Deep Fried...Something

Deep Fried Sous Vide Egg Yolks

Earlier today, I saw a discussion about sous vide eggs.  I went to my good friend Google and looked up a few recipes.  This one jumped out at me as something that I HAD to try.  The yolks came out with a consistency that is impossible to achieve with traditional cooking methods.  They weren't runny, but they were almost as smooth as pudding.  Adding a crunchy deep fried shell made them a great snack.  I'll definitely be making these again.

Deep Fried Sous Vide Egg Yolks

Ingredients:

• 7 eggs
• ⅓ cup flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• Canola oil, for frying
• ½ cup fine bread crumbs
• 1 teaspoon black truffle salt
• 1 Tablespoon fine lemon zest (optional)

Directions:

1. Cook 6 eggs (reserving one) sous vide at 148°F for one hour.  Let the eggs cool in a bowl of tepid water for 10 minutes.
2. Turn on the faucet to very low. Working one by one, carefully crack a cooked egg into your hand, and let the white drip away under the water.  Set the yolks aside.
3. Heat about 1½ inches of canola oil in a small saucepan until it reaches 360°F (make sure the temp doesn’t exceed 370°F).
4. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and sea salt.  In a second bowl, whisk the remaining (uncooked) egg.  Spread the bread crumbs on a plate.
5. Gently roll each yolk in the flour mixture, then dip in the egg wash, then roll in breadcrumbs.
6. Fry each yolk for about 30 seconds, or until lightly golden brown.  Drain on a paper towel, then sprinkle with black truffle salt and lemon zest.

Notes:
I just used regular salt instead of black truffle salt, and I left the lemon zest out altogether. 

Sous Vide Pork Chops

I haven't really been a fan of pork chops historically speaking.  They're usually either too dry (yuck) or undercooked (even more yuck), so I haven't bothered trying to make them in quite some time.  I was reading my favorite sous vide web page though and saw the recipe for pork chops.  Given how juicy everything else had been, and the fact that you don't have to worry about undercooking when you cook sous vide, I decided to give them another try.  The resulting pork chops were so good, and so juicy, that I might be back on the pork chop bandwagon.  Because these are brined before cooking, they needed very little seasoning.

Sous Vide Pork Chops

Ingredients:

• Pork chops (I used center cut)
• ¼ cup salt
• 2½ Tablespoons sugar
• 1 quart water
• 1 Tablespoon canola oil
  

Directions:

1. In a large ziploc bag, combine the water, salt and sugar.  Mix until dissolved.
2. Add pork chops and brine in refrigerator for 1-2 hours.
3. Remove pork chops from brine and pat dry.  Place in individual vacuum bags.
4. Cook in sous vide machine at 135F for 12 hours.
5. Heat oil in heavy pan over high heat until just before smoking.  Place pork chops in pan and sear, about 45 seconds on each side.
6. Remove from pan and serve!

Notes:
I brined my pork chops for about 12 hours.  They were still good, but I think 1-2 hours would be plenty.  I served these splashed with just a little bit of this pomegranate tangerine vinegar  Also, in case there's any doubt about how juicy these are, here's a cropped close-up from the above picture:

Sous Vide Salmon - Try This At Home!

I know some (ok fine, most) of these sous vide recipes aren't easily recreated at home unless you either have a sous vide machine or have cobbled together a reasonable approximation of one.  This one is different.  You can make this at home with nothing more complicated than a ziploc bag, a big pot, and a candy thermometer (or a similar large thermometer).

One of my only complaints about my sous vide machine is that the manual has fairly ridiculous cooking temperatures and times in it.  When I decided to make sous vide salmon, I looked around a bit on the internet to find a consensus, and I'm glad I did or I would have cooked this about 20 degrees hotter and for about 20 minutes longer than I needed to.  I ended up basing my times on this recipe from The (Baltimore) Sun.  The salmon was absolutely amazing and it only took 15 minutes to cook!  I've already made this twice and I'll definitely be making it again.

Sous Vide Salmon

Ingredients:

• 2 boneless skinless salmon fillets, 5-8 ounces each
• Salt
• Pepper
• Herbs of choice

Directions:

1. Brine the salmon in a salt water bath for about 10 minutes.
2. Drain the salmon, pat dry, and season with salt, pepper and herbs. 
3. Seal each fillet in a vacuum bag (see notes).
4. Bring water to 123-125F (it will cool down slightly when you add the salmon).
5. Add salmon bags and cook for 15-18 minutes, keeping water as close to 120F as you can.  Stir the water every minute or so to ensure even heat distribution and turn stove on and off as needed to keep temperature in the right place.
6. Remove bags from water.  Remove salmon from bags.  Eat salmon!

Notes:
I highly recommend Ziploc's vacuum bags.  They're cheap and they work like a charm.  However, if you don't want to spend the $3, you can use the technique from the article:

Submerge all but the top of the still-unsealed bag in a heavy pot of cool water. Work the remaining air bubbles out of the bag, taking care not to let any water leak inside, and then seal the bag. (If water does get inside, remove the fish and place it in a new bag. And don't feel bad - even Chef Erjavec was forced into a do-over.)

Make sure the thermometer you use to measure the temperature of the water doesn't touch the bottom of the pot or the salmon, or your numbers will be off.

You can sear the salmon over high heat in a little olive oil after removing from the bags if you want a nice pretty crust.  I haven't been patient enough to try it yet though.

Sous Vide Chuck Steaks

The biggest challenge yet for the sous vide machine: could it turn $2.99 pound chuck roast steaks into delicious and tender medium-rare steaks?  I bought a couple of big chuck roasts at Costco, cut one of them into quarters, and decided to give it a try.  I cooked them for about 20 hours at 138F, turning the temperature down to 135F after 12 hours or so.  They came out remarkably tender, but I'll probably cook them a LITTLE bit lower next time.  Overall, the experiment was a success.  I'm pretty confident that with a little bit of tweaking, a cheap cut of chuck can be every bit as tender as a much more expensive cut of meat when cooked this way.

Sous Vide Chuck Steaks

Ingredients:
4 chuck steaks, about 1/2 pound each
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper
1-2 Tablespoons Olive oil

Directions:

• Season each steak with garlic powder, salt, and pepper.  Seal individually and place in sous vide machine for 18-24 hours.
• Remove from bags, pat dry and sear in hot skillet with olive oil for about 45 seconds per side.  Reserve liquids from each bag.
• Pour oil out of skillet and return to heat.  Pour in reserved liquid from sous vide bags.  Cook for 2-3 minutes, until reduced to a syrupy consistency.
• Spoon liquid over steaks and enjoy!

Notes:
I served this with quinoa asian slaw, roasted baby yukon gold potatoes, and sourdough bread with roasted garlic.  I made the potatoes and garlic in my rotisserie and the total prep time for the entire dinner was about 15 minutes.  As I told Sarah, it took longer to serve the food up than it did to prepare it.  I love dinners like this.

Sous Vide Short Ribs

While I was starting to read up on sous vide cooking, someone on a message board asked for people's best recipe for ribs.  I did a quick search and found several people raving about short ribs cooked this way.  Most short rib recipes involve low slow cooking for a long time, either braising or smoking, resulting in fall-off-the-bone tender meat that doesn't have a bit of pink in it.  Sous vide gave me the opportunity to make medium-rare short ribs that are still fall-off-the-bone tender.  A little bit of salt and pepper, a few vacuum bags, and I was off to the races.  These cooked for 48 hours and still came out medium-rare at the end.  It's still a little mind boggling to me, but I'm loving every minute of it.

Sous Vide Short Ribs

Ingredients:

• 2-3 pounds beef short ribs
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• Splash of Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. Heat sous vide cooker to 138F.
2. Season all sides of the ribs with salt and pepper.  Seal in vacuum bags and put in sous vide cooker.

   

3. Cook for 48 hours.
4. Just before removing ribs from sous vide cooker, heat 1 Tablespoon oil in cast iron skillet until nearly smoking.
5. Remove ribs from cooker, remove from bags, and sear in cast iron skillet for 45 seconds per side.
6. Remove ribs from skillet and pour off any excess oil.  Pour juices from the bags into skillet and add a splash of Worcestershire sauce.  Cook for about 60 seconds, stirring regularly.
7. Pour pan sauce over ribs and enjoy!

   

Notes:
I'll probably cook these around 134F next time.  They were good, but a little more rare would have been even better.  I'll also probably use less salt, and add it to the pan sauce later.  The ribs were delicious but tasted a little like corned beef.  This, of course, didn't stop us from demolishing them in just a couple of minutes.

Is it ready yet?!?

I'm mainly posting this to test the Facebook integration, but here's a picture of the short ribs inside the sous vide machine.  They've been in there for about 36 hours, and they will be dinner tonight.  More to come once I take them out. :)

Sous Vide Filet Mignon

Sous what?  If you don't watch Top Chef and you're not a bigtime foodie, you might not have ever heard of sous vide before.  Without going into long and boring detail, sous vide is essentially a technique where you vacuum seal the food you're cooking, then immerse it in very carefully temperature controlled water that's at the temperature you want your food to be when it's done.  Until recently, it was a technique that was primarily done in very fancy kitchens, because the equipment to keep water so carefully controlled (the temperature varies less than 1 degree F) was extremely expensive.  There have been some ways to do it with less expensive gear, but it usually involved several pieces of equipment or didn't quite give the right level of temperature control.

In March of this year, the first consumer-targeted sous vide machine hit the market.  It's not particularly inexpensive, but we decided it would be my 10th anniversary/33rd birthday/Father's Day gift this year.  I have all sorts of ideas of things I want to cook in it, but the first thing I wanted to make was filet mignon.  We had a couple frozen filets from Omaha Steaks in the freezer, and since the only difference between frozen and thawed in this technique is how long you cook them, I decided to go for it.

I don't have a fancy vacuum sealer, and based on today's results, I'm pretty sure I don't need one.  I bought a Ziploc pump and vacuum seal bags at the grocery store, and both the vacuum and the seal were great.  The steaks stayed under water the whole time, which is extremely important to get the temperature exactly right. 

When the steak came out of the sous vide cooker, it didn't have the nice crust that you'd get from grilling/broiling/pan-frying it.  This is fixed with a quick sear, about 45 seconds per side, on a hot cast iron skillet.  The end result: the best steak I've ever made, hands down.  It was super tender and perfectly cooked all the way through.  Next up: medium rare short ribs, cooked for 48 hours.

Sous Vide Filet Mignon

Ingredients:

• 2 6-ounce filet mignons
• Salt
• Pepper
• Extra-light olive oil

Directions:

1. Lightly coat the filets with oil, then rub salt and pepper on both sides.
2. Place filets individually in vacuum bags, seal them, and suck out all the air.
3. Cook at 138F for 1-2 hours.
4. Just before removing from sous vide machine, heat oil in a cast iron skillet until almost smoking.
5. Remove meat from sous vide machine, take it out of the bags, and sear for approximately 45 seconds on each side.

Notes:
While it's basically impossible to overcook something with the sous vide technique, it's not recommended to cook tender cuts for longer than 4 hours.  If you want to finish the food at a different time than you prep it, take the bags out of the sous vide machine and put them in an ice bath until chilled, then move to the refrigerator or freezer.  When you're ready to serve, remove from fridge/freezer and bring back up to heat in the sous vide machine, then sear.