| Author | Message | ||
     Aesquire |
I've looked at a few of his books. Not my cuppa. But I have a female friend who loves the stuff & the movies and has multiple figurines. A Facebook page with cute cat pictures and aliens instead of elf on the shelf. I got clothes, mostly look shirts, and an Instapot SV for Christmas. Then my visiting sister made her pork chops in the Instapot with onion soup mix & water, using the juices & cream of mushroom soup to make a flour free gravy. Delish! I'll probably be on a sous vide kick for a bit. I'll report on the Instapot later, seems very good Canadian construction. Pressure cooked everything.... | ||
| 86129squids |
I love cooking sous vide. Did some crazy good pork chops a while back. Our new gadget is a 7 quart air fryer. After all the Christmas home cooking, which was delish, we needed a break from the heavy stuff. Did some curried sea bass with rice and zucchini chips... the fish had the consistency of a tender scallop, fabulous. Chicken wings are next! Patrick, I'd read/heard somewhere that the Instapot was designed by some Canadian engineers who just wanted a superior design. Have fun!  | ||
| Ourdee |
Throw a steak in the Instapot and punch the meat button. Easier than a Kuerig. | ||
| 86129squids |
Ummm- it'd still need a decent pan sear, right? That's almost blasphemy, although sous vide steaks are a cheat too. (fun) I'm still working the difference between my steak at a nice medium and hers at a tragic MW to W. It's hard to beat the rituals involved with grilling, whether charcoal or gas. You'll always need a sear at the end though. | ||
| Ourdee |
Nope. | ||
| Aesquire |
In restaurants, sous vide is most often used to prep meat for the final sear. A sous vide steak is edible out of the bag, but not visually appealing. The application to a hot pan or grill makes chemicals that can enhance the flavor and provide those browned bits for a pan sauce. Malliard reaction. The big advantage in restaurants is a steak can be thrown in the bath before you open the doors, and be finished, quickly, for serving an hour, or several hours, later. It eliminates time pressure a lot. You don't need fancy gear to get the "reverse sear" method to work at home. The old way is to sear meat, then bake it to final temperature, rest it to equalize temps & allow to cool to relax the muscle fibers, to retain more moisture...then serve. A better way is to gently heat ( bake in a 250 f oven works ) The meat to just below rare, then sear for flavor and desired doneness, ( rare to medium or well done if desired ) There's little to no need for a rest after the sear, the inside is already at temperature. Put some herb butter on & serve. One big advantage of reverse sear /sous vide is the reduction or elimination of the over cooked grey band. And the critical time stretch restaurants love with sous vide is great if soccer practice runs late and the herd, or wife, is an hour late, you just wait until just before serving to sear. ( The oven method lacks this advantage ) Personally I'll bake pork chops and fish and enjoy them without the sear fairly often. A spice rub and butter or olive oil is a good substitute for my taste. I don't have experience with pressure cooker meats yet. Just a few samples when Sis shows off her skills on visits. | ||
| Aesquire |
To be clear the Instapot is a pressure cooker with preset program buttons. Highly recommended and I just happily got one & haven't used it yet. I got the new SV model that ALSO does sous vide unpressurized, if desired. You do want a final sear on "reverse sear" & sous vide meats, I think. Pressure cooked meats are a different, and unknown to me thing. | ||
| Aesquire |
Squid, if you are a griller, you just adjust the time to get your desired doneness. Put her's on 1.5-2 minutes before yours, and leave on another .5-1 minutes after you pull yours. Rest together under foil. Always pat dry with paper towels before it hits the heat. Moisture on the surface will steam the meat until it evaporates, and sear won't start till it's dry. The numbers vary with thickness. You'll have to experiment. If you like rare, & outside char, try frozen steaks. | ||
| Ourdee |
Throw it in. Hit the meat button with the pressure valve closed. Try it as it comes out to see if you want to do anything else. In the summer with the instant pot, I throw it on the back porch before opening the steam. Keeps the smell, heat, and humidity out of the house. | ||
| Tpehak |
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| Rick_a |
Since my youth I've gone from well done to medium well, and have recently finally graduated to medium rare in my steaks. It really is the best flavor. I'll often microwave an egg in a cup for a quick scrambled egg. They end up quite fluffy and perfect for a sandwich or breakfast muffin. A tiny bit of milk, oil, and/or cheese makes it good. That's the extent of my cooking abilities  | ||
| Pwnzor |
Patrick, check out the YouTube channel "Sous Vide Everything". As for baking a steak before searing, be careful at 250F degrees, you'll overcook it pretty quick. I prefer my steaks rare, with a nice sear on it. To achieve this, I pre-season the meat and seal it in the bag. Then it's 2 hours in the sous vide at 135F degrees. It can go longer, even all day long. The great thing about the SV method is it's almost impossible to overcook. The meat will just get more tender the longer you leave it in. Get my cast iron pan on medium-high heat, coat it with grapeseed oil, slide a stick of butter in and sear for 90 seconds per side, spoon basting the whole time. Like so: https://youtu.be/vxNaxi6dmFc?t=770 Sous Vide also lets you rescue things from the bottom of your freezer that you may have forgotten about... for example:  From frozen, apply spices liberally and seal into bags. 3 hours at 165F and this chicken is tender and juicy, perfectly cooked through. Here it's seen in a cold water bath after coming out of the SV, before going into the fridge.  Now I've got 7 pounds of chicken that can get diced straight into a green salad, or chopped up and made into the best chicken salad you've ever had:  How about a rack of lamb... (here seen after SV at 153F degrees for 3 hours)  And here after using the Searz-all on a small grill over my sink.  How about some spare ribs and pork belly...  Slice up the pork belly and put it in a salad...  My favorite thing about the Sous Vide method is the ability to prep all the meats well in advance. Bring them home from Costco, cut it up, season and seal it up in bags, write the date on it and freeze it. The SV takes care of thawing and cooking all in one step, and it can go all day long. The meat just gets more tender.  We're eating good these days at the Anthony household, I can tell you that much. Again, the Sous Vide Everything Channel on YouTube is a wealth of information. Guga will show you his successes and failures equally... although they do tend to be mostly success stories. | ||
| Aesquire |
Thanks! I've started on that series. And now I'm hungry! I saw a video where they tried a steak for a week In the Sous vide. The taste tester declared it a great roast. Definitely changed the texture from "steak". Tasty & edible, though. And they were able to compare to a "normal" sous vide steak. Both steaks cut from one piece. There are limits. This teacher has some good videos too. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NkyWtgW-ySI I've got a lot to learn. Yea! | ||
| Pwnzor |
It all depends on what YOU want from any particular cut of meat. You can turn a steak into a roast, or you can waste money on fresh garlic only to find out that dry seasonings work best. I've been through some pretty startling revelations watching Guga for the past few months. Those guys are funny, and they test out all kinds of methods. Nothing really beats a nice hot sear over a hot bed of coals. But for my purposes, a cast iron skillet has become my go-to method for searing. It's quick, easy and I get nice uniform heat across the pan. | ||
| 86129squids |
Hey Matthew- that rack of lamb, did you mean 135 degrees, surely not 153? GREAT pics and commentary BTW. Patrick, you've checked about all the boxes I'd check. Nice to know I'm in good company with other food geeks/gourmands/gluttons.  Got champagne and Siberian caviar from work coming home tonite to celebrate the New year. Hoppin' Johns with Benton's smoked sausage are up for tomorrow, then the rotisserie will run on the 2nd with four Cornish hens and fixin's. Yay! Oh, and when Froggy scans those pics, his head will explode. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Yes, 135... don't know how I got that backwards. | ||
| 86129squids |
Good. I was beginning to cry over that hammered well rack of lamb. I know you're better than that! Every blue moon or so I'll get a guest that asks for our NZ full rack, lollipop chops, gorgeous, at MW or W. I do everything in my power to pull them back. Medium is the absolute ceiling. As long as they tip me properly, DILLIGAF. But by then my expectations have been severely lowered.  | ||
| Ratbuell |
Any time I cooked for a college roommate, I'd ask how he wanted his steak or burger done on the grill. "Burn it". Uh...nope. Buy your own meat and ruin it, I'll find someone else to feed. After the third or fourth night when he didn't have any dinner, he realized I was serious. | ||
| 86129squids |
I love you, Joe. | ||
| Rick_a |
I got a perfectly cooked medium rare steak and some champagne tonight. Can't complain. | ||
| Ourdee |
We're eating good these days at the Anthony household, I can tell you that much. Forget Twos. I know where to go in Georgia. | ||
| Crusty |
Forget Twos. I know where to go in Georgia. Jim's Smokin' Que | ||
| Ourdee |
And Matthew's. | ||
| Pwnzor |
I had thought about bringing the sous vide circulator, an extension cord and a small grill with me... Maybe this next go around I'll do so. It wouldn't be hard to do. We could throw some steaks or chops in, and just sear them on the grill when we come in from a ride. | ||
| Aesquire |
Personally I like "medium" on a steak. Pink in the middle, but not rare. Less picky on the sear. Charred stuff seems to be a fad. Not for me, thank you. It depends on what you are used to? Norse mom, so well done was SOP. I'm the rebel in the family. I like it hotter & juicier than the rest. Scandanavian food tends to be white or grey. It's a running joke. With a lot of truth to it. Even the sweets. Lefse is a Family favorite. Mom has a Lefse paddle hanging on the wall, and we had it for Christmas. You roll it out very thin, then pick up the sheet with the paddle, ( a thin venetian blind slat works ) and flip/roll it out onto a large flat griddle to cook. butter, sprinkle with sugar, roll, and consume. https://thecountrybasket.com/how-to-make-and-bake- norwegian-lefse/ Kringla, ( Kringle ) is typically white, soft, and mildly sweet. In my parent's house for Christmas some red & green granulated sugar is sprinkled on for color. Radicals! At the opposite end of the food spectrum is Lutefisk. Dried cod preserved with lye. Will survive a trans Atlantic voyage in the bottom of an open boat, with, I will add, no harm to the flavor. Which is horrible. It's white too. ( I'm told soaking in sea water improves the flavor. I prefer to abstain. ) It's funny, looking up these foods I found my family uses the Icelandic names, so I'm guessing many Icelandic settlers came from the same region of Norway. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Ahhh lutefisk. We used to eat that shit at LHC's Southern Renaissance Pleasure Faire back in the day. We also drank a lot of 190 proof Everclear. And ate a lot of um... fungus. And stuff. | ||
| Ourdee |
I had thought about bringing the sous vide circulator, an extension cord and a small grill with me... for the Wednesday or Thursday evening meal. | ||
| Aesquire |
You can also use a cooler and put hot water in it for camping sous vide if you don't have electricity. There are tutorial videos.  I'm less a foodie than I seem. Not much, maybe. I'm a kitchen gadget nut. The ones I actually use, however, turn out to be few. Cabinets full of toys I should give away. The Aroma rice cooker is one. Don't bother with your expert and no doubt true opinion that real men just need a pot & stove. It makes perfect rice and steams eggs & veggies with ease, little extra heat in the kitchen, and frees the stove for whatever goes with the rice. Often pasta sauce w/sausage. Kitchen aid mixer, pro model with metal gears. My sister has the attachments, I got her the spiral gizmo for Christmas. I can borrow the grinder etc. If I want to. It just mixes. The stuff I used to do by hand, cookie dough, bread, brownies... No problem. The coffee maker isn't a gadget, more like an altar. Black & Decker. I may upgrade to one with an insulated carafe instead of a heated glass one. I also got a Krups coffee grinder for Christmas! Yea! My coffee nut friends told me in chorus it is the worst one. Seriously. Well, they know that. But the person who gave it to me didn't. It's 100% better than hitting beans with a rock. I'm happy and grateful. Works fine. I also got from the same person, a pound of Death Wish coffee to go with it. Surprisingly good tasting. High caffeine, you could do far worse for pulling an all nighter. Happy New Year! | ||
| Torquehd |
I may upgrade to one with an insulated carafe instead of a heated glass one. The advantage of a glass pot on a hot plate is that you can turn it off to keep the coffee from over-cooking, go out to the garage for an hour or three, then come back in and turn it back on for 6 or 8 minutes, and have another perfect cup of coffee. You can do this all day long. I doubt the insulated giraffe (I refuse to use that word) would do that. A Thermos is a great investment. I need to replace mine as it's fallen out of my truck a few times and is no longer vacuum sealed. It used to keep my Coffee piping hot all day. Now, a couple hours and it's luke warm. | ||
| 86129squids |
A Krups grinder? I've used mine almost daily for 20 years. Some folks say a burr grinder is better. Meh. THat's a great gift. SOP, got a batch of K-Roger brand French roast fresh ground, ready by timer to start @ +- 7AM. We served over 400 steaks, plus seafood, and all the first/second/fourth courses, like bandits, and crushed it. I can't tell you how amazed, humbled, and appreciative I am of our kitchen. We have a beast. Our primary prep guy, he stayed until the END, running dish like it was nothing. He worked all day today, works EVERY day, doing prep. Then, since we have no one man/vag'/mangina enough to just... WORK, Camilo gets it done. With a smile. I've been a kitchen guy, done most all of any restaurant operation, and I know the best. |
