Sous-Vide Jones

"Almost Meatless" Virtual Potluck: Posole Burritos with Escabeche Slaw

So my pal Tara wrote a cookbook called "Almost Meatless" and instead of an annoying book tour with all the pesky luxury hotels and messy paperwork, their publisher is sponsoring a "Virtual Potluck" to promote the book.  That means a bunch of bloggers are each cooking a recipe from the book, and posting about it today.  In return we get a free copy of the book, so certain bloggers in the group can stop repeatedly checking it out from the Multnomah County Free Library (we know who we are). No strings were attached - i.e. we're allowed to slam the recipe if it sucks, etc.

I jumped at the chance, mostly for the opportunity to nerd out hardcore on sous-vide without ODing on meat.  In the book, Tara and Joy recommend braising a big-ass pork shoulder when you have a little free time, and then freezing portions for later use in a variety of recipes.  I'd been looking for an excuse to mess around with pork sous-vide, and although Almost Meatless isn't a sous-vide book, Tara was down with me adapting it.  We agreed that I'd make the Posole Burritos with Escabeche Slaw using sous-vide pork shoulder.  Posole (or pozole) is a Mexican hominy stew often made with pork.  Escabeche is traditionally fish cured/pickled with vegetables and acidic ingredients, but in keeping with the less-meat theme, this slaw is vegetables only. It was an easy recipe to make, and a very substantial meal despite having "only" 2 ounces of meat per serving. My family dug it like a shovel.

Here's how it went down. I bought a big-ass (5.2-pound) pork shoulder (on sale!):

I thought about cooking the whole thing in one chunk, but I was worried about getting even heating in the water bath. Also, splitting it in two would let me experiment with different cooking times and temps, so, booya:

The fat strata on top look awesome - almost like pork belly.  The pork shoulder recipe from the book calls for a simple braise with salt, pepper, garlic, and chicken or ham stock. I decided to play it pretty straight. I poked holes and jammed them full of garlic pieces, as instructed:

I generously salted and peppered the two halves:

I skipped the searing step since I wasn't doing a traditional braise -- not a huge tragedy because the cooked pork is sauteed before going in the stew, so I can still get my sizzle on. I also decided to skip the chicken/ham stock because liquid in the bag makes it harder to seal, and it would essentially be cooking in its own pork stock anyway.  Before I sealed the bags though I couldn't resist one small embellishment, a couple of tablespoons of rendered bacon fat I had in the fridge:

Everything went into two Food Saver bags for sealing. I got a decent seal without too many air pockets (always a challenge with the Food Saver):

My first real challenge was picking the cooking temperature. Tom Keller (in Under Pressure) specifies 180F for cured pork belly, but temps in the 150s for baby pork shoulder. My shoulder wasn't cured and wasn't as fatty as belly, so I let it go overnight (12 hours) at 155 using my (ugly) backup temperature controller (it has a more robust temperature probe - I am afraid to use my pretty controller above the 130s ever since I had a probe failure):

(If you find a woman that puts up with all this shit being in the kitchen, marry her)

I was a little worried the next morning that the pork had dried out because there was a significant amount of liquid in the bag, so I pulled it at 12 hours and started the other half at 144F. It turns out I had nothing to worry about -- fatty cuts of pork can apparently give up a lot of juice and still be fine.

That afternoon I prepped for the burrito recipe, starting with the slaw:

I "toasted" (burned) a dried pasilla and guajillo chile:

The recipe calls for one or the other but what can I say, I am an over-achiever. I definitely burned these (they ended up blacker than shown) and would use lower heat next time. I was able to fish them out of the stew before serving so nobody got a mouthful of bitter charcoal.

The stew of tomatillos, hominy, onion, and tomatoes looked and tasted great:

Next, the moment of truth -- I opened the first bag and removed the shoulder roast. Despite the lost liquid, it kicked ass. There was still plenty of moisture in the meat, and unlike a true braise it still had a pink color and slightly firm texture:

The texture is similar to a thick pork chop cooked medium, but with all the flavor of braised pork belly. Maybe it's what pork chops tasted like back in the day before modern pigs were bred to be leaner.  (Did that really happen? It screams Urban Legend or at least Incomplete Story). The garlic and bacon flavors are definitely present, although they are probably lost in the larger flavor party of the posole.

Relieved, I measured out 8 ounces of pork, cut it into big (3/4") cubes, seasoned it per the recipe (cumin, coriander, ancho), sauteed it very briefly, and added it to the stew. I didn't want to overcook my carefully-done pork, so gave the posole a stir and served it immediately. The family went to work building burros:

It's always more fun when you get to make your own, right?:

The posole burrito is a very successful dish. The stew is tangy from the tomatillos and tomatoes, which balances the richness of the pork and hominy (you heard me - hominy is downright meaty, at least in this dish). The slaw and cilantro are bright and crisp and keep the texture interesting. The colors are great too -- red stew with yellow hominy, green cilantro, and purple slaw. I cut mine open to enjoy the show (briefly):

Yum-donkulous. Thanks to Tara for including little ol' me with a bunch of bigtime bloggers!

Instructables article on Sous-Vide Beef Ribs

A recent Instructables article demonstrates beef ribs cooked for 48 hours at 135F/57C.

(photo from Instructables)

I prefer to do mine at 131F for 72 hours (I will post on that eventually), but these look pretty awesome.

Seeing Red - beet and radish SV temperature tests

On Chadzilla's blog I first read about the idea of cooking vegetables (potatoes, in that case) at 182F/83C in order to dissolve the starch but not the pectin.  I checked Keller and he is in the same range for potatoes - 185F/85C.

I decided to mess around with beets and radishes to see how they behave at and near these temperatures.  I prepared three bags, and filled each with large diced beets & halved radishes, along with canola oil and salt.  (I've found that water (and water based liquids like stock) tend to waterlog firm starchy vegetables when cooked sous-vide.)  I labeled the bags 170F, 182F and 192F:

(There's also some diced daikon in there but I can't remember what happened to it).  I cooked them for 2 hours each (in my Auberins/Sanyo rice cooker rig) at their labeled temperatures.  The oil stayed clear, but enough water leaked out of the vegetables to transfer lots of beet dye to the radishes:

(This is a different bag than the 192F bag shown above - the vegetables didn't fight and rearrange themselves during cooking).  So obviously don't cook beets with anything else unless you want them dyed red . . .  (I didn't mind for this project).

On to the results:

BEETS - Despite all the beet color in the bag, the beets didn't appear "cooked".  There was a nice progression of textures and the different temps, and none were unpleasant.  170F beets are very firm with a hit of crunch, like an al-dente (underdone) potato.  182F beets were firm but yielding - definitely my favorite.  192F beets were noticeably softer but not mushy or overdone.  However, something fundamental changed in the structure because the beets were very salty -- the salt had penetrated throughout the beet.  Maybe this was from pectin breakdown?  The 170F and 182F beets were nicely seasoned.  182F = the winner.

RADISHES - It was clear that the radishes had been cooked, as most of the color leeched out of the skin (and was replaced by deep red beet color in some cases).  170F radishes were the best, firm but no raw crunch, and nicely seasoned.  182F radishes were okay, but some are too soft.  192F radishes were too soft (mushy) and VERY salty similar to the 192F beets.  170F = the winner, but I would like to play around some more in the 170-180F range (although I'm not sure my rig is precise enough to break that down too finely). 

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's SV in the sky!

(photo via imagesme.net)

Fun story on Eater from Corton's Restaurant Director Arleene Oconitrillo:

What's the most outrageous request from a customer that you could accommodate? I don’t know if it’s outrageous, but it was really, really cool. I received a phone call at 10:30 in the morning from someone who wanted us to prepare a meal for three for an in-flight meal. An in-flight meal from appetizer to entrée--I believe it was a five course meal. We cook most of our food sous-vide so we vacuum sealed everything. She was a stewardess, so she prepared it on the plane and they had an awesome flight. Who was it for? I actually don’t know.

It's not clear whether this was a private jet or a commercial flight, but I guess it kinda had to be a private jet.  Hmmm, maybe I could be a co-pilot/chef . . .

Pet-Peeve Jones: "Sous Vide" Is Not a Verb

I'm gonna nerd-out here for a minute.

Sous vide is an adjective phrase; it translates directly to "under vacuum" and refers to a condition under which the food is cooked.  Food isn't "sous vided," it's "cooked sous-vide."  "Sous vide" is already a shorthand designation for food that is sealed in a bag and then cooked at a precise temperature, usually in a water bath.  But that doesn't mean we should make it into an English verb.

No one would ever say "I in-a-banana-leafed a tamale" or "I on-a-bed-of-vegetablesed a pork shoulder."  But people do write stuff like "Someone once asked me which I preferred: a sous-vided short rib or a slow braised short rib."  I don't mean to single out one blog (it's a great blog actually), because I see it all over the place.  And it gets to me.  Obviously.

Anyway, instead of abusing a perfectly innocent French phrase, I propose we make up a new verb.  Any time you feel that "cooked sous-vide" is too long to type or say, just use the verb "flirbed."

I may end up losing this one to the tide of public convenience, but I'll go down fighting.

/rant

Monkfish Business

Via Caterer Search (yeah, I have no idea either), an extremely detailed recipe, including step-by-step photos, for SV Monkfish Masala from British (?) chef Glynn Purnell.  He prescribes 62C/143F for 10-12 minutes.  I am so stuck on doing firsh at super low temps, but I am learning the hard way that that only works for delicate fish.  I did some snook the other day at like 125F and it was a fleshy trainwreck -- I ended up pan-searing it to finish.

His seasoning method is interesting - he covers the fillet in salt for 6 minutes, then rinses it off and rests it for a day in the fridge wrapped in a towel . . . 

My Back-up Rig - Johnson Controls A419 Controller

So, I finally got into vegetables, which means much higher temps than meat/fish, and my first probe conked out.  I think it has to have something to do with the hotter water.  It still works temporarily sometimes in cooler water.  Anyway, I was bitter, but Auber Instruments was pretty cool about it and gave me a 40% discount on the replacement.  I frigged up and told them the wrong model number, and they were cool about that too.  Really good customer service I have to say. 

BUT it still sucks that replacement probes are $30 for a thermistor, some wire, and a stereo plug, so I wanted to find an alternative.  It's possible I'll figure out how to build a probe for the Auber controller, but in the meantime I bought a Johnson Controls pre-wired controller for like $80.  I figured it wouldn't suck to have a second rig to cook things while I have one controller tied up with experiments such as cooking short ribs for a week.  My wife agreed not to divorce me (for now) as long as I keep the second rig in the garage.

The Johnson controller has a much simpler thermistor probe, with leads that have to be wired into the controller.  I think it will be much cheaper to replace.  It also looks very sturdy.  However, the thicker wire doesn't fit as well under a lid as the Auber probe. 

The Johnson is nowhere near as user-friendly as the Auber.  There are internal jumpers that have to be set to get the correct operating mode (heating vs. cooling, etc.), which requires taking off the faceplate with a screwdriver and decrypting the instruction manual.  Not major surgery, but definitely not plug-and-play like the Auber, so I can really appreciate what Auber have done to make something closer to a kitchen appliance as opposed to industrial equipment.  Also, it's ugly and the cords are big, while the Auber is svelte and looks good on a kitchen counter.  On the plus side, the Johnson is configurable for cooling modes, so could be used to control fermentations (lager) and god-knows what other crazy projects I may get myself into down the road.

Unlike the Auber, the Johnson is a so-called "bang-bang" controller - it turns on the heat at a particular temperature setpoint and off at another point.  There is a tiny bit of customization that I haven't played much with, but at the end of the day it is either "on" or "off", which gives much less precision that the Auber, which can cycle the power quickly to achieve "partial power."  I set the Johnson to click on at 129 and off at 130 (F) to cook some short ribs for a week in my garage.  The initial overshoot was pretty severe - something like 138.  But once I added the ribs it seems to have calmed down and spends most of the time between 129 and 132, with occasional excursions to 133.  This variation wouldn't be acceptable for some applications (fish), but it meets my needs for long-cooking tough cuts of beef.  I will get some veg in there eventually at 182 and see what happens - I expect wild behavior but who knows?

SV Porn

pigeon breast cooked sous vide with cotechino, lentils and black cabbage
Originally uploaded by sunday driver

I want this in my mouth (found on Flickr)

SV beats boiling and steaming for nutrition

Not exactly breaking news, but according to this article abstract:

When the three types of heat treatment were compared, boiling showed lowest retention of all the vitamins examined (45-64% in 5 min), whereas sous-vide processing gave the highest retentions (97-100% in 5 min). Retentions during steaming were a little lower (83-100% in 5 min)

My SV Rig

Auber instruments WS-1500A and a 10 cup rice cooker scored from Freecycle: