More Rambling on Sous-Vide

Learn from my experiences.

I have some more observations about cooking proteins using the sous vide method.  Here they are in no particular order.

1. You really ought to own a vacuum sealer.

   
   Since Sous-Vide means "under vacuum" this type of cooking is more about the bag than the bath.  The zip-lock/displacement method works well, but the added advantage of a vacuum sealer is totally worth the $80 you'll spend on it.  Having a food saver allows you to buy in bulk or at a better quality and store it in your fridge/freezer for longer without spoilage.  Costco sells a large pork loin (not the tenderloin) for less than $20.  From this I can cut two 1# roasts and 11 pork chops.  Bag in various quantities and I can cook pork for weeks.  Salmon fillets, especially the farm raised ones, run large and I can get at least 10 portions from that.  Preseason and bag.  The thicker ones are for main dishes and the thin ones for punching up a salad.
   
   
   

2. Seasonings in the bag should be light.

   
   
   When seasoning food before the vacuum you should use a light hand.  The reason is that if cooked in the bag the seasoning (particularly salt) has nowhere to go and so it goes into your food.  I recently seasoned a whole fillet of salmon as I would for oven or stove-top cooking and bagged it up.  When I used the water bath to cook 'em they were much saltier than I thought they should be.  Why? Well, on the stove-top or oven some of the seasoning comes off as fat is melted out of the food.  In the bag the fat may still come out but the solution of fat and salt come to equilibrium with your food due to the magic of osmosis.

3. There isn't a reason not to buy the latest immersion pumps.

   
   I have tried all of the SV techniques listed in my first SV article.  The cooler and stove-top methods are good but require you to keep monitoring temperature.  The external thermostat is OK, but if anything goes wrong with the placement of its probe you can easily exceed the preset temperature for awhile and the food will be overcooked. Plus you have to move the bags around on long cooks so the water can circulate.
   
   Once I got my Anova Sous Vide Immersion Circulator I was in heaven.  Efficient heating, water circulation, cool looks, and precision control led to total confidence.  Recently Amazon.com had a "Prime Sale" and was selling the latest Anova Culinary Precision Cooker for $139.  I bought one just 'cuz. Although it has an 800W heating element (1000W in the previous model) it is more adjustable and has better electronics -- including Bluetooth so you can control it with your phone or tablet.  Please wait for a sale and buy one.

4. Chill unused food quickly and reheat with the water bath.

   If you cook food SV that you are not going to sear and eat right away, please use an ice water bath to quickly get your food through the danger zone (45F-140F) before storing in the fridge or freezer.  One of the downsides to vacuum bagging is that any bacteria on the surface of the meat can become distributed throughout.  This is why knowing your safe combination of time/temp is so important.  But if you didn't succeed in killing all of the bacteria it can multiply while your food is cooling off in the fridge.  Take the extra time to give your food a quick trip below 45F and be sure to reheat completely following the time/temp guidelines.

5. Salting at the right level helps meat retain juice.

   Everyone from the guys at ChefSteps to Alton Brown celebrate the brining process.   Adding the correct amount of salt to the bag can actually help food retain some of its natural moisture.  Use the weights/amounts suggested by the "equilibrium brining" technique.

Vegas Sandwich

A rant on tipping...

So this isn't a recipe per se -- and yet it is.  It is a recipe for good things to happen to you.
A recent rip to Vegas sparked some thoughts about tipping in America.  But first the backstory.

We drive to Vegas at the crack of dawn to get an extra full day there.  Typically J leaves around 4 and I leave just before 5am.  We meet at Mon Ami Gabbi (Paris) for breakfast and to start the day. This time J mentions that he has read about the "Vegas Sandwich."

You'll need;

• Your ID
• Your credit card
• A $20 bill ($50 optional)

Put the $20 between your ID and credit card and hand it to the agent when you check in to your hotel.  Ask at this point if there are any upgrades available (or some other vague request).  Make no specific mention of the Jackson.

One of a few things can happen at this point.  The worst is that the agent is unable to do anything for you and pockets your cash.  That's right, you just wasted $20.  However, you have helped out someone who is probably struggling in a crappy, tourist-driven economy in a godforsaken desert.  That beats losing two hands of Blackjack.

The weirdest would be if they gave your money back to you. "This really isn't necessary, Sir." Or perhaps they fling it back to you with a sneer that says "Try $100 next time."

Most likely they will pocket your contribution and pull some strings to get the best room in the situation.  This is what happened to us three times this last weekend.

• D and I were using a free room promotion at the SLS but wanted to check in at 10am instead of waiting til 3pm.  After the sandwich we were in with a high floor and an upgraded view.  I believe that the sandwich (and maybe the fact that it was Wed) made that a reality.  
• J used a sandwich at Flamingo and although he had an upgraded room already booked, was given a garden /pool view.
• When we moved to the Linq for the rest of the weekend I dropped D off to register while I got the bags to the bellman and parked the 'Burban.  By the time I meet her at the registration desk she has sandwiched us into early check-in, and a pool view petite suite.  D laughed that the line attendant indicated that it was too early to check in without paying a $30 fee.  (Note that the sandwich was cheaper than the fee)

So the question is did the $20 really do all this or was it going to happen anyhow.  We will never know.  This question is one asked of organized religions every day.  Much like religion, it is a cost/benefit analysis.  Can you afford to throw away $20 on an increased chance that you will have good things happen to you at the registration desk?  Yes you can.

Travel experts point out that reservation clerks have tremendous latitude and you want them seeing you as not just another piece of cattle.  (Women with big boobs have known this for years)  However, this brings up the whole notion of tipping.  I'm not talking about the Reservoir Dogs tipping rant, I mean a real exploration of how this thing works.

This isn't just my opinion here, I want to hear what you have to say when I'm done.

First off some terms.  Tipping can mean both gratuities after service and tips given a-priori in the hopes of exceptional service.  Institutionalized tipping is the social construct whereby the price of goods and services has a mandatory and optional part.  The optional part is the tip.

A-priori is the essence of tipping.  You are giving something with absolutely no guarantee that you will get something in return.  Nobody has told you that it is required and so it is the ultimate gift.  If this were the only kind of tipping then I doubt that there would be a debate about it. Pay it forward in daily life. 

After service tips are still okay in my book.  As I framed it above, there are two parts to the price and we pay accordingly.  When service/sale has been rendered the payer can send a non verbal message about the state of service by altering the optional part.  There are societal suggested amounts, but the amount is entirely up to the one with the wallet out.  This is the first place that we get in trouble.

You see, as long as everyone sees it the same way then we will all get along, but not everyone does.  Servers see 15% as a minimum tip, not a recommended one.  Cheapskates see tips as completely optional.  Uncle Sam sees tips as part of one's salary. Barbacks see the Bartenders tips as part theirs. Denny's waitresses see that quarter under the water glass as decidedly not funny.  And the market has a hell of a time pricing goods and services when the error bars on the data are half the data.

Case in point.  I was talking to the cabbie in Vegas and he was regaling me with a story of some gorls who got picked up at one hotel, had to go the bank to get a new credit card (while he waited) and then to a restaurant or club.  He scoffed that the tip was only $3.  So I asked him how much the ride cost.  $30 he said.  Gulp.  I typically tip 10% on cab rides.  Did he expect the congressional medal of honor for wating outside Citibank?  IDK.

So would it be easier to have no tipping whatsoever?  Maybe, but a hell of a lot less fun.  I will start the discussion with a quick list of my tipping tendencies and you folks should reply as needed in the (sporadically moderated) comments section.

• Meals: 15% to 20% with 20 for good service and 15 for bad.
• Taxi rides: 10% or $5 whichever is more.
• Dealers (casino): One wager amount if I had a good run and won something.  So $5 to my roulette croupier if I hit my number early.
• Haircuts: 15% (or 20% if she's cute).  I tip $2 on my $8-$10 cuts even if the barber is an ex-marine.
• Service calls: An Abe or Sawbuck if it is hot or yucky.  $20 if the guy cuts me a deal on a part or saves me $100.
• Bellmen/Skycaps: $1/bag or $5 for less than 5 bags.
• Bars: $1/drink unless I am being a PITA -- then 10%.  I will not tip 20% on your $18 "signature cocktail." (BTW I was taught 10% on alcohol and 15% on food)
• Valet: $1-$5 when I get my car depending on speed of service.
• Housekeeping: $5 to $10 per day at end of stay if I needed housekeeping at all. Frequently I leave nothing because I never use service on short stays)
• Doorman/Taxi attendant: $1 -- I know a nutless monkey could do this job, but a good doorman needs to be kept in place.
• Car Wash: $3 unless the windows are actually streak free and I can tell -- then $5.
• Maitre'd: Nothing usually but $10 to $20 if it is a view restaurant and I'd like that view.

New Sous-Vide rig!

Upgrade to the lifestyle.

I decided to treat myself for my b-day and bought an Anova sous vide circulator.  A great bang-for-the-buck unit that I got on sale because a new version is out.  I took the old rig out to the desert.  Of course I just realized that the roaster would've made a good deep fry rig...alas.

The vessel is a Coleman stacker 48 (30ish quart cooler) with a cutout in the lid.  Currently testing how long for it to take a full load of cool water to 150F.  

Tomorrow night I'll make some chicken thighs and try to remember to take pics so that we can have another recipe on this blog.

Sous Vide Steak

Steakhouse goodness!

As promised here is the lowdown on my sous vide steak process.

You'll need

• a couple of high quality steaks
• fresh rosemary and thyme
• some steak seasoning
• a vacuum sealer (or ziplock freezer bags)
• a sous vide rig (see my article for options)
• some steak butter (optional -- I'll post recipe later)

I season each steak and seal them up with one sprig each of rosemary and thyme.

These can be frozen or used right away.  The only difference is how much time they will spend in the water bath.  Minimum one hour from thawed and minimum three hours if frozen.

Set the water bath to 125 for medium rare steaks.

When the water comes to temp drop in the steaks and wait the requisite time.

After the sous vide bath, get the steaks out, pat them dry with paper towels and re-season.  Discard the rosemary and thyme.  They won't look very appetizing because they lack that charred outer crust.

 

Sear the steaks with a torch or 40 sec on each side in a very hot skillet.

 

Just look at the nice even crust that cast iron delivers.

Top with the steak butter and enjoy.

Steak is part of a well-balanced diet...

Pizza Experiment.

Kinda Coming Soon.

We tried an experiment last night.  I made pizza from scratch.  The dough was good tasting but hard to work with. I burnt the bottoms of one batch and the next was under done.  The sauce was a hit out of the park. Our favorite topping was the classic margherita, just sauce, chunks of mozzarella and fresh basil.  All that is left over this morning is half the sauce and some breadsticks I made while trying to get the dough right.  What a snack!

It'll probably take me 2 or so more tries to get this ready for prime time so look for it in late April.

--Hasta!

Black Cod vs Chilean Sea Bas

The jury is in.

The most requested recipe from my list was the Steamed Black Cod with Black Bean Paste.  So I am investigating a new fishmonger in my neighborhood.  The problem is that I just got out the recipe and it calls for Chilean Sea Bass.  How could I misremember it so?  Well it turns out that the two fish are very similar. (Except when Shigei  prepares them at my favorite sushi place)

To those that wanted Black Cod know this:  I will make the dish with whichever fish I can source first and you can always make it with Black Cod.

BTW, the second most requested recipe was the Prime Rib Roast and Yorkshire Puddings. I will be making this on March 14th when the family comes over for dinner so look for this one on March 15th.

Poaching Eggs and Frisee Salad

Frisee Salad Video

I mentioned Chef John and have linked to his FoodWishes videos before, but I was watching one of my all-time favorites and thought that it had a great section on poaching eggs.  So here it is.  This is the Salad Lyonnaise video.  It features not only one of my favorite meals (I start every Vegas weekend with a Frisee Salad at Mon Ami Gabi) but also a great vinaigrette and the quick poaching demo. 

Watch it now!

Coming Soon!

Eggs Benedict and my no fuss Hollandaise sauce.

I'm gonna do Eggs Benedict this weekend.  What the heck, I had cake for dinner last night and the diet can start later.  That means that I can photograph my no fuss, no muss, blender-based Hollandaise sauce. You will thank me.  This one turns out thick and tangy.  Not runny like stove-top ones, and not bland like powdered mixes.  You'll need eggs, English muffins, Canadian bacon (eh), unsalted butter, a lemon, cayenne, and some chives.  It will help if you know how to poach an egg, but I will give some pointers as part of the recipe. 

I honestly think that this is one of my best recipes for a number of reasons.  Not the least of which is that you learn two techniques to pull this off.  One word of warning: making this for a large group is difficult.  The toast will cool and the ham will dry out while you are laboriously poaching eggs two at a time.  We'll have to chat about how to do fine dining for groups larger than 4 in another post.

Sous Vide

Cooking with Sous Vide.

I was sharing this one so I went to 130F, but it was glorious!

I originally got into sous vide in order to make a medium rare steak with a charred exterior without that line of well done meat surrounding the perfect core.  I had previously tried cooking frozen steaks, searing the outside and finishing in a 200F oven, and just buying really thick-ass steaks.  Sous vide promised a solution.

Cooking with a water bath is a great way to do a few things, but it is not for everything.  Case in point is prime rib.  One of the first things I did SV was a 5 pound boneless prime rib.  I had to cut it in half in order to vacuum seal it with any confidence.  I added a number of herbs to the bags and the flavor permeated the meat.  In addition the long, slow cook meant that the seasoning rub made itself known.  Finishing with a torch was fun.  Overall the meat was perfectly cooked with a minimum of overcooked areas and was consumed with great haste by everyone present.  However, it was way more work than slow roasting in a 250F oven.

Sous vide actually refers to the vacuum packing and I am very glad that I bought a Food Saver brand sealer.  However, the key here is really the water bath.  To that end, one doesn't need to invest in a vacuum sealer.  Just use heavy duty ziplock bags (maybe do a little research on their composition and behavior under mild heating), the displacement sealing method, and keep the temperatures low.

The water bath slowly brings your food (proteins in my case) up to thermal equilibrium with the water. This way you cannot temperature overcook your food.  You could however leave it in the water bath either too long or too short a time.  Let's take these one at a time.

Too long in the bath.  In addition to killing bacteria, the temperature is making chemical changes in the meat.  Collagen is breaking down into gelatin, fat is moving around, etc.  With some cuts and some meats prolonged holding at even medium rare temps (like 48 hours) can render the texture seven kinds of wrong.  At the same time, 48 hours for a brisket may be just enough to tenderize it.

Too short in the bath has another consequence.  Let's take chicken for example.  The dominant wisdom is to cook chicken to 165F in the breast and a little more in the thigh.  The reason is that at 165F salmonella is killed almost instantly.  A 165F breast is mostly dried out.  Salmonella will die at much lower temperatures if the temperature is held for a longer time.  You can cook a chicken breast to 140F if you hold it at 140F for 45 minutes.  Try that with an oven. 

The meat will need to be seared for that exterior crust.  Do this either before or after the water bath. Do both if you are from Seattle and make cooking videos set to music using metric units.

So as long as you do some reading about long term texture destruction and short term bacteria elimination you should feel confident to SV.  I never wanted to cook duck because I had been warned that a duck breast goes from raw to overcooked in the blink of an eye. On the other hand a perfectly cooked duck breast is a wonderful thing.  SV gave me the confidence to do it.  Rack of Lamb too.

Another thing, SV cooked proteins can be frozen and reheated in the SV rig.   This is the one way that reheating something doesn't cook it again.  In fact, many restaurants use SV to quickly serve things that have a huge lead time if created from raw materials.  Is it cheating?  Do I want to wait 3 hours for a fresh cooked slice of prime rib or do I wanna let them cook it earlier in the day and just slice my bit when I order.  Same concept in my mind.  

So if you still wanna dabble in SV here's my advice.  Try it on a small scale and see if you want to continue.  Here are the 4 ways to do SV (ranked in increasing cost);

1. Cooler method. This works well for steaks on a small scale and there are tons of videos on youtube.  Basically you  heat water to 5 degrees above your desired temp, pour it into a small cooler, introduce your zip-locked steaks and  wait for the hour or two that it takes to ensure that you are at temp.  Take out the steaks, pat dry, and finish them in a skillet, BBQ or with a torch.
2. Stove-top method.  Bag your meat.  Bring a pot of water to the correct temperature and plop in your bag.  Now monitor that pot for the next hour or two.  If you are lucky there will be some magic combination of burner setting and lid crackedness that allows you to relax your vigilance.  But if you let the temp get away from you it can ruin the intended effect.
3. External thermostat method.  Get yourself an analog crock pot/rice cooker/electric roaster and an external thermostat.  You'll have to test your rig to make sure that it can hold a variety of temps.  My original crock pot was both too small and too low in power to serve as a SV rig.  Hence the Nesco roaster.  The external 'stat reads the water temperature and turns the electricity on and off to control the process.  This is why you cannot use a fancy digital rice cooker.  When the power cycles on/off to the unit it must pick up where it left off -- full heating, Cap'n.
4. All-in-one method.  This means either the Sous Vide Supreme (or that cheaper slow cooker/SV rig sold in Australia) or an expensive immersion circulator and a collection of plastic tubs. 

Overall, do some reading.  Try some low tech experiments.  Make eggs poached in the shells (an egg is already vacuum packed).  SV is not for everyone or everything, but it has its niche.

Suggestions?

Here's a list of my best recipes.  Let me know which ones you'd like me to make/photograph/post on this blog.  (SC) means Slow Cooker and (SV) means Sous Vide.  Send me email at mrharmon7@gmail.com.

Fajitas
Herb Lemon Game Hens w/Garlic Cream sauce
Tacos Al Pastor (SC)
Lobster Mac-n-Chz
Duck a L'Orange (SV)
Rack of Lamb w/Herbed Butter (SV)
Couscous
Mushy Peas
Cottage Pie (Shepherd's Pie w/ground beef)
No butter shrimp scampi (from D's milk allergy days)
Miso Ginger Salmon
Chimichuri Sauce
Chili Rubbed Pork Loin w/Madeira Mushroom sauce
Roasted New Potatoes
Mushroom & Pea Risotto
Svickova
Chicken Pot Pies
Meatloaf or Mini Meatlof Meatballs
Cumin Dusted Pork Chops
Yellowtail w/Coconut Milk sauce
Redcurrant Glazed Pork Chops
Motoyaki
Ahi Poke
Island Express (Sushi Roll from Flip's)
Sloppy Matt's
Sardicado
Fish Tacos
Steak (4 ways) (one is SV)
Green Beans w/ Bacon Dressing
Taotinis
Blue Fin Cocktail
Pork in Gorgonzola
Roasted Garlic Soup
Dustan's Green Chili Stew (served on a quesadilla)
Philadelphia Roll (salmon & cream cheese)
Matt's Guacamole
Gulliver's Creamed Corn
Ginger Lime Shrimp Soup
Penne w/Vodka Tomato Cream Sauce
Steak with Green Peppercorn, Horseradish and Cognac sauce
Vegetable Samosas



I know that it is a long list, but I have time.  Let's do the interesting ones first.
--Matt