Freeze-ahead Sous Vide Boneless Beef Short Ribs

[Porthos]

I picked up enough boneless short ribs to make 3 meals for my Sweetie and me. One meal will be pan-braised tonight. One has been vacuum-sealed and is in the freezer. My question is about seasoning, sealing, freezing, then defrosting and cooking at a later date. I'd like to season and seal the 3rd meal's worth. Can I use a dry rub on the meat, then seal, freeze, and cook at a later date? Does anyone else do this?

Edited June 11, 2020 by Smithy
Corrected title spelling (log)

[btbyrd]

It's not clear how you're planning on cooking them, but if you're going to SV them I find that it's most convenient to cook them SV first -- and in a large batch -- and then freeze them so I don't have to wait 72/48 hours for them to cook when I want to eat them. In any event, they store fine vacuum sealed in the freezer. My only concern would be any salt in the dry rub, which might end up giving a more firm cured texture to the ribs. That may or may not be a problem, depending on your preferences. 

[Porthos]

My idea was that instead of defrosting the meat and then putting it into a ziptop bag, I would defrost and drop the vacuum-sealed bag into the sous vide bath.

 

I wonder if I frozen the meat on a cookie sheet, then seasoned it and sealed it if that might prevent or seriously reduce the cured texture.

 

I dislike reheating food I've cook in a sous vide bath. Personal preference. YMMV.

 

Edited to add: I don't like having leftovers in general, and so only prepare enough for whomever I'm feeding.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Porthos (log)

[btbyrd]

You don't have to defrost frozen vacuum sealed product before cooking it SV; cooking from frozen is perfectly fine, if not preferable. Rapidly thawing in the SV bath reduces moisture loss during thawing (compared to thawing slowly in the fridge or in cold water).

 

I doubt that seasoning frozen meat will make a difference in the ultimate texture versus seasoning and then freezing. The meat is still going to be in contact with the salt for an extended period during both storage and cooking. You might not mind the salted texture though. I don't have a huge bias against it in something like short ribs (though I don't care for the texture in tender steaks).

 

Cook-chill-store SV is not really a workflow that produces "leftovers." It's more like creating mise in place for future meals. I have no idea why you'd have a preference against reheating chilled and stored SV product, but if you want to make your short rib cooking workflow unnecessarily labor intensive and time-sucky, knock yourself out. I, for one, find having a batch of 72 hour short ribs stashed in the freezer convenient and delicious. Dinner's ready in an hour!

[Bernie]

There is another weird factoid that may well apply to the situation of SV from frozen.

 

What starting temperature water should you use when you make ice cubes in your freezer in an ice cube tray, tap water, cold water, hot or boiling water to get the ice cubes quickest?

Well of course it would be cold water, right?

 

No actually it would be boiling water!

 

That can't possibly be right could it? Yep. You see its the temperature difference that is important to the heat flow. You need to remove heat energy from the water and since it takes more than one unit of energy to drop the temperature one degree, its better if you can speed up the heat flow. The heat flow is determined by the difference in temperature along the heat flow path. Seems counter intuitive but try it.

 

In the case of SV the same thing happens. It takes longer to heat the food from very close to its final temperature than it does from a much lesser temperature. Again its heat flow, not temperature change that determines its final temperature.

 

Like I said a weird factoid.

 

EDIT: Note that the idea of SV is to arrive at our final internal temperature and along the way progress through various temperatures to allow the various chemical reactions to take place (usually at some specific temperature range), so speeding up the time to arrive at the final temperature is likely to have an effect. So that is another prospective investigation for the experimenters here.😁

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by Bernie (log)