paulraphael

Methylcellulose is the typical gelling agent for this. It gels when it gets hot, liquefies when it cools. I'd be surprised if no one's played with combinations of methylcellulose and gelatin (or something similar), to get a gel that would be stable at any temperature.

Jo, do you have a recommendation for carnarolli from Amazon? I get mine from Eataly in NYC (love it ... haven't looked at other risotto rices since) but it would be nice to have other sources. The pressure cooker rocks. This formula has worked great for me (adapted from MC, Marcella Hazan, and others): 400g / 100% Rice (any short grain rice high in amylopectin*) 40g / 10% Oil or Butter 80g / 20% Shallots or Onion 900g –1100g / 225–275% Liquid (stock—at least 80%, remainder—vegetable juice, wine, fortified wine, water)** 1000g / 250% is a good starting point. 80-200g / 20-50% Aged Cheese (parmegian, asiago, gouda, etc.) 24g / 6% Butter, cubed Salt, Pepper, Vinegar -sweat onion/shallot in oil or butter in pressure cooker until translucent -add rice and stir until translucent, about 2 min. -add liquids and turn up heat. lock lid but do not pressurize. when steam shows that liquids are boiling, pressurize to 15psi and turn down the heat for minimum evaporation -cook 5.5 to 9 minutes. less for al dente, more for soft. 8 minutes is a good starting point. Start timing when cooker reaches full pressure. -depressurize with valve or cold water. -if risotto is still a little wet, excess moisture will absorb on its own. if there’s a lot of remaining liquid, finish uncovered on the stove, stirring over medium heat. if risotto seems dry or undercooked, add more liquid and finish on stove, stirring over medium heat. -stir in butter and cheese, then adjust seasoning to taste with salt, pepper, vinegar.

If you really need to serve it a half hour after getting home, that's tough, cook-chill should work nicely if you can afford a bit more time. Just cook any steaks SV, and chill, storing in the fridge in their bags. When you get home, fill a big pot with hot water from the tap first thing (know your tap water temp and make sure it's not hotter than your final cooking temp. Mine is about 52C, so this works out well. Toss in the bags of steaks and cover. Give them a half hour or so .. the core temperature will rise to 30C or 40C, depending on thickness. You can set the table, change, prepare other things in this time. Then preheat the bejeezus out of a pan and sear. The internal temperature will continue to rise as you sear, and will continue some more for a few minutes. If you're making a pan sauce, move the meat to heated plates and loosely cover. By the time you serve, the meat will be warm all the way through. Not hot, but medium-rare meat is never actually hot. If you're planning to do this, make sure your steaks are no more than 1.5" thick. 1.25 will heat through faster.

In my experience this salt level doesn't give the tough, sausagy texture some people complain about, but it does add a bit more toughness than what I prefer.

This is what I do when cooking conventionally, but people have problems with the salt curing the meat when they do this before cooking s.v.. I think it's because of the longer cooking time, and possibly because of time spent at temperatures that accelerate the process.

I'm experimenting with ways to get the salt into the burger before cooking without wrecking the texture. One idea is to work it into butter (suet should also work), cut the butter into chunks and freeze them, and add along with the beef to the grinder. The idea is 1) add some tasty fat, and 2) sequester the salt from the proteins until late enough in the cook that it doesn't cause problems. The reason for this added step is that I've found a salt level that I like (0.7%) which is actually a pretty big pile of salt. Maybe rolling a patty around in this and getting it on all sides would be ok, but the suggestions to sprinkle it on top sound unappealing. For thinner burgers I'd just sprinkle. For a big fat one, I wouldn't want so much salt concentrated in one place.

I haven't seen any evidence that meat reabsorbs juices. It's possible that a pressure cooker is a special case. I'm guessing that with slower chilling, it's about not losing as much additional liquid during the chilling process. When resting conventionally cooked meat, juices aren't reabsorbed (or redistributed, as the lore suggests). All that happens is that proteins in the juice near the outside of the meat cool enough for the viscosity to increase. This helps hold it in place when the meat is cut, rather than spilling all over the place. This has been demonstrated in experiments.

There are many other enzymes, including calpain and cathespin. These have both been shown to tenderize meat. Their peak activity levels are around 40C and 50C, respectively. They're both deactivated by 60C, but in any large chunk of meat cooked in a 60C water bath, the interior is going to spend a long time in the activity range of these (and other) enzymes. Cathespin is possibly a problematic enzyme. It's been implicated as a producer of off-flavors. I don't know if it's also capable of producing bad textures. In general, I try to minimize time meat will spend in the 45C–55C range. It's one reason that SV can be tricky for anything big.

Here's a method I calculated for a rare to medium-rare gradient: (use only on steaks 1.5” to 2” thick) -cook through to 52°C/126°F in a 53°C Water Bath. 1.5” thick: 1 hour 50 minutes 2” thick: 3 hours 15 minutes -remove from circulator. Adjust water bath to to 57°C / 135°F. Put meat in when stabilized. For 1cm gradient: 10 minutes. For 0.75cm gradient: 6min It sounds like you're looking for something more like medium-rare to medium, which would look just like this but with water baths a couple of degrees higher. You could also work out a much faster method with a longer gradient by plopping the bags in a much hotter bath and pulling out at just the right time. This is basically just conventional cooking in a humid environment ... BUT you have total control and consistency.

That's not really a difficulty; it's just a result that you want. you can get a medium-rare to medium gradient with sous-vide, and then get the result consistently and perfectly. It just takes some calculation to figure out your method. You can do it in one cooking stage or two. The only real complication is that precise timing becomes a factor again. But since you have control over the temperature, you can just use a timer. No need for instant temperature readings or guesswork.

I'd be intrigued by a proposition that there's a "sous-vide" texture—rather than a texture that happens to come from the most popular ways SV gets used. How does cooking meat in a 100% humid environment give a certain texture, regardless of time or temperature?

I think if you learn to control the process, you can get any texture you want from sous-vide. Whether or not it's the best possible way to get a given texture is a different question.

Have you tried calling companies that supply it to manufacturers? They typically only sell in bulk, but they're generous with samples. And sample size is often 500g ... huge. I've done most of my experimenting with samples from TIC gums and CP Kelco. The only trouble is that if I do run out some day, it may be impractical to actually buy the stuff.

Strange that it's not available. I don't understand him saying lambda is "low quality," unless he means he doesn't have a high quality source. It's just a slightly different carrageenan molecule, and it does have somewhat different characteristics. Lambda solutions are clear vs. cloudy, they hydrate cold vs. >70C, and they don't form gels (kappa forms brittle gels). Heston and Ferran have to get it from somewhere!

Also, some people use fluid gels for this kind of application. I haven't tried because I don't like the workflow, but you may find them worth playing with.

I've been experimenting with this a lot, and hoping to have enough information for a blog post on it soon. For a demiglace equivalent, which will presumably have a healthy concentration of natural gelatin already, I'm using 0.2% lambda carrageenan 0.1% xanthan gum These both hydrate cold, with shear from any blender. It's important that you don't thicken until you've thoroughly defatted. Both these hydrocolloids are powerful emulsion stabilizers, and you will get a cloudy, oily emulsion that will never separate if you don't defat first. Also important that you don't use this in a sauce that contains dairy. Calcium ions with cause it to form a gel. I'm also experimenting with: 1:1 guar : LBG 3:1 lambda carrageenan : xanthan propylene glycol alginate For adjusting thickness of final sauces, the most popular choices are modified starches that are pre-hydrated, like ultrasperse and ultratex. These dissolve easily and don't need cooking to hydrate. I prefer the clarity and texture of a starch / gum blend, typically 1:10 xanthan : arrowroot If you mix them together thoroughly as powders, you'll be able to make a slurry without the xanthan turning to clumps. This can be whisked into a sauce, and only needs to be simmered briefly to hydrate the arrowroot. This starch / gum blend has the advantage over the previous gum blend that it doesn't need blending, so you can adjust by feel right on the stovetop.

The longer you cook, the more juices will be pushed out of the meat. It's just one of those factors you have to take into account. You might want to try cooking for a shorter time. I do thighs for just a couple of hours and like them fine ... probably less tender this way, but juicier. Agree on avoiding pre-salting. Especially with a long cook, which risks the meat curing. It will also put salt into those bag juices, which makes reducing for use in a sauce problematic.

Interesting! I didn't know you could liberate collagen from hard bone. Does this suggest mean that bones of any type will eventually break down in a pressure cooker? What's left from that matrix if you render all the collagen? P.S. when I see $1.99/lb at whole foods, I worry that those are the neck bones of employees who asked for time off.

I very much like SV for tender cuts. I think these cuts have to be cooked with precision, to avoid over softening and drying out, but I like the perfection of the cook, and the lack of overcooked meat around the edges. It's also the only way I have of serving a lot of people simultaneously. Takes all the guesswork and panic out of the equation. I agree with gfweb that a higher temperature will help. I used to think of myself as a rare meat guy, but SV experiments have shown me that I like medium rare beef much more. Part of this is that when you conventionally cook a steak to rare (say 127) only the center will be cooked that low. Everything out to the edge will be progressively more done. The part of that steak you like the most is probably in the 130s. I generally set my circulator to 55C / 131F, in order to cook the meat to 54C / 129F. A few degrees higher is still plenty pink. Yes to what everyone else said about searing. Your last two steaks had trouble because the first two cooled the pan. Cleaning the pan and taking more time to reheat would fix this. A big fat griddle also works great.

Also worth considering that grain, by definition, is from grass. We're making a distinction between the seeds and the leaves, but cattle living in the wild would be eating a certain amount of both. There is some truth that cattle have health problems when they eat too much of the wrong types of grains. This happens, but is universally considered bad farming practice. Good farmers can raise very healthy cattle, whether they're finished on greens, silage, dried grass, grain, or on combinations. The best beef I've had has been finished on a combination of green grass and grains.