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How to cook pork rack sous vide


Bojana

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I have a beautiful piece of pork rack which I would like to cook sous vide. Can someone please recommend temperature and duration, including rubs, spices, liquid etc.

Thank you,

Bojana

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I'd marinate it for 24 hours in a nice sauce of olive oil, red wine, a table spoon or two of fish sauce (I like the Vietnamese best since it's stronger on flavour than the Thai, but Thai fish souce is fine too), ground black pepper, honey and mustard.

Sear it in butter in a skillet for a couple of minutes till it's nice and brown all over, put it in the bag and dunk it in ice water (50/50 ice cubes and water - or if you can't be bothered to make all those ice cubes, just put a big bowl of water in the freezer for a couple of hours till it gets a crust of ice). The meat should be enough chilled after a minute.

Add some of the marinade back in the bag and vacuum seal it. Cook the pork for 10-12 hours at 60 C (that's 140F). Sear it again if you wish, a blow torch is conveniant, and serve it with whatever you like. I think a good potato mash and some sauteed peppers, squash and red onions is perfect.

My sauce suggestion would be to cook the liquid from the sous vide bag together with equal amount of apple juice and some soy sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Use a roux if you prefere, or just thicken it with some corn starch.

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A pork rack is already tender, so I would question whether prolonged sous-vide is necessary? I do not like SV'ing meat for too long, particularly if there is salt in the bag. You tend to lose a lot of juice.

The question of whether to sear the meat prior to SV is also a vexing one. Cooking issues has an article on it. I used to pre-sear meats prior to SV, but this step can sometimes produce a bitter taste (don't ask me why). These days I do not salt and do not sear my meat prior to SV.

One method which does work is injection brining. Weigh your pork and measure out 10% of its weight in water. You could use milk if you prefer. Then weigh up your brine and add 5% its weight in salt. For example:

- pork rack 1kg

- water 100mL

- salt 5gm

- (optional) sugar 5gm

Stir the brine thoroughly until the salt dissolves, then inject the brine evenly into the meat. Leave it in the fridge for at least 2 hours for the brine to equilibrate, then vacuum pack. Cook at 60C for 1 hour if cooking from room temperature. After the SV step, remove the meat from the bag, dab it dry, and rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. Apply a rub of your choice then grille using extremely high heat over charcoal.

Since you asked for a rub, this is what I use. No doubt others may have better rub recipes. Sorry, I don't actually weigh these ingredients!

- smoked paprika 2 tbsp

- cracked coriander seed 1/2 tsp

- garlic powder 1/2 tsp

- onion powder 1/2 tsp

- brown sugar 2 tbsp

- salt 1 tbsp

- freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp

There is no love more sincere than the love of food - George Bernard Shaw
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If you are not going to present the whole rack at the table I would break it down before cooking if you are going to cook it SV. Roasting the whole rack in an oven vs roasting individual chops gives a dramatic difference, but if you are cooking SV Im not sure how much of a difference there would be.

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Thanks for the tips. I went ahead with marinade as suggested by Mofassah, but cooked it for 3-4 hours at 60C. On the first evening I served it with the reduced bag juice plus some chicken glaze, fried polenta cookies and picked mustard seeds. For the second evening I did not have any more bag juices so I made the cherry sauce from Eleven Madison Park book and loved that plate even more.

The meat was lovely and succulent, thank you for all the pointers that helped me make it happen.

pork.jpg

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