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"Poaching" fish in fats


ulterior epicure

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I've been using the Keller butter-poaching method w/ some success with scallops.  I try to keep the beurre monte at around 160F, and keep them in it for about 3-5 minutes...

I've tried it with shrimp, but been disappointed with the results. 

I am looking forward to trying it with lobster, but alas,  while I've convinced my mostly-vegetarian wife that shrimp and scallops "don't count," she draws the line at lobsters...  So it may be a while...

jk

Ming Tsai has a butter-poached shrimp recipe (click here) - but he uses a butter poaching liquid. I'm not sure how this might make the shrimp work?

I think I'm going to try it with shrimp... unless anyone can recommend something else.

“Watermelon - it’s a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face.”

Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921)

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Interestingly enough, at TFL (and Per Se I assume) they rest (or used to, at least) their cooked proteins in buerre monte before pickup.

I have tried this, and I have to admit I like the results. Keeps the meat at a servable temperature, but also allows you to rest long enough to retain the juices....and who can forget the lovely coating of seasoned butter.

Only bad thing is it takes a little while to make the butter, and you need a lot of it if you are cooking a quantity of meat at a time.

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Interestingly enough, at TFL (and Per Se I assume) they rest (or used to, at least) their cooked proteins in buerre monte before pickup.

I have tried this, and I have to admit I like the results. Keeps the meat at a servable temperature, but also allows you to rest long enough to retain the juices....and who can forget the lovely coating of seasoned butter.

Only bad thing is it takes a little while to make the butter, and you need a lot of it if you are cooking a quantity of meat at a time.

i poach my pike in a virgin black butter with very good results...

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i poach my pike in a virgin black butter with very good results...

andrewB, you're going to have to explain this one to me. Virgin black butter?

“Watermelon - it’s a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face.”

Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921)

ulteriorepicure.com

My flickr account

ulteriorepicure@gmail.com

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i poach my pike in a virgin black butter with very good results...

andrewB, you're going to have to explain this one to me. Virgin black butter?

it is a mounded butter sauce with lemon juice, white pepper, browned butter and chilled butter, and cream... in poaching in this liquid you have to keep the heat very low and gentle for it not to break. it is typically i believe used as a sauce, but... :biggrin:

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  • 1 year later...
I've got a massive amount of clarified, seasoned butter. Can I poach some shrimp in this?

Wellll... I guess we can let you do that. :raz:

Yep, you can. And if you poach enough to get a nice shrimp flavored butter you can chill it and make shrimp biscuits or shrimp brioche or something.

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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I've done this very well with shrimp. First I cooked the shells in the butter to infuse the butter with shrimp flavor, then I bagged the butter with the shrimp and cooked it sous vide (which, in this context, is simply a way to poach the shrimp without using a ton of butter). Worked great.

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I am sorry, but im a foodie, a CiA grad and a cook most of all.... But you know when i cook im not staring at a theomother all day every 15 mins or making sure its at 15degreese C THAT IS RIDICULIOUS!!!

im sure some of you may love that or what not but thats just insane!! We are talking home cooking for the most part... Restaurant wise what we did for our poached lobster dish with a basic parm risotto was to have equal parts butter to water, at a very low simmer, usually held on a pilot until the order was picked up then brought to a light simmer, drop the lobster shell less in for 3-5 minutes, and remove. Any longer and the lobster will lose yield, and shorter it will be undercooked which im sure would be ok. that is unless of course you want to put it in a bag and wait for about 30 minutes..... just so you can have a slightly softer, MAYBE alittle more tender of a bite....

But seriously i dont think it should take 5x longer to cook then eat.... for the most part....

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From Keller's new book it doesn't seem they are truly s.v.'ing the lobster tails. They fill the circulator with butter, keep it at a set temperature and drop the tails in. No cryovac involved with this step. And they come out perfect everytime (at least according to TK) versus some inconsistency with the stovetop method.

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I've got a massive amount of clarified, seasoned butter. Can I poach some shrimp in this?

Wellll... I guess we can let you do that. :raz:

Yep, you can. And if you poach enough to get a nice shrimp flavored butter you can chill it and make shrimp biscuits or shrimp brioche or something.

It seemed like the clarified butter would work, but all the recipes I saw here and elsewhere involved incorporating butter into boiling water. What's the advantage of the other approach? Is it just a way to use less butter?

Could you point me to a recipe for shrimp biscuits?

I've done this very well with shrimp.  First I cooked the shells in the butter to infuse the butter with shrimp flavor, then I bagged the butter with the shrimp and cooked it sous vide (which, in this context, is simply a way to poach the shrimp without using a ton of butter).  Worked great.

Thanks for the tip. I first simmered the heads and shells in the butter (which already had garlic, shallots, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary and dried herbs). Then I cooked the shrimp for about 7 minutes at 180-190. I was planning to cooked them only 5 minutes, but the temperature dropped a lot when I added the shrimp. Other than using massive amounts of butter, I guess there isn't a way to avoid that drop.

I am sorry, but im a foodie, a CiA grad and a cook most of all.... But you know when i cook im not staring at  a theomother all day every 15 mins or making sure its at 15degreese C THAT IS RIDICULIOUS!!!

im sure some of you may love that or what not but thats just insane!!  We are talking home cooking for the most part... Restaurant wise what we did for our poached lobster dish with a basic parm risotto was to have equal parts butter to water, at a very low simmer, usually held on a pilot until the order was picked up then brought to a light simmer, drop the lobster shell less in for 3-5 minutes, and remove.  Any longer and the lobster will lose yield, and shorter it will be undercooked which im sure would be ok.  that is unless of course you want to put it in a bag and wait for about 30 minutes..... just so you can have a slightly softer, MAYBE alittle more tender of a bite.... 

But seriously i dont think it should take 5x longer to cook then eat.... for the most part....

Yeah, yeah, I used a digital thermometer to check the temperature.

Todd A. Price aka "TAPrice"

Homepage and writings; A Frolic of My Own (personal blog)

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I've done this very well with shrimp.  First I cooked the shells in the butter to infuse the butter with shrimp flavor, then I bagged the butter with the shrimp and cooked it sous vide (which, in this context, is simply a way to poach the shrimp without using a ton of butter).  Worked great.

Thanks for the tip. I first simmered the heads and shells in the butter (which already had garlic, shallots, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary and dried herbs). Then I cooked the shrimp for about 7 minutes at 180-190. I was planning to cooked them only 5 minutes, but the temperature dropped a lot when I added the shrimp. Other than using massive amounts of butter, I guess there isn't a way to avoid that drop.

This is where using at least a modified SV technique comes in handy. You could have put the shrimp and the butter into a large ziplock bag, sucked out as much air as you could and sealed the bag. Then you could have heated up a large stockpot of water to your target temperature (I like 47C/117F for cooked-through-but-not-hard shrimp) and dropped in the bag. The large thermal capacity of the water would keep the water bath temperature from dropping too much, amd your shrimp would cook in a few minutes. The easiest way to do this would be to overheat the waterbath by 5 degrees or so, drop in the bagged shrimp and then adjust the temperature downward with cold water. If the stockpot is fairly large, you shouldn't have to boost the temperature back up during the short cooking time.

I am sorry, but im a foodie, a CiA grad and a cook most of all.... But you know when i cook im not staring at  a theomother all day every 15 mins or making sure its at 15degreese C THAT IS RIDICULIOUS!!!

If this is what you think people do when they cook sous vide, then it's clear you have no real understanding of the technique.

Leaving aside the fact that one is normally regulating the temperature automatically, it takes literally only a few moments to cook something like shrimp. The example I outlined above is more or less the same as using a large bain marie to heat the butter.

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I've done this very well with shrimp.  First I cooked the shells in the butter to infuse the butter with shrimp flavor, then I bagged the butter with the shrimp and cooked it sous vide (which, in this context, is simply a way to poach the shrimp without using a ton of butter).  Worked great.

Thanks for the tip. I first simmered the heads and shells in the butter (which already had garlic, shallots, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary and dried herbs). Then I cooked the shrimp for about 7 minutes at 180-190. I was planning to cooked them only 5 minutes, but the temperature dropped a lot when I added the shrimp. Other than using massive amounts of butter, I guess there isn't a way to avoid that drop.

This is where using at least a modified SV technique comes in handy. You could have put the shrimp and the butter into a large ziplock bag, sucked out as much air as you could and sealed the bag. Then you could have heated up a large stockpot of water to your target temperature (I like 47C/117F for cooked-through-but-not-hard shrimp) and dropped in the bag. The large thermal capacity of the water would keep the water bath temperature from dropping too much, amd your shrimp would cook in a few minutes. The easiest way to do this would be to overheat the waterbath by 5 degrees or so, drop in the bagged shrimp and then adjust the temperature downward with cold water. If the stockpot is fairly large, you shouldn't have to boost the temperature back up during the short cooking time.

Could I have used one of those Ziplock bags with the batter operated pump for this (or maybe I should search for the answer to this question on the sous vide topic).

Todd A. Price aka "TAPrice"

Homepage and writings; A Frolic of My Own (personal blog)

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Sure you could have. But, for something like this, a regular heavy-duty ziplock bag that you suck the air out of would have worked just fine. The only improvement you would get from pulling out more air is that you can use less butter (if you pull out all the air, even a tiny amount of butter will coat the shrimp completely with a thin layer of buter -- and the shrimp doesn't know the difference between a thick layer or a thin layer of butter). Since conserving butter doesn't sound like an issue for you, it's probably not worth worrying about sucking out more air in this context.

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I am sorry, but im a foodie, a CiA grad and a cook most of all.... But you know when i cook im not staring at  a theomother all day every 15 mins or making sure its at 15degreese C THAT IS RIDICULIOUS!!!

If this is what you think people do when they cook sous vide, then it's clear you have no real understanding of the technique.

Leaving aside the fact that one is normally regulating the temperature automatically, it takes literally only a few moments to cook something like shrimp. The example I outlined above is more or less the same as using a large bain marie to heat the butter.

**********************************************

I may be in the gutter, but I am still staring at the stars.

**********************************************

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Mainly just a "hamed" up retort... But speaking from home cooking standpoint... to have a bain of water and butter for cooking lobster would be excessive... So lets say i have a dinner party of 10 comming and Everyone has a lobster tail... even if i cook 10 tails in the bath.... thats alot of waste in the end...

Wouldn't that be the benefit of cooking SV--you can use a ton less butter.

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Mainly just a "hamed" up retort... But speaking from home cooking standpoint... to have a bain of water and butter for cooking lobster would be excessive... So lets say i have a dinner party of 10 comming and Everyone has a lobster tail... even if i cook 10 tails in the bath.... thats alot of waste in the end...

Wouldn't that be the benefit of cooking SV--you can use a ton less butter.

Exactly. If you use a bag -- even just a ziplock bag -- and a water bath, you can cook the ten lobster tails in less than one stick of butter.

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