In the second installation of MDRN KTCHN on CHOW.com, our Director of Applied Research, Scott Heimendinger, focuses on sous vide cooking. Watch the video above to see Scott demonstrate the process and explain the science behind this technique. Want to try it out yourself? We have many sous vide recipes in Modernist Cuisine as well as Modernist Cuisine at Home. We also have a few recipes in our online Recipe Library, including ones for short ribs, rare beef jus, and light and dark turkey meat.
The Chemistry of the Barbecue “Stall”
The “stall” is widely known among serious barbecuers. Well into cooking, the temperature of uncovered meat stops rising and may even fall slightly before it climbs again. Most barbecue experts say this stall occurs when connective tissue in the meat softens and fat starts to render, which does occur, but it doesn’t cause the stall.
The stall is quite real, but it is not due to softening collagen as the graph below shows. We cooked two briskets side-by-side in a convection oven, which mimicked the air temperature in a smoker, but was much more consistent and thus better suited for the experiment. We left one brisket uncovered (blue curve) and vacuum sealed the other (green curve). Sensors measured the core temperature of each brisket as well as the dry-bulb (black curve) and wet-bulb (red curve) air temperatures in the oven.
The stall clearly occurred in the uncovered brisket 2-4 hours into cooking as the wet-bulb temperature in the oven fell. The stall ended after about four hours because the surface of the brisket had dried out enough that it was above the wet-bulb temperature. The temperature of the vacuum-sealed brisket, in contrast, rose steadily to the oven’s set point in about three hours. Any effect due to collagen or fat rendering would occur in both briskets, but we see the stall only in the uncovered one.
Early in the cooking, the wet-bulb temperature rose as the uncovered brisket evaporated, increasing the relative oven humidity to about 72%. But the humidity then began to drop as evaporation could no longer keep pace with the air venting out of the oven. By the eight-hour mark, the humidity was below 50%, and the wet-bulb temperature was down almost 10 °C / 18 °F from its peak.
The core of the uncovered brisket stalled. In this test, we left the brisket dry, but if we had slathered it with sauce periodically as many barbecue chefs do, we could prolong the stall by keeping the surface wet.
Sous vide cooking is, in our opinion, by far the best way to achieve the perfect cooking rate necessary for great barbecue. We barbecued in two distinct steps: smoking to impart the smoke flavor, followed by sous vide cooking to achieve the optimum texture and done-ness.
Smoking before a long sous vide cooking step has the advantage of proteins remaining intact and able to react readily with smoke. Smoked food continues to change while being cooked sous vide: its pellicle darkens, the rind becomes firmer, and the smoky flavor mellows.
The alternative, of course, is to smoke the food after cooking it sous vide. This also works well, but a longer smoking time is required to develop a robust smoked flavor and appearance. This is because precooking denatures a large fraction of the proteins in a cut of meat or a piece of seafood, which leaves the flesh less reactive to the smoke.
Whichever approach you choose to take and you should try both ways to judge the differences yourself the remarkable texture that is the hallmark of sous vide cooking, and the consistency it brings to smoking, makes it the best way to smoke meats and seafood. Alternatively, you could substitute for the sous vide step a combi oven, CVap oven, or low-temperature steamer.
You can find our recipe for Smoked Dry-Rub Pork Ribs here.
–This post was adapted from Modernist Cuisine. Too see what others think of our pastrami, see the Steven Colbert clip below, and click here to read about what Steven Raichlen has to say on The Barbecue Bible.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Nathan Myhrvold | ||||
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For a Great Summer Feast, Cook Ahead, and Bring Extra Fat
Summer feasting can be great fun, but it poses a number of challenges for the cook. You may find yourself in an unfamiliar kitchen or even cooking at a park, on the beach, at a campsite in the woods, or in a friend’s backyard. The grill at hand may lack some of the features of your own, and you may have to share it with other cooks. Cookouts often involve making lots of portions and feeding impatient children.
The best way to ensure fast, delicious results despite all these hurdles is to prep and precook your food at home so that all you have to do at your destination is to warm it up and put on the final touches.
Cook chicken, steak, and other proteins sous vide before you leave the house. Allow the bags of food to cool while still sealed, and then pack them into your cooler with ice. To reheat the food, simply unbag it onto a hot grill and sear it quickly. (Our new book, Modernist Cuisine at Home, also reveals some tricks for improvising sous vide setups while tailgating or picnicking.)
Precooking the food sous vide is convenient, and it shortens the wait for those kiddies. More important, the precision of temperature that sous vide cooking offers allows you to safely cook every portion safely and to exactly the degree of doneness you want. Never again will you have to serve rubbery chicken or tough steak just to be certain it is safe to eat.
Eating Safely in the Great Outdoors
The key to safety is knowing how long to cook at a given temperature to achieve full pasteurization. If you are cooking chicken breasts, for example, you can heat them to a core temperature of as little as 55 °C / 131 °F. Once the center of the thickest part hits that target temperature, hold the chicken at that temperature for 40 minutes to pasteurize the meat. That temperature is not as high as many people are used to, and some prefer their chicken closer to medium-well than medium-rare. That’s easy to accommodate: just choose a higher cooking temperature. The greater the core temperature, the shorter the pasteurization time; see the table for some suggested holding times for chicken breasts and thighs.
Whenever you cook food sous vide in advance, it is crucial to chill it soon after cooking and to keep it chilled until you reheat and serve it. The food should never spend more than four hours total in the “danger zone” of 4 °C to 60 °C / 40 °F to 140 °F. So bring plenty of ice if you are going on a long car ride, or if you won’t be grilling for a while. And don’t forget to bring a bottle of hand sanitizer along; even pasteurized food can become unsafe if you touch it with dirty hands.
Capture That Grilled Goodness
Generations of grillers have been trained to fear flare-ups, but that is misplaced. Certainly you don’t want flames charring your food, but most of the flavor from grilling actually comes from fat drippings, which ignite into flames and then travel back to the food as smoke. If you are quickly reheating precooked food, slow-cooking over coals in tin foil packets, or grilling veggies or other low-fat foods, it’s hard to capture much of this characteristic grilled flavor. An easy work-around is to season your meat and veggies with pressure-rendered fat. You can find a recipe at the bottom of the page.
You can use pressure-rendered fat when cooking on gas or charcoal grills, grill pans, or even in tinfoil packets. Just remove the food from the sous vide bag and brush it generously with the fat. Grill meats first, typically for about one minute per side. Then add vegetables and fruit as desired. Leave fruits, such as peaches or pineapple, on the heat long enough that the sugars in them caramelize. Remember, don’t panick when you see small flames flare-up and lick at the food: you want the smoke they generate to carry its flavor onto the food. But do keep a spray bottle on hand in case the flames get too high.
Leave Only Your Footprints…
Remember to never leave a grill, fire, or coals unattended. Spread the coals out and cover them with sand if necessary before leaving. Gather up all the plastic bags and other waste from your meal, and take it with you.
Explore MC at the Exploratorium!
Join MC coauthor Maxime Bilet and our very own Scott Heimendinger of Seattle Food Geek as they team up with San Francisco’s Exploratorium and Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks. As part of the ongoing series Exploratorium After Dark, the three foodies will explore Modernist techniques from centrifuging to sous vide cooking. Exploratorium chefs will prepare tasty treats such as juice caviar and liquid nitrogen ice cream (and if that’s not enough, there will also be a cash bar).
Exploratorium After Dark: Gastronomy will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts on April 5, 2012, 6-10 pm. All After Dark events are ages 18+. Tickets range from $12 to $15. For more information, click here.
Teaching Melissa Clark
New York Times columnist Melissa Clark gave Nathan Myhrvold what many might consider the ultimate challenge: teach me recipes from Modernist Cuisine that I can make for a dinner party without buying any unusual ingredients or equipment.
Nathan isn’t one to turn down a challenge, and besides, cooking from Modernist Cuisine in a home kitchen is much easier than lifting it. Nathan taught Melissa how to cook salmon sous vide using tap water, cook steak in the oven, infuse celery with apple juice, caramelize delicata squash in a pressure cooker, and make balsamic panna cotta. For the results of Melissa’s dinner party, plus the recipes and videos, read the article here.
In Our Recipe Library: Short Ribs for Hanukkah!
We’ve been inspired by classic Jewish cooking to serve sous vide beef short ribs with a Manischewitz jus and wasabi whipped cream. You can find the recipe, along with a video and tips, in the recipe library. Check out the intro by Scott Heimendinger from Seattle Food Geek who consulted with us on this creation!
A New Recipe in Our Library: Starch-Infused Fries
Depending on whether you consider pommes pont-neuf to be a proper French fry, we have either four or five French fry recipes in Modernist Cuisine. In our most recent edition to the Recipe Library, we’ve delved into our recipe for Starch-Infused Fries and also included a video on how to make our Ultrasonic Fries.
Have you tried any of our French fry recipes? Tell us about your experiences in the comments or in our Cooks Forum.
Nathan Myhrvold Will Appear on The Martha Stewart Show, November 17
Last time Nathan appeared on The Martha Stewart Show, she came to visit us in Bellevue, Washington, at The Cooking Lab. This time, since Nathan is spending a few days on the East Coast, he’s stopping by her studio to talk about Modernist cooking and its adaptability for home use. Nathan will demonstrate sous vide salmon and pistachio gelato, some of our favorite recipes!
Tune in to The Martha Stewart Show tomorrow, November 17, for more!
New Recipe (and It’s Not from the Book): Thanksgiving Stew
What do you get when you combine a water bath, pressure cooker, chicken feet, cranberries, and Stove Top stuffing? The tastiest Thanksgiving meal you’ve ever eaten out of a bowl!
Along with the multi-component recipe, we also have tips, photos, and four videos (sous vide turkey breast, sous vide cranberry consommé, microwave-fried herbs, and how to beautifully plate your stew).
Maxime Will Teach Modernist Cooking at Sur La Table
Maxime Bilet, coauthor of Modernist Cuisine, will team up with the elite national cooking store Sur La Table for a one-day class. Max will present cooking demonstrations of the following dishes from MC:
- Extracted Berry Juice Soda
- Pressure-Cooked Carrot Soup with Coconut Cream
- Brined and Slow-Poached Wild Salmon
- Seared Sous Vide Steak with Creamed Spinach
- Lemon Curd with Sliced Citrus
The class will be held on Wednesday, September 28, 2011, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Sur La Table in Kirkland, Washington. Tickets are $95 and can be purchased through Sur La Table. For tickets and more information, click here.