Roasting 'premium' cuts low and slow

[ChrisTaylor]

I've watched and read a lot of Blumenthal. As you're probably aware, he advocates low and slow roasting of cuts such as rib eye or even whole chickens. Low and slow in the 90*C or even 60*C sense of the phrase.

Now, I have an oven that can go down to 50*C quite happily--no need to hold the door open or anything else. I also don't have a problem, on weekends at least, with having to wait 3-4-5 hours for my roast dinner. This is all good, good, good. But I'm wondering if it really is significantly better. Has anyone compared a brined roast chicken cooked at, say, 160*C to one roasted at 90*C or lower? Is there really a noticeable improvement in quality? What about the rib?

[TheTInCook]

Look at some of the AltoSham sales material. I'm pretty sure they at least have some case studies for roast beefs. Dunno about chickens, since they are small enough that they don't seemingly benefit from an ultra low and slow roast.

[rotuts]

thanks for this great ref:

http://www.alto-shaam.com/

too bad im not a mutimilionaire ...

I cant imagine Heston making things up.;

but .. what would be the benefit of 51 C for 3 - 5 in an oven over SV similar temps? then a browning?

drying out the meat a little?

I also think SV chicken/turkey does not need the brine. Cant say for sure. but is not the brine to reduce 'drying out' ? not going to happen in the SV.

Gravy/ crispy skin additional.

Edited April 11, 2012 by rotuts (log)

[infernooo]

Chris: I have tried hestons method and to be honest, wasn't _blown away_ by it.

To some extent, it does provide a "tastier" (subjective) alternative to SV for cuts that don't need extensive cooking such as beef tenderloin / rib rack / rib eye as the meat is almost turbo-dry-aged, though it does tend to lose a bit more moisture than SV. There is also a difference in the final taste, with the oven method producing the typical roast beef flavour, unlike SV which even with a seared outside, still has that very subtle (in some peoples opinion, bordering on bland) flavour.

As for chicken, I have done both and prefer the roast/oven technique. The skin does allow retention of moisture and you also get the roasted chicken flavour. Whilst I love the moistness and tenderness of SV chicken, I do find it can be lacking in flavour, which is why I prefer the oven method.

The only real downside for the oven method may be energy costs, smells, and possibly more baby sitting

[ChrisTaylor]

I'm not cooking the meat sous vide. It's going in the oven. He argues that it dries out less than it would in, say, a 180C oven.

[sculptor]

Aren't conventional ovens notoriously inaccurate in the temperature range discussed here?

[ChrisTaylor]

My oven can sit at those temperatures. I've tested it.

[Nich]

Would putting a pan of water in the bottom of the oven not combat some of the moisture loss anyway?

[infernooo]

Possibly, but that takes it closer to the realm of SV (tightly controlling temperature and not allowing evaporation)

[Mjx]

I've watched and read a lot of Blumenthal. As you're probably aware, he advocates low and slow roasting of cuts such as rib eye or even whole chickens. Low and slow in the 90*C or even 60*C sense of the phrase.

Now, I have an oven that can go down to 50*C quite happily--no need to hold the door open or anything else. I also don't have a problem, on weekends at least, with having to wait 3-4-5 hours for my roast dinner. This is all good, good, good. But I'm wondering if it really is significantly better. Has anyone compared a brined roast chicken cooked at, say, 160*C to one roasted at 90*C or lower? Is there really a noticeable improvement in quality? What about the rib?

The rib eye may be terrific low and slow, but chicken... eh. I've made a couple of low temperature braised chicken dishes that use legs/thighs with the skin surface above the level of the braising liquid the entire time, and they're excellent. Roasting a whole chicken at a low temperature conjures up images of lots of flabby skin; even at the lower end of standard temperatures, I've been underwhelmed by the results (I guess you could torch it, though). If the chicken was so athletic that only low temperature cooking is going to make it tender, I'd go with a strightforward braise, not a low temperature roast.

[ChrisTaylor]

At the end of the cooking he rests the chicken until it's cool then places it in a very hot oven for ten minutes, so the skin crisps up.

[Mjx]

At the end of the cooking he rests the chicken until it's cool then places it in a very hot oven for ten minutes, so the skin crisps up.

Hmmm. When you consider the thickness of most of the meat on a chicken, you have to figure that ten minutes in the oven is going to have some sort of effect beyond crisping the skin.

I'm really happy with the approach of roasting a brined chicken 15 minutes per side at 190°C, followed by 20-25 minutes on its back at 230°C, which I got from 'Cooks Illustrated' (yields deeply flavourful, moist, tender meat, and skin that is deliciously browned and crisp, not greasy), or I'd be tempted to do a side by side of my usual approach and the Blumenthal one.

[ChrisTaylor]

I'll report back after tomorrow's dinner, I guess. I've decided to try slow roasting, just because.

[Andreas]

I've recently tried one of Heston's chicken recipes. There are TV snippets for two different chicken recipes on YT, I tried the one that takes 2 days instead of 3. (brining over night, smothering in butter, cooking at 90°C to 60°C core temp, letting it rest for ~45 mins., crisping up the skin at max. oven temperature).

IMO it comes out extremely juicy and tender (compared with a standard roast chicken). During the first oven phase (at 90°C) the chicken does not brown at all, the temperatures are not high enough. The melting butter seems to be sucked into the skin.

In the second oven phase (max temp), the skin lifts of from the meat, and crisps up really nicely. I would speculate that the air cussion between meat and skin isolates the meat somewhat from the high oven temperatures.

I can't exactly compare this chicken to a sous vide chicken breast since till now I always made my sous-vide chicken breasts in an 80°C bath (in a pot on my stovetop, monitored manually). I'll soon try one with my new immersion circulator, but it might take some time...

Compared to my sous-vide chicken breasts, the roasted ones are even juicier.

So all in all I would say that the bird definitely is better with this method, but I can't say how a sous-vide one compares.

On the other hand it might not be that practical to sous-vide a whole bird. The question would also be: how much of a difference does e.g. 60°C vs. 90°C roasting/water bath temp. make.

[StefanS]

I also think SV chicken/turkey does not need the brine. Cant say for sure. but is not the brine to reduce 'drying out' ? not going to happen in the SV.

Brining add moisture (water) to the chicken, cooking removes moisture.

The higher the temperature, the more moisture you loose.

I.e. Cooking to the exact temperature you want to cook to will reduce the moisture loss the most. It should not really matter if you do it in a 60C oven or SV to 60C.

SV will not reduce moisture loss in it self (due to plastic or anything else), SV reduces moisture loss since it is often done at low temperature.

If you want as moist chicken as possible it is better to brine and it is better to cook with the temperature you want it to be instead of higher, be that SV or oven.

[ChrisTaylor]

I'm keen to get feedback from Nich and annachan, but I was happy enough with the results.

* The beef wasn't especially well-marbled to begin with and didn't have much, if anything, that resembled a layer of fat on the outside. Welcome to buying beef at 90% of Australian butchers. So I was a bit worried that maybe slow-roasting wouldn't work. And yet it did. I was very happy with the rest. I seared it (salt, no oil, no pepper) in a screaming hot pan then moved it to a tray (purely because that pan holds its heat well and would continue to cook the before at too high a temperature when moved to the oven). I then drizzled it with a little truffle oil, added some more salt and pepper then roasted it for ~3 hours at ~70C. I then rested it in foil for just over one hour. I was happy with the rest, which was medium rare with a very gentle gradiant of colour inside--a fairly even pink 'cept for the very middle. So not quite as 'even' as you get with sous vide, but different to how I've seen 'traditional' roast beef or steaks turn out.

* The chickens were brined, fridge-dried and then hit with a compound butter, most of which went under the skin, along with some slices of preserved truffle. It took about 3.5-4 hours for them to reach 60*C (which they hit within about five minutes of each other--buying two chickens of the same size was the plan). I then rested them in foil for about one hour, too. The oven was cranked up to 225*C and I gave them just shy of ten minutes--the skin wasn't flabby but wasn't crisp. Any other time I'd aim for crisp skin, perhaps by giving it the prescribed 250C/10 minutes treatment, but my aim was more for truffle flavour/aroma than crispy skin. I was happy with the result. A noticeable step up from traditionally roasted chicken (my go-to method always involves brining and air-drying, so I don't attribute the improvement in quality to the prep).

[Karri]

I've watched and read a lot of Blumenthal. As you're probably aware, he advocates low and slow roasting of cuts such as rib eye or even whole chickens. Low and slow in the 90*C or even 60*C sense of the phrase.

Now, I have an oven that can go down to 50*C quite happily--no need to hold the door open or anything else. I also don't have a problem, on weekends at least, with having to wait 3-4-5 hours for my roast dinner. This is all good, good, good. But I'm wondering if it really is significantly better. Has anyone compared a brined roast chicken cooked at, say, 160*C to one roasted at 90*C or lower? Is there really a noticeable improvement in quality? What about the rib?

As luck would have it, I did this very experiment about a month ago. I didn't save any pictures, BUT:

I did a chicken the way Thomas Keller advocates in the French Laundry Cook Book. Trussed and roasted at 210C until done. And the one of Heston Blumenthal, I rubbed a stick of butter (500g) on the chicken and roasted it for 5½ hours at 90C untrussed, and finished in the oven at 210C to crisp the skin.

Thomas Keller: The chicken was nice, moist, crispy skin, I had to untruss the chicken to finish the cooking of the legs though, as the skin was starting to turn very dark brown and it was still raw in between the leg and the breast. Leg meat was beautifully moist and tender. The juices left in the pan made for an excellent Madeira and shallot reduction sauce finished with cream.

Heston Blumenthal: The breast was one of the juiciest I have ever had, it was in a word perfect. The legs on the other hand were stringy, hard, chewy, inedible. The pan juices were obviously just a stick of butter, the chicken itself did not leave much of anything in the pan. I did make a sauce, but it was more like a beurre montee. Not very nice.

Then I had some friends over for dinner and I made a third one, untrussed rubbed with butter, roeasted at 180C until done. This was by far the best of the lot. The legs were perfect, the breast was moist and delicious.

edit: I brined all the chickens.

Edited April 15, 2012 by Karri (log)

[ChrisZ]

I cant imagine Heston making things up.;

but .. what would be the benefit of 51 C for 3 - 5 in an oven over SV similar temps? then a browning?

I don't know if he's spelled it out anywhere, but although it's often said that the most technically "perfect" way to cook a chicken/turkey would be to butcher it and cook the different parts sous vide at different temperatures, there is a certain amount of tradition and satisfaction in serving a whole bird at the table. It's not as practical to cook a whole chicken or turkey sous vide as you'd need a pretty big water bath and some huge sized foodsaver bags! So if you want to cook the bird whole, then slow roasting is the practical alternative.

[EnriqueB]

I cook chicken breast sous-vide at 56ºC, they are perfectly succulent. I used to prepare them at 60ºC but they are noticeably better at 56ºC.

I have also done slow roast chicken several times using Modernist Cuisine version, which is close to Heston's method. With brining and at low oven temperature (probe close to the chicken surface at 65ºC for 3-4 hours) the breasts are great but still far less moist and succulent than SV @ 60ºC. And then the legs are, in my opinion, chewy and not cooked enough, exactly as Karri says. A higher temperature does improve the legs but makes the breasts less moist (much better than most roasted chickens, but once you try them SV there is no way back)....

[dukelancer66]

At my place of work we regularly cook whole prime ribs at 250*F or 120*C. They are cooked for a little over 4 hours. I feel that they are much more tender than ribs cooked at higher temperatures due to the length of cooking time, and the ability of the low heat to penetrate deeper into the meat to break down connective tissue. There is also far less carryover cooking since the outside temperature is lower. We take them out of the sham at 120*F internal temperature as opposed to the 108-110*F I used to do before at another kitchen.

We have also had tremendous success with whole turkeys. We cooked them overnight (9 PM to 9 AM) in a hot box that was set to 180*F or approximately 82*C. We expected them to be cooked the whole way through, but to be colorless and require some time in a hot oven. We were incorrect they came out nice and brown. However the skin wasn't as crispy as compared to turkeys at a higher temperature, but these were much juicier. Even the breast meat. That was also helped by injection brining them.

I have not tried to roast chickens at that low of temperature before, but the stringiness of the legs is probably due to them not being able to absorb enough heat for the connective tissue to break down. I Roast my chickens at 350*F (176*C) for chickens weighing 3-4 pounds and 325*F (162*C) for ones weighing 5-6 pounds. If you can brine them it helps them out quite a bit, but i try to cook them to an internal temperature of 155-158* F and let carryover cooking do the rest.

[ChrisTaylor]

I'm revisiting Blumenthal's rib eye recipe today, only with 'asado' ribs (http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/95697/95697,1192301853,1/stock-photo-barbecue-argentine-style-pork-ribs-and-asado-6070924.jpg) instead of, you know, a rib eye roast. I'll cook them longer than I would a rib eye, given there's all that connective tissue and such to break down, but other than that I'm staying true to the recipe--the ribs were dry-aged in the fridge, hit with salt, seared assertively and then placed in a low oven.

[&roid]

Thomas Keller: The chicken was nice, moist, crispy skin, I had to untruss the chicken to finish the cooking of the legs though, as the skin was starting to turn very dark brown and it was still raw in between the leg and the breast. Leg meat was beautifully moist and tender. The juices left in the pan made for an excellent Madeira and shallot reduction sauce finished with cream.

edit: I brined all the chickens.

Hi Karri, I'm a big fan of the Keller method, what size were the chickens you used? I find a 1.4kg bird about perfect for this, any bigger and I start running into the issue you describe, especially if I've brined it as this makes the skin a LOT crispier and more prone to colouring.

[ChrisTaylor]

Thinking on the chicken some matter--not because of this thread, but I was kicking around plans for turkey--I'm considering roasting the breasts on-the-bone using Blumenthal's method but reserving the legs for a small chicken pie, which could be served with the breasts to provide a more interesting contrast of flavours/techniques.

[ChrisTaylor]

Another attempt at slow-roasting beef. This time it was two and a half kilos of beef shin (in a single piece, as opposed to the more usual 'osso bucco' slices). I served it with risotto Milanese and some slow-roasted tomatoes--a nod, I guess, to osso bucco. A smarter person than me would've realised 12 hours at ~70C would mean that the meat would become very rich. Very rich. Think trying to eat more than just a few slices of tongue. The meat was tender yet retained some chew to it--think fillet.