blackp

Smoke then SV or SV and then smoke? I read with interest the latest posts about brisket, smoking and SV. Some while back I read an opinion which I now cannot find that it didn't matter if things were smoked then cooked SV or vice versa (I think attributed to Nathanm). Back in September (see post #778) I asked some questions about SV cooking and bacon. Nobody replied, but I did perform a reasonably controlled experiment to get some answers. As a relatively new owner of a smoker and a convert to home made bacon I wanted to determine which way worked best. This may not apply to brisket, but here's what I did: Cured 2 pork bellies using the cure from "Charcuterie by Ruhlman & Polcyn" for 12 days. I cut one belly in half and after washing and drying vacuum packed one half and cooked it SV @ 65C for 90 minutes. The SV half was chilled in an ice bath and then removed from the bag and dried. All 3 pieces were left overnight in the fridge on racks to allow to dry further in preparation for smoking. The 3 pieces were smoked @ 70C for 4 hours in my Sous Vide Magic controlled Bradley Smoker. The half belly which hadn't been cooked SV was then bagged and cooked SV @ 65C for 90 minutes before being chilled in an ice bath. All 3 pieces remained in the fridge again overnight on racks before slicing the next day. So in the end I had 3 almost identical slabs of bacon - one cured then smoked, and two cooked SV - one before and one after smoking. After slicing all the bacon was vacuum packed into ~200g packs. The 2 SV cooked samples were identical in appearance. The one not cooked at all had a slightly translucent look to it like proscuitto or jamon. It had a slightly redder colour. The 2 cooked samples were slightly more pink, that said the difference between the cooked and uncooked was not huge. I distributed samples among friends (including Nickrey) with nothing other than a batch number to differentiate between them. With a few friends I decided to give them only 2 samples at a time so that they only had to say which was best rather than ranking among 3 samples. I then gave them a different combination to see how their feedback changed. When comparing the bacon not cooked SV with that cooked SV after smoking nobody liked the SV bacon. When comparing the bacon not cooked SV with that cooked SV before smoking everybody liked the SV bacon. Those who had samples of pre-smoke and post-smoke SV were less unanimous, but 5 out of 6 preferred the bacon which was cooked SV before smoking. I know that this is not an exhaustive test, but I went to quite an effort to make sure that the only difference between the samples was the SV cooking and when it occurred. None of the tasters had any idea what I'd done differently between the samples that they had to taste. Another interesting point is the amount of loss due to processing - the batch with no SV cooking at all lost 8% of its weight, that smoked then cooked (the favourite) lost 13% and the least favourite the one cooked then smoked lost 11%. I am now convinced that there is a difference between cooking then smoking or smoking then cooking AND that I will now always make my bacon by curing, SV cooking and then smoking - at least until someone comes up with a good reason not to. Cheers, Peter.

I couldn't agree more! I just received my copy of "The Family Meal - Home Cooking with Feran Adria" which I had on pre-order with Book Depository UK for several months. Imagine my annoyance to find that a book by one of the worlds most famous chef's based in Spain has only the silly US measurements Bob mentions. It doesn't show grams or degrees Centigrade at all. I've written to Phaidon Press complaining about this and have cited MC as an example of where even recent US cook books are seeing the light. The "home cooking" referred to in the title is really "staff meals" from El Bulli. Apart from the measurements the book seems to be very approachable compared to anything else I've seen written by Ferran.

I use a SVM to control a "Bradley Original Smoker" and it works fine. I understand that you can control a "Bradley Digital Smoker" using a PID controller, but the PID controller takes over the role of the "digital" part of the Bradley so the extra expense is wasted. Also to keep the temperature low it is necessary to use the Bradley cold smoke adaptor or gerry rig something similar. This keeps the heating element of the smoke generator outside the smoking cabinet and allows you to control the internal temp of the cabinet using your SVM. Of course for sous vide the SVM is excellent. I normally use it with a large commercial rice cooker, but have tried using it to control a bain marie which it does fine. The bain marie needs forced circulation though (an air bubbler works OK) whereas the rice cooker maintains a fairly constant temperature throughout with natural convection.

Home-made Bacon - to SV or not to SV - that is the question. Not sure if I should post this in the Charcuterie thread or here! I have been curing and smoking bacon for a very short time after an initial collaboration with Nickrey which was a great success. The last batch I made was cured for 11 days and then smoked at 65°C (150°F) for 4 hours. I'm pretty sure that the internal temp of the meat didn't get to 65°C during this time, but next time I'll use an internal probe to be sure. I took one of the smoked pieces and cooked it SV at 65°C for 90 minutes. I then chilled the bag and refrigerated it overnight with the other 3 pieces prior to slicing. What made me think that the interior of the bacon didn't get to 65°C was that the SV cooked piece was definitely more pink and looked more like commercial bacon. The other pieces were definitely cured OK - that is they were pink, neither raw looking nor brown, but looked more like the colour of prosciutto (read: a bit translucent) rather than bacon. When cooking the non-SV bacon I usually put it into a cold pan without any oil or fat and bring the heat up. The fat rendering from the bacon is sufficient to grease the pan and there is negligible moisture loss during that process. When I cooked the SV bacon using the same method quite a bit of water was expelled from the bacon, which had to be evaporated before any browning could take place. I cannot really understand this, and indeed the SV piece of belly was the other end of the same belly for one of the non-SV samples - so it cannot be a meat variation. The flavour of the cooked SV and non-SV bacon was very similar. I had expected the SV bacon to be drier given the water loss, but couldn't detect a difference. If anything the SV sample was a little tenderer than the non SV sample, but that could be my imagination (Hawthorne effect?). I will cure some more pork belly using the identical method for each piece. I've pretty much decided that the next batch should include some bacon cooked SV and then smoked and some smoked first and then cooked SV. Also I intend to keep one piece just cooked conventionally in the smoker, but paying better attention to the internal temperature. Can anyone suggest what else I might do to get a better understanding of the benefit of SV to bacon?

I think I've found just the measuring device. It's a plastic tree calliper and it will measure cylindrical (or for that matter spherical) objects up to 7" (~177mm) in diameter which should be OK for 90+% of SV applications. At less than USD$4 - it shouldn't break anyone's discretionary kitchen gadget budget! Cheers, Peter. Edited to show a better picture and a link with a better price.

On the surface of it, it does seem that your set up needs some tuning. It sounds like you have too much Integral ("I") action happening. When "I" is too strong oscillation is the usual outcome as the reaction to being off temp is being corrected to quickly. Try increasing the "I" value (yes this is counter intuitive, but the parameter is for the number of seconds to take before reacting so a larger number results in a smaller effect). Have you read the PID Tuning Giude on the FMS site? Keep your eyes peeled there's a version 2 which should be published very soon. Cheers, Peter.

Hi Chris, I've got some pork belly which was dry cured over the last 8 days and is now rinsed and drying in racks in the fridge. I plan to smoke it tomorrow @ 65C (150F) in my Bradley smoker controlled by a Sous Vide Magic PID. The Ruhlman & Polcyn book suggests smoking for 2-3 hours at that temp, but MC suggests 7 hours. I was going to try smoking for 4 hours and holding it in the smoker at 65C for a further 3 hours. I wonder if I should just do the smoking part and then bag it and cook it SV. Have you done a comparison of the methods? What time did you cook the bacon SV for? What I would like to do given I have 3 pieces of belly is to smoke them for 4 hours and remove 2 from the smoker keeping one in for another 3 hours. Of the 2 removed one would be cooled and sliced as is, and the second bagged and cooked SV @ 65C for ? hours. The only problem with drawing a final conclusion is that 2 pieces came from the same pig and the other piece from a totally different butcher - so the raw material difference could cause me to draw incorrect conclusions. Maybe the controlled test should wait until I have equal samples? I'd appreciate your feedback, Cheers, Peter.

I am very new to smoking and after a lot of research I purchased a Bradley Original Smoker (the non-digital kind) with the Cold Smoker attachment. I use my Sous Vide Magic controller to control the element in the smoking cabinet and plug the smoke generator directly into the power. I was able to successfully hold the cabinet temperature at 25C (77F) for a few hours to cold smoke some salmon and some cheese. Obviously the ambient temperature plays a part at such low temps, but it's winter here so day time temps are around 20C. I'm sure you'd have no problem holding 150F with the same set up as the ambient won't be a problem unless you live in Death Valley. Cheers, Peter.

They don't specify the water volume and the dimensions of the bath, and there is no contact form or e-mail address, and no address at all (phone number must be Massachusetts). 110V only. USA only. It looks like a deep fryer with a sous vide label attached. It's even got the chip basket! No mention of any form of circulation nor any mention of intelligent control like PID. Doesn't sound like much of an innovation to me. Cheers, Peter.

I'm not a fan of the Ruhlman recipe. The ratio for meat/salt he recommends varies so wildly it is hard to know what the recipe should look like. If anything, I would take the salt ratios and curing technique from the MC recipe and adjust seasonings to taste. I'm interstate at the moment so don't have access to my notes, but the salt sugar ratio I used was not exactly Ruhlman's, but that suggested by loftyynotions from these pages. I added the MC recommended sodium erythorbate and used the same cure for both batches. The difference was only the spice/flavorings which I used in precise percentages for the MC batch and the best guess I could make for the Ruhlman recipe. I agree with Nick. After several side by side tastings the Ruhlman flavorings win for me and those I've fed the bacon to. Not to say that the MC recipe makes bad bacon - far from it. It is an order of magnitude better than any store bought bacon I've ever had, I just like the other recipe better. Cheers Peter

I asked a question in a new thread about brining turkey as a result of having experiencing an off smell when I opened the container with the turkey wings and brine. I've subsequently chucked the wings just in case. I used the MC brine high-concentration method. ChrisZ, suggested that I may have used the wrong concentration of salt/sugar for the weight of the wings. Here what he said: "The brining ratios you mention are actually those suggested when you use water (only) as 100%. This is not equilibrium brining, so although the setup and calculations are easier doing it this way you need to include an additional rest period after brining and before cooking, for the salt to distribute evenly in the meat. I assume you're using the brining tables in volume 3, pg 168? The suggested ratios when you have meat+water as 100% are 1% salt and .4% sugar. In your example, where meat+water = 3.5kg you would need 35g salt and 14g sugar. This method is equilibrium brining- the advantage is that you can't 'over salt' the meat. To which I responded: Hmmm - not so sure! On Page 3:168 it says "...scaling in column 1 are relative to the combined weight of the meat and water..." ... "Quantities in the scaling 2 column are for use with the more traditional high-concentration approach...." But on page 3:171 when describing the High-Concenration Method it says: "1. .....Use the "scaling 2" column for quantities..." "2. Follow steps 2 - 5 above" Step 2 from "above" says: "Weigh the total amount of meat plus water and use the resulting weight as the 100% for scaling....." Is Chris' suggestion correct or is my reading of the brining instructions correct? Cheers, Peter.

The wings did come from a poultry processor, but it is not usual here in Australia for any poultry to be brined prior to packaging. I will purchase another pack when I see them and check the ingredients list - but I'm sure it will say Turkey and nothing else. Cheers, Peter.

Hmmm - not so sure! On Page 3:168 it says "...scaling in column 1 are relative to the combined weight of the meat and water..." ... "Quantities in the scaling 2 column are for use with the more traditional high-concentration approach...." But on page 3:171 when describing the High-Concenration Method it says: "1. .....Use the "scaling 2" column for quantities..." "2. Follow steps 2 - 5 above" Step 2 from "above" says: "Weigh the total amount of meat plus water and use the resulting weight as the 100% for scaling....." I will ask this question in the MC pages - perhaps we've jointly discovered an error? And I will follow up on Heston's method - thanks for the tip! Cheers, Peter.

Hi Chris, In this case the only thing was the turkey. I unpacked the tray of wings from the supermarket and rinsed them and then put them into the brine in a sealed tupperware container. This was put into the booze fridge in the garage which has only bottles in it no other food at all. In any case the turkey and brine were sealed in plastic. The fridge is <5 years old and I've tested the temperature using my reference thermometer and it ranges between 4C and 5C. The fact that the turkey didn't smell of course doesn't mean that it wasn't somehow "off". That's my best guess - or of course it could have been perfectly OK but now we'll never know and at least nobody got sick ;-) Cheers, Peter.

Hi Chris, Possible, but not likely - it smelt quite neutral before brining. Anyhow - I've chucked it just in case and will try again. Cheers, Peter.

No, I dissolved the sugar and salt into cold tap water, then added the turkey from the fridge, after rinsing it.

Thanks Dave, I'd pretty much decided to bin the wings, and you are quite right - they didn't cost much and the hospital would be way more expensive if it became necessary. I had not noticed the Modernist Thanksgiving recipe - when I looked for inspiration for brining/sous vide cooking turkey I turned to MC and found the parametric recipe to brine turkey along with SV temp and time. I will take your suggestion and use dry salt the next lot I get. Thanks for your help, Regards, Peter.

Apologies if this topic is covered elsewhere but I couldn't find the answer to my question. I purchased a pack of turkey wings and brined them in a solution of 7% salt and 3% sugar where 100% equals the weight of the turkey and the brine. To explain - the wings weighed 1.5kg I made 2 litres of brine so 100% equals 3.5kg therefore I used 245g of salt and 100g of sugar. I put it into the fridge (running at 4-5C) for 48 hours. When I opened the container I was confronted by a strong smell. It didn't smell "bad", or similar to a smell I would associate with meat which has gone off, but it wasn't pleasant. I've rinsed the wings off dried them and vacuum bagged them individually with a view to cooking them sous vide at 58C for 12 hours which is Modernist Cuisine's recommendation. I plan to roast the wings briefly in a very hot oven after sous vide cooking. Does anyone have any experience with this bad smell after brining turkey? Should I just chuck the lot and try again? Thanks in advance for your help. Peter.

See Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, p. 152: at 145-155°F (Medium-well) "Pink fades to gray-brown". Nathan Myhrvold in Modernist Cuisine, p. 3•86 and 3•234, recommends 52-56°C (126-133°F) for hamburgers. How accurate (accuracy, not resolution of the display!) is your temperature control? Is your reference thermometer NIST-calibrated? Some SV-rigs have been reported to be several degrees off ex factory. How long was your SV-cooking time? Post-searing method/temperature/time? I think that your temperature is just too high to get the pink result you are after. I've been cooking SV for some years now and my preference for any beef which does not need tenderising is 52-53°C. Obviously I need to keep cooking times to <4hours at these temps but it works for already tender meat. I only use higher temperatures for tenderising tough meat like beef ribs which I cook at the "food safety" low level of 55°C. I know that I can get them tender quicker at a higher temperature, but I like them to still be pink and 55°C will keep them pink. I have tried beef ribs at 58°C for 24 hours and while tender it was too well done for my taste. I much prefer 48 hours at 55°C where the meat is just as tender and the colour is still pink. Just my $0.02 Regards, Peter.

I have been using potato starch instead of the old tradition of cornflour for a few years now. I can't think of any thickening task which is not better with potato starch. I first heard about it when quizzing the cook/owner of our favourite Taiwanese restaurant about how she got the thickened sauces to be so glossy and so clear. Potato starch was the answer. While you can buy big bags of the stuff the Japanese grocery we frequent has a version in a shaker pack. The label says it only contains potato starch, but it seems to flow more easily than the version from the bag. The rest of the label is in Japanese so I'm really none the wiser - it could be pure potato starch which has been treated somehow to make it more granular. The good thing is that it can be shaken directly into what you are thickening - unlike cornflour which needs to be dissolved in water first or you get lumps. Cheers, Peter. Sorry - forgot our US friends call cornflour corn starch.

Thanks Larry, I hadn't considered the fact that the MC recipe keeps the bone on for curing - that alone could explain the difference. I only resorted to calculating the percentage of Insta Cure to salt/sugar because the R&P recipe doesn't even hint as to how much pork belly their recipe will cure. As I read it you make a batch of "Basic Dry Cure" and then use 50g of this mixture for belly weights between 1.5 and 2.25kg (3-5lbs) of pork. So by their own recipe the concentration of the "active ingredient" is OK in a +/-50% ratio. Go figure. Cheers, Peter.

I'm attempting to make some bacon for the first time (in partnership with nickrey from these pages - he has a smoker and a bacon slicer!) so I thought I'd check the 2 best references I have, namely MC and Charcuterie by Ruhlman & Polcyn. (Nick has used R&P before with excellent results). Both recipes for dry rub (MC 3.182/6.107 and R&P 39) make more than you need for a single slab of belly so rather than comparing ingredient lists based on weight of pork I thought that checking the percentages of the 3 major ingredients (Salt, Sugar and Insta Cure#1) would be illuminating. I ignored the weight of the flavouring ingredients as they are optional and do not by themselves perform any "curing". Now I'm confused. MC uses 51.0% Salt, 36.7% Sugar and 12.2% Insta Cure #1. R&P use 62.1% Salt, 31.0% Sugar and 6.9% Insta Cure #1. I can sort of understand the variation between salt and sugar - maybe the MC team like sweeter/less salty bacon than Ruhlman does - but why the large discrepancy in the Insta Cure? I've checked several other bacon recipes on the web and the percentage of Insta Cure is mostly in the 5% - 7% range. I cannot find another recipe anywhere which calls for the Insta Cure to be 12% of the total. Can anyone help? I there a reason for this? Does it even matter? I might just wind up making both recipes to see how they differ. Cheers, Peter.

The only pressure cooker I've had experience with has exactly the same device to control pressure as my Presto canner. There is a small vertical pipe in the lid and a weight with a hole in it sits over this vent. That's why I made the suggestion that the only difference is the internal rack and the size of the pot. Not sure how spring loaded cookers work, but with the kind with a weight I contend that they'll work just as well as the canner as there is practically no difference. Cheers, Peter.

I purchased a Presto pressure canner recently and the only difference I can see between it and a pressure cooker is that it has a rack inside which stops anything from actually sitting on the bottom of the pan. This could easily be replicated in a pressure cooker. I don't think that the absence of a gauge will prevent you from canning with a pressure cooker the only real difference between the cooker and the canner is the size. The Presto is 23 litres where most pressure cookers are between 6 and 10 litres. I might be able to can 12 jars at a time but you could only do 4 or 5 in a regular pressure cooker. Cheers, Peter.

Hi Larry, I vacuum it at 99%+5seconds which is the setting I use for most freezing purposes. From the little I understand the removal of as much air as possible is the goal so I could probably use a longer time @ 99% next time I open the pack.