Fat Guy

I succeeded in getting a really good comparison of oven and stovetop braising, and I was able to reheat the Lab #1 samples without incident, but boy did I screw up the 200/300 degree comparison. I recently acquired this cool new Panasonic "FlashXPress" toaster oven, and I figured, hey, I should use that for the 200 degree braise. I checked to see if my Corningware casserole dish would fit in the toaster oven, and it did! So I did my reheating in there first and it came out great. I didn't bother to put the lid on (it didn't fit anyway) because the short ribs were almost fully submerged anyway. The second reheating made the meat even more tender and juicy, but it didn't deprive the meat of structure as I guessed it would have. This was definitely the tastiest meat I've tried in the seminar. I'm very interested to see how it comes out upon yet another reheating. Then I decided to braise. This was a disaster. Suffice it to say you don't want to put aluminum foil too close to the elements in a FlashXPress toaster oven. After I recovered from the humiliation and defeat, I decided I'd just do the 200 degree braise in the regular oven later on, but then I got called out to dinner and all the timing and measuring got screwed up. To add to the chaos and confusion, we had just given our bulldog, Momo, a bath and Ellen was drying him as he chortled enthusiastically in the living room. I did get some nice tender short ribs out of it all, and my totally unscientific observation is that the lower temperature created more "falling off the bone" tenderness but, surprisingly, less flavor and structure. I liked the higher temperature samples better -- they were very tender in their own right, but they were more like meat and less like mush. Then again, I may have braised too long. Anyway, the really good comparison I got was between oven and stovetop. I had a few things going for me: First, I have a matched set of Calphalon pots, so I was able to eliminate the vessel variable. Second, the pots have glass lids, which made it extremely easy to adjust the rate of simmering in each pot to what appeared to be an identical rate. I can't overemphasize how great it is to have glass lids on braising vessels. Third, my oven is well calibrated and well lit. And finally, the burners on my range have a simmer setting. You can see that, unlike normal burners, these have two rings of gas jets, a big one on the outside and a little one in the middle under a heat diffuser plate. This allows for a very slow, steady simmer. It was easier to adjust the oven than to adjust the burner, so what I found was that the oven at 280 gave the same rate of simmer as the burner on the lowest setting. The results, as I suspected they might be, were nearly identical. For whatever reason, the oven samples lost more moisture than the stovetop samples, and the stovetop samples took about 15 minutes longer to become fork tender (I think this is because for the first little while the oven was running hotter than the stovetop, until I dialed down to 275 and then back to 280). But none of this seemed to create a meaningful difference. Subjectively, I found stovetop braising -- especially with a glass lid -- to be much more pleasurable. There was no bending down, lifting, awkward manipulation of racks, or anything like that. And you don't have to heat up the whole oven to accomplish a task that can be accomplished just as well by a tiny flame. I assume stovetop braising will only work if you have thick vessels like the Calphalon (or Le Creuset) that provide good heat distribution, and I also assume that on an electric burner that cycles on and off to maintain heat this wouldn't work out as well. But we'd have to test that.

Great idea, mjg. Last night a friend and I followed your advice and made pretty much that exact dish, but with rigatoni. Fantastic.

I'm moving real slow tonight. Finally got the photos transferred onto my computer but will probably post in the morning. Who will be the first? Did we scare everybody away? I knew we would eventually, Dan -- way to go!

My samples just started braising a few minutes ago, so I will probably be one of the last members of the seminar to post results tonight. Who's going to go first today? Tell all.

I used Beaujolais Nouveau, for what it's worth.

Yes, that's because I typed the opposite of what I meant. I meant to say fully submerged is inferior to partially submerged.

I was thinking the same thing on the bus this morning. But then I thought, even if there is a reason, the reason could be wrong. Then again, so far, our experiments have confirmed that fully submerged (is that redundant?) works better, at least under our test conditions.

I do think stock allows for a clearer flavor -- most everybody this far has found wine to be pretty strong stuff. And yes, please do post your results whenever they're ready. These topics will stay alive indefinitely. I look forward to your results with poultry!

Just more meat! I too was surprised that the fully immersed sample was not as tender as the partly immersed one. Yet another mystery of braising.

We've been accumulating quite a lot of braised meat throughout the “Truth About Braising” seminar, and I don't know about all of you but there are only so many short ribs I can eat in their intact form. Not to mention, so many ribs are getting mangled by poking, prodding and testing that they can't be served to anyone except total food geeks like us. That means extra meat of a high level of quality, and I'd like to use this topic to explore some ways in which to use it. I'll start. Lentils with short ribs This is a dish I came up with a couple of months ago when I was called upon to assemble something for what I would characterize as an extreme pot-luck dinner. Everybody was responsible for one course of a multi-course meal, and a couple of days beforehand I was informed that I had to make the meat course (I was hoping that they'd let me get away with having Ellen make dessert!). The nice thing about it is that it uses a lot of short rib scraps and not a lot of actual short ribs. I won't be giving exact quantities, because this is a leftovers dish: you take a bag of supermarket lentils and you enhance it with however much meat you have around, plus minimal vegetables and seasonings. Here's the basic idea: Start by removing all the short rib meat from the bones, and then trim the nice big pieces and set them aside. These will form the basis of your serving portions. All your other meat and scraps should be chopped up. Don't worry if a few bits of fat stay attached; you just want to be sure to get rid of the cartilaginous pieces that have an unpleasant texture. You can get a lot of nice edible trimmings if you work at it with your knife for awhile. Save the bones and the inedible trimmings in a zipper bag in the freezer for a later stockmaking project. Pour a bag of lentils (a pound is a standard bag) into a pot and add the braising liquid (defatted) that your meat was stored in. I find that when cooking lentils it helps to cook them almost like risotto. Add just enough liquid to cover, and cook over medium heat until most of it is absorbed, then add more liquid. I hope these images will give you some idea of the progression over a period of about 45 minutes as the lentils expand to soak up added liquid. From image 1 to image 2 you can see the lentils expanding in the original liquid (which was a combination of the braising liquid plus a little water to cover). If you look at image 3 and use the rivets on the side of the pot as a reference point for depth, you'll see how much liquid the lentils have absorbed later on. Throughout the process, stir occasionally and add liquid and other ingredients as needed. I added a little more water, some wine, and a little more braising liquid from a failed experiment. Later on I added some diced carrots. You'll notice I didn't start with any onions in the pot or anything like that. This is a minimalist composition meant to emphasize the meat. As the lentils are nearing doneness (still al dente but getting on), add the chopped up short rib meat and let it heat through. This would be a good time to add salt. Everything up to this point can and should be done in advance. The dish tastes much better if you rest it at this point. You can let it cool and place the whole pot in the refrigerator until later if you like. About 45-60 minutes before service, put the pot back on a low heat. You'll probably have to add a little more liquid, preferably stock if you have some handy. At the same time, take those nice big pieces of short rib meat and put them in a closed vessel in a 275 degree oven with some stock or braising liquid. In the last few minutes of heating the lentil-and-meat mixture, stir in just a teaspoon or so of Sherry vinegar (or any other nice vinegar) to give a little brightness and acidity to the dish. For service, fill a shallow, rimmed bowl with a layer of the lentil-and-meat mixture, top with a short rib chunk, and sauce with a little of the stock or braising liquid in which you reheated the short rib chunks.

It does seem that there are some desirable characteristics to both wine and stock, and maybe there is a combination (3:1 stock:wine maybe?) that would give us the best of both. Add another experiment to the list for future extra credit. I also wanted to mention, Smithy, that if you are able to get good results out of bottom round in a straight braise you are well on your way to being one of the world's great cooks. Bottom round is an extremely difficult cut to work with, and the cookbooks I trust tend to recommend lengthy marinating and even larding before braising. I'm particularly glad that you got some improvements after reheating -- it may very well be that bottom round is never quite right on day 1 but can be delicious on day 2. I was interested to see just how much flavor developed in the water when braising just with water and aromatic vegetables. When you think about it, you realize you have a piece of meat and bone in there with water and aromatic vegetables for a couple of hours, so you are essentially making a stock. A weak stock, but a stock nonetheless, and when you reduce it you do see some stocklike characteristics. I imagine that if you pack a big braiser full with 20 short ribs you will see a more pronounced version of this effect. I wanted to make a quick comment on my experience with reheating, and also give a visual on how the short ribs and braising liquid look after a night in the refrigerator: That's a lot of fat -- the layer must have been 1/4" thick, which is the thickness of the layer I'd expect on an entire large stockpot. So one observation about reheating is that overnight refrigeration is a great way to get a lot of fat out of your braising liquid. I can't imagine that just skimming would get it all out. And while there are uses for fat in saucemaking, I like to have control over it. Once I got the fat out I reheated the batch at 275 degrees for about 45 minutes and tasted bites from several ribs. I found that storing them all together and reheating them together really evened out whatever differences there might have been from Lab 1 -- the foil-cooked ribs, which were lousy on day 1 -- were in there, and there was no way to identify them by tasting after reheating. Overall, I thought the reheated meat was better in every way than the meat from the day before. It even looked better. The striations in the meat came apart beautifully with a fork and juices and steam issued forth from the interiors of each piece. The meat still had structure but it was luscious and, to abuse an adjective, meaty. I'm looking forward to re-reheating tomorrow. I wonder how many reheats you can do before you wreck the stuff.

Thanks for that report. A little later tonight I will start a topic on what to do with leftover braised meat.

Thanks for the exhaustive report, Dan. I don't wish to play favorites, but you get a gold star. One question, though: do you have comments on the Lab 1 reheat other than that it was excellent? Specifically, did it taste different today than yesterday, and if so how and was it better or worse?

I think it's great that so many eGullet Society members decided to participate in the Lab 1 experiments. This is tedious, labor-intensive stuff that doesn't have an immediate reward like a recipe would. And it's not like we're coming up with absolute conclusions -- a lot of this involves learning how much more there is to learn. I'm going to assume that jwwai is the last person who will be ringing in with Lab 1 results, and the discussion of Lab 2 has begun, so I'm going to close this topic until Friday, at which point we will open it up to comments from non-participants.

There are pros and cons to doing this as an interactive seminar. I could have done all the experiments last week and been better prepared than the rest of the group, and that would have improved logistics and made things more convenient, but then it wouldn't have been a true seminar -- it would have been more like a high-school science class where the teacher already knows how every experiment is going to come out. As I mentioned in the earlier literature, this is the first time I'm doing each of these experiments, so the results of each experiment are going to affect the logistics of the next. That makes it hard for me to post the next day's instructions until we get back some of the early results from the previous lab. For example, when it turned out after Lab #1 that different vessels could make a big difference, I had to recompute Lab #2 to eliminate that variable. I'll try to post the Lab #3 instructions in a couple of hours, but there are some things I'm still trying to resolve. I think, however, that tomorrow will require less equipment than the previous two days.

Here are all my browned samples and liquids ready for assembly: After preparation, from top right, going clockwise, we have shallow stock, shallow water-with-mirepoix, deep stock, shallow wine: The nice thing about this arrangement was that everything fit in the oven on one shelf, nicely spaced: I didn't take a ton of temperature readings, because I wanted to preserve that nice seal. But the readings I did take were within a 2 degree margin of error, which I attribute to thermometer placement. I started with hot stock (it started out frozen and I microwaved it to almost simmering), though I imagine if I didn't it would have taken a little longer for the deep-stock sample to come up to temperature. I was very pleased with the efficacy of the foil covers. I used a double layer this time and really pinched the covers tight around the lips of the mini loaf pans. Moisture loss, as you can see, was minimal and in the case of the sample with mirepoix I think the liquid level actually went higher as the meat and vegetables gave up some liquid. I first tasted with no liquid. Nonetheless, and not just on a surface level, the type of liquid made a difference. The liquids also seemed to have different properties. For example, only the sample with wine fell off the bone and yet it was “tighter” in texture. It had an identifiable wine taste, which was nice, that permeated the meat pretty far into the interior. The samples with stock were mellower, richer and meatier than the wine sample. Surprisingly, the sample that was only partially covered with stock was more tender than the fully submerged sample. Cosmetically, though you can barely tell this from the photo, the appearance of the browning held up better on the shallow sample than on the submerged one. The submerged one, however, had more meaty flavor farther in to the sample. The sample with water was bland, but equally tender to the stock sample. I put the pans back into the oven at a higher temperature in order to let the liquids reduce by about half, and then I spooned a bit over each corresponding sample. Tasting again, the differences among the liquids was more pronounced. The wine, even as a very thin sauce, was almost overwhelmingly winey. The shallow stock sauce was the closest to ideal. The deep stock sauce wasn't as flavorful. The sauce from the mirepoix tasted like a thinner version of the stock sauce. I then figured out that it would be interesting to dip each sample in a different sauce. So, for example, I dipped a piece of the stock-braised short rib in the wine sauce. This was to me maybe slightly less harmonious than a sample sauced with its own braising liquid, but it was hard to tell. I didn't have the discipline to do a blind comparison, but informally I would say that the sauce has much more effect on flavor than the choice of liquid in which you braise. When I put a little bit of the stock sauce on the water-with-mirepoix sample, it was almost indistinguishable from the sample that had been braised in stock. I have some more observations to share, including some thoughts on reheating and a recipe, and I also have some weights and measures I can contribute if the conversation goes that way, but I'd like to get things started with the above notes on the basic comparison for Lab 2 and give the other seminar participants a chance to speak. And I'm hoping we'll see some new people today, who maybe didn't do Lab 1 but had the time and inclination to do Lab 2.

I should have been more clear about that: definitely remove the congealed fat. I think the mini-crocks sound great for this experiment.

According to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association:

The issue is that not one of us seems to have taken temperature readings during that first half hour. The hypothetical proposition of my hypothetical graph is that a lot of action may have taken place during the first 30 minutes and that it may have had the foil racing out ahead in temperature and then being overtaken by the time we measured. Of course, a hypothesis usually isn't worth much until it's proven. So at some point someone will have to test this with probe thermometers so we can take readings every 5 minutes without constantly opening the oven and triggering the uncertainty principle by affecting the experiment with our observations.

That's right. The idea here is to taste meat after 1 reheating, 2 reheatings and 3 reheatings (multiple coolings and reheatings are traditional for some classic braised dishes). Although the samples are not uniform (I was hoping they would be), they are close enough and the reheating may even things out a bit more, such that this set of tests should at least give some idea of the texture and flavor progression. You could also re-refrigerate and re-reheat additional samples if the pieces are still reasonably intact after tasting. It's up to you.

So I had a few additional thoughts about these vessels. Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron: It seems that in everyone's experiments the Le Creuset either produced the best results or was tied for the best results. This is both fortunate and unfortunate. It's fortunate because if you've already paid $200 for one of these pots you can feel better about your investment. It's unfortunate because I was really hoping we'd prove that these pots are a waste of money and that an aluminum foil tray does just as good a job. Clearly, it doesn't. We could probably do some adjusting of times and temperatures to make the aluminum foil perform better than it did in Lab #1, but that introduces a convenience problem. The Le Creuset pots seemed overall to have the tightest-fitting lids as well, making for less liquid loss. I assume this is a good thing. Subjectively, there is only one thing I like about the Le Creuset: its appearance. These pots, and their Staub equivalents, are gorgeous. This not only makes them nice to look at but also makes them usable as serving vessels. Everything else about the Le Creuset, I dislike. These pots are extremely heavy, especially when filled with liquid. They don't brown quite as nicely as uncoated cast-iron. The black "phenolic resin" handles on the lids are total crap: I have two Le Creuset stockpots, both with broken handles, and the Dutch/French oven that Sam Kinsey lent me also has a broken handle. Testimony from around the eG Forums confirms that these handles are crap. How could such a venerable manufacturer perpetuate such a blatant design flaw? The metal side-handles on the pots themselves aren't so great either -- they're too small for very good control. For this reason, if I do buy such a vessel, I will buy a Staub with a metal handle, not a Le Creuset. Calphalon Professional Nonstick II Anodized Aluminum Objectively, in my experiments, this pot performed as well as the Le Creuset. It lost more liquid but this did not seem to affect taste. By far this is my favorite pot subjectively. It is light in weight yet has good thermal capacity (this is a good property of aluminum in general). It browns as well as the Le Creuset, despite a non-stick surface; and the non-stick surface makes it a breeze to clean. The thing I like most about it, though, is that the lid is made of heat-resistant glass and has a metal handle. Because the glass is see-through, you can see the rate of simmering inside the pot without having to lift off a heavy Le Creuset lid with a broken handle. I've had this pot since around the time we got married (around 10 years ago) and the lid -- especially the handle -- is still in great shape. The metal loop side-handles on the pot itself are also excellent -- big enough to grip for good control, but not so big that they get in the way. You can get these and similar pots cheap (under $50) at places like Marshall's and they often go on sale on Amazon.com. Corningware Although I appreciate the glass lid, I would never choose this vessel over the above-mentioned vessels for the simple reason that you can't brown in it. It also has poor side-handles -- they're more like tabs than handles. I do like that you can present it at the table, and it is the most dishwasher-proof of all the vessels (the dishwasher will over time erode the Calphalon and the enameled cast-iron (if not its performance, then at least its appearance). From a cost perspective, these vessels are quite cheap. Aluminum Foil Tray I guess this doesn't work very well, and it's also the most inconvenient, unattractive vessel -- so it's off my list unless I need to do a large-production job at some point.

Here's what I'm thinking about as a hypothetical with respect to the progress of temperatures in foil and heavy metal: Of course, to test the hypothesis we'd need to do actual observation. I may try to do so one day this week, if I can find a second probe thermometer, and post the real results. I still have some usability notes on the different pots that I'd like to post, but I was hoping others had their own observations to share first.

Brown the meat in oil only. Then add the braising liquid when it's time for the vessel to go into the oven. If you brown in a vessel other than the one in which you're going to braise, be sure to use a little of the braising liquid (after browning and transferring the meat to the braising vessel) to deglaze the pan and transfer it over with the little brown bits and juices to the braising vessel, then top off with the rest of your braising liquid. Does that make sense?

It's always humbling when preconceived notions run head first into the brick wall of the scientific method. I was completely convinced, before we did Lab #1, that the experiment was just a formality and that it would prove a simple point: that when braising in the oven the choice of braising vessel makes no difference. Not so, it seems. Every single one of us noted differences in the way a piece of meat heats in vessels made of different materials. In particular, as far as I can tell, every result above is in line with the more massive/higher thermal capacity vessels reaching a high temperature sooner. Why? Isn't the oven providing steady heat? If so, why should it matter what the vessel is made of? I then thought about parallels in other types of cooking, and realized that in baking the mass/thermal capacity of a baking surface makes a big difference. Given a 300 degree F oven, a thin metal cookie sheet performs very differently from, say, a baking stone. The reason for this, as I understand it, is that the baking stone absorbs heat from the oven and radiates it into the food, whereas the thin metal sheet mostly just transfers the ambient heat. As a result, there is what appears to be an amplification of heat. One thing I did this morning -- and maybe you all can do it too -- is I weighed the pots that I used. The higher temperature readings I got during the middle part of braising did seem to correlate to the mass of each pot, at least in terms of rank order. It would seem to follow, then, that for most of us the samples in the aluminum foil trays were undercooked -- specifically, that the collagen did not dissolve and convert into gelatin (the fundamental chemical change upon which braising depends for its success). If so, it would also follow that if we had just left our samples in the foil for another 15 or 30 minutes, or if we had put the foil in a separate oven at a higher temperature, they would have come out well too. But can that be the case? We're talking about samples that were at 180 degrees F or thereabouts at their dead centers for an extended period of time. How could they be undercooked, and how could the collagen -- which we know converts at much lower temperatures -- not convert? I don't know the answer yet. It may be that later in the week we should go back and try a foil experiment again, this time adjusting temperature or time to favor the foil and trying to let the meat in the other vessels overcook. It would also be helpful, I think, to get several temperature readings from that first 30 minutes of cooking, using two probe thermometers. Because the same absorption-radiation phenomenon that makes some vessels heat "more" than others has got to be that they are slower to heat because absorption equals insulation. Maybe at the very beginning and only at the very beginning the foil heats a lot faster because it's not providing insulation, and maybe this "shocks" the meat in some way, causing it to seize and become stubborn, and then maybe after 20 minutes or so the other vessels catch up and pass the foil. I don't know. I've already learned enough about the dangers of speculation for one week.

Keep these reports coming, folks. For now, I'm going to sit back and read, because I think some people in other time zones may still post results. In the morning I'll offer some observations and we can keep the discussion going throughout the day. Also, very soon, I will post the instructions for the Lab 2 experiments that are to take place tomorrow, which will seem pretty simple now that we've all been through Lab 1. Many thanks!