977 replies to this topic

[Mikels]

Brining, I do it with all my poultry when roasting. Does anyone have experience doing it with SV? I didn't see anything about this in earlier posts, but I have been known to have missed things. Oh, to have a search function....

Edited by Mikels, 14 July 2008 - 05:46 AM.

[Mikels]

For what it's worth. I have done briskets at 135F and 147F (several times at each temperature) and would say that to my taste,  135F was vastly preferable. The meat had better texture and was moister at 135 (for 40 to 48 hours) than at 147.

No matter what you do, a lot of moisture will leave the meat. Also, you need a well-trimmed brisket (especially at 135F) that also has reasonable marbling. The flat of some briskets does not have enough marbling and will yield something that turns out "dry" no matter what temp.

At 135F for 48 hrs, you end up with  meat that is fork tender, deliciously pink and has its full visual integrity (it doesn't look stringy or fibrous at all).
Checking it today, the meat has shrunk a bit and released a lot liquid.
Bag is no longer tight

I think that the difference is easy to explain. At 135, you have medium rare brisket, while at 147, it is medium to medium well done. With the connective tissue reduced to gelatin in both cases, the tenderness is a function of internal temperature. If you think about it, we are used to brisket being well done.

[DouglasBaldwin]

Brining, I do it with all my poultry when roasting.  Does anyone have experience doing it with SV?  I didn't see anything about this in earlier posts, but I have been known to have missed things.  Oh, to have a search function....

I frequently brine both pork and poultry when cooking sous vide (see my guide for details). That said, pork chops cooked at 131F (55C) for 12 hours and poultry breasts cooked at 140F (60C) until pasteurized are perfectly acceptable without brining. I feel that brining is important when cooking pork shoulders and poultry legs confit style (8--12 hours at 176F {80C}). Additionally, the meat can also be mechanically tenderized using a Jaccard.

There is indeed a search function at the bottom left-hand side of this page. If you had noticed the search, you would have discovered that brining has been discussed at some length up thread. (But, there is always room for additional discussing ).

[MikeTMD]

Hello, SV Gang,

I am looking for purely numeric answers to my question:

Momofuku Ko has 48 hour SV Short Ribs on the menu - any ideas/guesses/estimates as to what temperature they may cook it at? ( in this case we already know the exact cooking time)

That's what their ribs look like:

[e_monster]

It looks like about 135F or so with a nice quick sear.

[MikeTMD]

Thanks, e_monster:

135F @ 48 hours - would it be high enough to melt the fat, though?

[e_monster]

I have cooked them at 135F several times (followed by a quick sear) and people love them -- they are sure that it is some expensive cut of meat--very tender and very rich. and they look very much like what you posted.

135F softens the fat but it won't render all of it--so you need to start with well trimmed short ribs. When you sear some will render and some help form a nice crisp crust.

I sous-vide with the bones and remove the bones before searing.

I put the empty pan on a high burner for 10 minutes or so which gets the pan to about 700 F before doing the sear. The ribs get just 10 to 20 seconds per side (I sear the four sides). If you cook sous vide it at a high enough temperature to render the fat, you miss out on the wonderful texture that a medium short rib can have. The pictures look like what my short ribs look like at 135F. I will try to get my act together and post some pictures.

[alwang]

Not sure about the SV temperature, but the Ko shortribs are deep fried afterwards.

[Ruth]

e_monster what goes into the bag with your short ribs? Just dry seasoning or do you add some liquid?

[e_monster]

I haven't been seasoning the shortribs before bagging. I just put them into the bags by themselves. When I take them out I season with salt and pepper before searing. It might be co-incidence but it seems like when there is salt in the bag on a long cook that the meat doesn't come out quite as juicy.

[nextguy]

Hi All,

I am a new member but a longtime reader. I have seen sous vide demonstrated many times but this thread actually convinced me that I should try it!

I've been using a Sous Vide Magic in combination with a consumer rice cooker for about 2 months now. It has been tough finding the right temperature for whichever protein I've decided to cook. I find that my tastes tend to be closer to rare than other members here.

Since I am from Montreal, and if you ask me Montreal has the best smoked meat, I have been searching for the best technique to smoke a whole brisket and not have it come out dry or too harsh in its smokiness. I don't have the luxury of a commercial sized smoke house so I have had to make due with my Centro brand electric smoker and I find that the temperature control is too finicky and the resultant smoke too harsh.

What I did last week was dry cured a couple of small briskets from the flat side in a rub containing kosher salt, black pepper, coriander seeds, celery seeds, paprika, and a few bay leaves. I left this in the fridge in a zip lock bag flipping it every day. After three days I rinsed and dried the meat and then re-spiced it. I then put it in the smoker with mesquite chips and set the temperature to 155F. It took about 15 minutes for the smoke to begin forming and at that point I let the meat smoke for exactly 15 minutes. When I removed the meat the wood chips were not yet completely black and smoldering. I feel that this is critical.

I let the meat rest and then put it in the freezer for about 1 hour to solidfy any blood and juice. I vacuum sealed each brisket seperately using my Food Saver 2460 and then cooked them sous-vide for 2 days at 135F.

At the end of 2 days the meat had lost quite a bit of juice and the bags were pretty loose. The flavor and texture though were unlike any other smoked meat I ever had. It was not at all like something you would find at Schwartz' or some other fine smoked meat restaurant but it was still great. As I said, the texture was soft but not crumbly. The meat was moist throughout and the smoke flavor was not at all harsh. It was subtle and sublime. Though 15 minutes in a smoker is not enough to develop a smoke ring, bathing in it's own juice which obviously was filled with smoke flavor allowed the essence of smoke to permeate throughout but not be over-powering. The only thing I forgot, and I am kicking myself now, was to add some garlic to the pouch. I am also thinking of adding some sort of citrus... not a lot but just a bit to counteract some of the carcinogens in smoke.

Thanks for reading and I'd appreciate any comments!

[MikeTMD]

I haven't been seasoning the shortribs before bagging. I just put them into the bags by themselves. When I take them out I season with salt and pepper before searing. It might be co-incidence but it seems like when there is salt in the bag on a long cook that the meat doesn't come out quite as juicy.

That would be my approach too. Salt in a SV bag will most certainly make meat (or anything else, for that matter) a lot less juicy, because of the osmosis.

[pounce]

Salt in a SV bag will most certainly make meat (or anything else, for that matter) a lot less juicy, because of the osmosis.

This might not be an accurate statement. Taking brining for instance.

Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes. This leads salt ions to enter the cell via diffusion. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis. The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins. The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix which traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from drying out, or dehydrating.

[MikeTMD]

Salt in a SV bag will most certainly make meat (or anything else, for that matter) a lot less juicy, because of the osmosis.

This might not be an accurate statement. Taking brining for instance.

Both statements are "accurate" - it's the concentration of salt that makes the difference ( for those of you who are interested - hypo/iso/hyper-tonic solutions determine the direction of osmotic movement).

[pounce]

Ok, so what amount of salt in the bag is going to dry out the meat (or anything else)? How much salt is too much for a given item for a given amount of time?

Edited by pounce, 22 July 2008 - 04:45 PM.

[FastTalkingHighTrousers]

I've always seasoned proteins I've either cooked via sous-vide or braise.
I've never had a situation where my meat comes out dry due to seasoning. I would love more information about the threat of meat losing moisture do to seasoning.
Should we therefore never season proteins before vac'ing? This notion is new to me.

[e_monster]

What length cooks are you doing sous vide? My experience has been that seasoning is not at all problematic when cooking items that get cooked for a few hours. But on really long cooks (36 to 48 hours for example) that salt MAY (I am not certain yet) be influencing the texture of the final result in a way that it doesn't when cooking for a few hours.

I haven't had time to do a scientific experiment yet to compare (i.e. by splitting a brisket and cooking one with seasoning and one without) but my anecdotal experience with brisket has been that the dry-rubbed briskets did not come out as juicy as the briskets that I cooked without salt. (Note that I would never ever ever bbq or braise a brisket that I hadn't seasoned -- but sous-vide for 48 hours at low temperatures is a very different process).

I think that this is a great topic for discussion and experimentation. I will try to be a bit more scientific when I do my next brisket -- as the variations that I saw might have been due to variations in the pieces of meat rather than due to seasoning.

Just my .02

[FastTalkingHighTrousers]

I've done everything from cooking beef, chicken and fish to order for ~<1hr. to cooking shorties and pork shoulder for 48hours. I've never done brisket ...not a big fan.
I always season every protein I vacuum pack.
Never have I pulled anything out of cryo that I would consider to be dried out.

[e_monster]

I haven't had anything come out dried out when seasoning either. BUT, I have had some things come out much juicier than others. I think you have to cook both ways -- with similar pieces of meat -- and A/B them and see if there is a difference. My seasoned briskets didn't come out dry but the unseasoned briskets came out juicier.

As I said, it is possible that the difference wasn't due to the seasoning -- I haven't been scientific enough -- but the difference has been consistent so far for me.

I would be curious to know if anyone has experimented in this arena.

[Mikels]

I've done everything from cooking beef, chicken and fish to order for ~<1hr. to cooking shorties and pork shoulder for 48hours. I've never done brisket ...not a big fan.
I always season every protein I vacuum pack.
Never have I pulled anything out of cryo that I would consider to be dried out.

I haven't had anything come out dried out when seasoning either. BUT, I have had some things come out much juicier than others. I think you have to cook both ways -- with similar pieces of meat -- and A/B them and see if there is a difference. My seasoned briskets didn't come out dry but the unseasoned briskets came out juicier.

As I said, it is possible that the difference wasn't due to the seasoning -- I haven't been scientific enough -- but the difference has been consistent so far for me.

I would be curious to know if anyone has experimented in this arena.

The only experience I have had with meat that was heavily brined was to cook SV a corned brisket 135F for 48hrs. It was nothing like a brisket done the same way. But then, the pickling may have denatured the meat.

The flavor was something else, much more intense than boiling it. It was just a bit saltier, tho.

[Werdna]

I'm wondering about doing pasta sous vide. I know it sounds like a horrible idea but I was thinking about egg yolk filled ravioli and the weird cooking time involved (aldente pasta but not hard-boiled yolk).

If the center could be cooked at 147(?) and the pasta not overcooked, it would be pretty cool. All I could think of was weighing the cooked/uncooked pasta to find out the water absorption of a perfectly cooked piece, then adding that much water to the bag and sealing it. But given the chemistry of pasta is more complex than just water-in I'm not sure if thats the way to go.

Anyone played around with this? I really want to make an inside-out carbonara

Edited by Werdna, 25 July 2008 - 11:24 AM.

[alwang]

If the goal is to get a runny yolk, perhaps freezing the yolk beforehand would be the better way to go. I think 147F will be too low to cook pasta well.

[slkinsey]

I know it sounds like a horrible idea but I was thinking about egg yolk filled ravioli and the weird cooking time involved (aldente pasta but not hard-boiled yolk).

This has been done. I've done it, in fact.

Just roll the rough very thin;

put down a bit of filling (I like a mixture of ritotta and some kind of bitter green) as a "base";

leave an indentation in the filling to hold the yolk;

carefully put a whole, unbroken yolk into the intentation;

cover with another piece of dough and carefully seal;

leave plenty of dough around the outside when you cut out the shape (you don't want to eat more than one egg yolk-filled ravolo anyway);

cook it in not-quite-simmering water for 4 minutes;

plate immediately, sauce with brown butter and shaved truffles if you have 'em.



The dough will be cooked, and the yolk will run when you cut into the center of the raviolo.

[Werdna]

This has been done.  I've done it, in fact.

Hey, thanks, I'll give it a go.

[slkinsey]

Actually cooking pasta sous vide would be a bad idea, because the pasta will continue to absorb water so long as there is water in the bag.

[Werdna]

Ya, thats why I want to measure the amount of water it absorbs when cooked right, then only put that much in the bag. Instead of the normal bloating of the bag from escaped juices, I imagine the pasta would swell to fill it. Probably have to lay the pasta flat to try and keep the water absorption even. If it works, it would mean I could cook pasta in more expensive liquids than I would otherwise (not wanting to turn a couple gallons of duck-stock or Sauternes into pasta water.)

[Chris Hennes]

I wonder what would happen with the starch, though. When you cook pasta in boiling water a lot of starch from the pasta ends up in the water: doing sous vide would prevent that. I guess it would be like those macaroni and cheese things where you add just enough water to microwave the pasta to doneness, but you don't have to drain it. I can't recall what the sauce on those was like...

[Werdna]

hmm, probably weld them togeather like glue. I'll have to try it, I think it would be worth it to have some sake-infused cold buckwheat noodles.

[nickrey]

I just sous vide cooked some beef cheeks for a chef friend. He had vacuum sealed them in food safe plastic bags with some jus.

They were cooked for 30 hours at 70 degrees celsius (158 fahrenheit).

While cooking there was no leakage and the bags were definitely water tight.

The cooking water, although not coloured, smelt strongly of cloves (there were some used to flavour the jus).

My question is are the clove scent molecules so small that they can pass through the plastic bags? If so, does anything else do this?

[Silly Disciple]

Actually cooking pasta sous vide would be a bad idea, because the pasta will continue to absorb water so long as there is water in the bag.

Ya, thats why I want to measure the amount of water it absorbs when cooked right, then only put that much in the bag. Instead of the normal bloating of the bag from escaped juices, I imagine the pasta would swell to fill it. Probably have to lay the pasta flat to try and keep the water absorption even. If it works, it would mean I could cook pasta in more expensive liquids than I would otherwise (not wanting to turn a couple gallons of duck-stock or Sauternes into pasta water.)

100% semoline dough absorbs about 80%-85% water to obtain an al-dente texture.
When you take into account the regular ratio of dough/filling in a raviolo, the absorption is about 35%-40% (YMMV).

However, you would have to check what the minimum temperature is for the semoline starch to gel, which I would guess is in the 60-70 C ballpark. Given that the temperature you're looking for the yolk is closer to the lower bound of this ballpark figure, I'm not sure this is the best approach for what you're trying to obtain.

You should also take into account that the pasta will stick together, that the yolk can break when you seal the bag, etc.

Freezing the yolk and then filling the raviolo might be a simpler low-tech solution with better results, IMHO.

Edited by Silly Disciple, 26 July 2008 - 04:25 AM.