (expected since the final temp never got anywhere close to the 200 degrees or so of typical pulled pork) but the taste was amazing and the bite a little toothy.
Then I used the result as meat I could either shred & serve with sauce, fry up in a wok, or turn into a Carnitas or just about anything that tasty pork is good for.
So this technique is a keeper but I’ll keep experimenting with variations to see how to create the best “traditional” pulled pork using it.
Please experiment and let us know your results! Since my thermal bath is only 5 quarts I can only do one experiment at a time with pork shoulders, even though I can fit 6-8 in my smoker.
Spare Ribs Sous-vide
I’ve been experimenting a lot with mixing and matching smoking and sous-vide. My most recent experiment has been with ribs. I was already doing short ribs per Thomas Keller using several days in the cooker but for some reason started with comparatively short times (24 hours ) for my spare ribs and finishing them in the oven (seem my 2006 post for my results). Then I happened to hear Nathan Myhrvold mention 48 hours on The Daily Show and gave it a try (of course given the 48-72 hour time for short ribs this makes a lot of sense!). I also smoked them a little first and finished them on the grill at the end. The results have been stunning.
My preparation is basically as follows:
* Pull the membrane off the back (same as for any smoker recipe)
* Rub the night before & wrap in plastic (I use some mustard to help hold the rub and have the vinegar break down the tissue a little)
* Smoke for 1-2 hours with whatever wood you like
* Seal & cook for 48 hours (148 seems to work pretty well for pork spare ribs, I’ve used some lower temps for beef ribs)
* Mop with BBQ sauce or Grilling Sauce
* Grill just enough to get some “bite” on the outside
* Serve “dry” or “wet” as you desire.
Enjoy and as always I’d love to hear your ideas, comments & recipes.–David
The Importance of Temperature
An easy mistake to make when first cooking sous-vide is to under-estimate the importance of temperature. Since sous-vide lets us be so much more flexible with time it extracts a price in temperature.
The reason for this is simple. Unlike with traditional cooking where a too hot or too cold oven or grill can be compensated for by careful monitoring of the food temperature with sous-vide our meat or fish will never become hotter than the temperature of the water bath–no matter how long we leave it in.
And complicating that is how difficult it is to actively monitor the temperature of the food–even with careful application of weatherstripping it is hard to use a temperature probe on meat in a sous-vide pouch without destroying the waterproof seal.
A final issue is the long cooking times. Too low a temperature is difficult to compensate for by simply “cranking it up” (although for meals which get a final searing you can of course fudge things a little by doing a little cooking during your searing).
And if your temperature was too high your meal might well be ruined long before you notice.
All that said, the choice of temperature is often–literally–a matter of taste. Whether you like your salmon rare (maybe 108) or a little more cooked (maybe 112) is up to you. Similarly you can have your steaks range from very rare to medium rare by fiddling with the temperature on your bath.
You can even experiment by cooking short ribs, for example, at a steak temperature to make them taste more like a chop.
So take notes, learn from others and share your findings on temperature, the secret ingredient of sous-vide cooking!–David
Sous-vide Tri-tip
We have a local favorite steak here in the bay area called “Fred’s Steak” which is a secret marinate on a tri-tip sold by a local family run butcher shop. Traditional preparation is either grilling or baking. But sure enough, a sous-vide treatment (45 to 60 minutes at 128-135 depending on taste) followed by searing in an iron skillet (or with a torch) worked out great and has won hands down in blind taste tests we’ve run here.
I’ve done the same thing with tri-tips prepared several different ways. Another winner for the sous-vide cooker!
Foodsaver Rescued!
The achilles heel for home sous-vide cooks has increasingly become the vacuum sealing. With the introduction of sub $500 thermal baths the fairly cheesy Foodsaver has become the weak link in the chain for those who don’t have the money or room for a $1500 commercial vacuum sealing unit.
Aside from their inability to vacuum seal anything wet and their inability to really provide pressure, the worst thing about Foodsaver is they have never stood behind their product. Once the gaskets died (which they always do eventually) they would never sell or send you another one.
But now jardenstore is actually selling Foodsaver replacement parts. Thank goodness. Our ailing unit was salvage completely with $20 worth of parts.
New Sous Vide Equipment Resource
One problem for “do it yourself” sous-vide has been the high cost of a thermal bath. We’ve written before about the approach of getting a refurb unit from an eBay seller, but of course we’d all like to get a nice, new digital unit.
Finally those are starting to be available for a discounted price. BCU Plastics (www.bcuplastics.com) is offering new units for as low as $650 for a 5 Liter unit, and $800 for the more versatile 10 Liter unit. They also offer an alternative to the FoodSaver product line and other sous-vide equipment.
The thermal bath units look similar to the Cuisine Technologies units, but discounted?
–David
Sous-vide Pork Shoulder Reprise
I made another pork shoulder roast sous-vide tonight. I started by using a rub of Bone Sucking Sauce Rib Rub and some garlic oil then vacuum sealing the pieces of the roast overnight. Then this morning I put them in the bath at about 160F for about 9 hours. I was a little nervous when they came out as the very ends of the smaller pieces were somewhat dry.
The good news is that most of the pork was very succulent and tasted excellent. So overall it was a big success and the meat was quite popular. Once again I regreted not having a commercial vacuum sealer though, as with the FoodSaver level of vacuum the juice seeps back out of the meat and extends the bag pouch. From all I have read if you have a serious commercial unit the vacuum is strong enough that the juices tend to stay in the meat more.
I did learn one important lesson on the way. My test for how much water I needed and how important a cover was was at 165F. At that temperature there wasn’t much evaporation. But I decided to make pulled pork from some of the pork and cranked my thermal bath up to 200F. At that temp (much like we all learned in high school about partial pressures!) the water evaporates much faster and my bath almost went dry. Lesson learned, hopefully.–David
Sous-vide ala Thomas Keller & The French Laundry
We were fortunate enough to have been invited to lunch at The French Laundry yesterday, Thomas Keller’s California property and the West Coast mecca of gourmet sous-vide.
The two dishes which the menu advertised as using sous-vide were a Maine lobster tail and one with sunchokes sous-vide.
In both cases it was clear that Keller has a lot nicer cry-o-vac unit than my FoodSaver:-) The lobster tail piece in particular had a great shape which appeared to have been the same shape in which it was cooked (and not that it had been cut afterwards).
Both dishes, like all 40 or 50 we ate (okay, maybe 9 plus a special cake for the occassion) were insanely good. Interestingly the wait staff never used the term sous-vide and instead described the lobster as poached.
–David
Sous-vide Steak
I experimented with sous-vide market steaks. I cooked them to 126F (after vacuum sealing) in the thermal bath and then finished them with about 30 seconds on each side in a hot iron skillet. As usual the steaks were very juicy, but the lack of browning flavors was evident. The searing didn’t fix that. NOTE: I’ve made similar steaks many times since and as long as I seared them long enough they were excellent and universally well received.
Alternatives might be to sear the steaks first, change the time and temperature of the searing, or of course to give up and just do steaks the “old-fashioned” way.–David
