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Also, another random note.

I worked at a place where we made our own Koji. This was pretty damn cool, what was cooler was the use of it. You'd squirt a few drops of koji into the bag and place a piece of fish in with it. I can't remember the fish used but it was a slightly tougher cut. We were on the west coast Florida and always had a variety. Then cook for a very short period of time to "infuse", then sear/baste.

I think the chef was trying to make it so, quite literally, anyone could cook a good piece of fish. Because help was really hard to find at the moment.
 
I'm curious what the sous-vide crowd uses as sauce for their end products. I'm sure there's some tasty suggestions but are obviously going to differ than incorporating a true braising liquid.
Depends on the final product. I keep good amounts of homemade stock at home and can use that fortified with the highly condensed gelatin / juices from the bag to make a quick sauce / glaze if needed - not ideal, but again, its about making calculated tradeoffs. Other times like 72 short ribs I don't feel the need for a sauce.
 
Yeah, I understand. It was mainly for banter as I no longer have a "high-drama thread" to post to.

I still think you should learn the classic way to do it, as the results are quite tasty. I'm curious what the sous-vide crowd uses as sauce for their end products. I'm sure there's some tasty suggestions but are obviously going to differ than incorporating a true braising liquid.

For sauce, I use this Shallot & Red Wine Sauce with all the juices from the bag dropped in.

And yeah, I should probably learn the techniques. I'm more focused on upping my smoker game so there is that.
 
You can do a confit in a vacuum bag by adding the fat and then throwing it in the SV machine. It's actually how most of the commercial ready to go duck leg confit I've seen is made. The advantage is you only need far less fat to submerge the product in fat. Not entirely sure if the end result is the same though; I've never done it since I don't have a proper vacuum machine.

I did this last week. The noise is super annoying, but it beats having to confit a case of birds in gallons of fat for sure. The chamber vac is super useful as well, especially since ziploc bags seem to have gotten worse over time.
 
I use sous vide for things it is good for. Confit, pâté, various terrines, the perfect trouble-free steaks, egg bites (Starbucks style, but better), emulsified sausages, cooked hams, beef cheeks, and so on.

There are numerous other things I've tried it for and concluded that a pot is easier and less trouble. Eggs fall into that category for me. Cooking an egg sous vide takes a lot longer than just using a pot, and I generally get my eggs the way I like them without all the extra effort of setting up the circulator.
You've clearly never had to sit over a 50 gallon tilt braiser at the end of a 12 hour Saturday shift fishing out 500+ poached eggs for Sunday morning brunch. I have done that more times than I can count and if I have to do it again I'm buying a thermal circulator. I probably will never have one in my house though unless I get gifted one or my wife decides we "need" it. And I haven't done any pate or terrines since cooking school many years ago. But I think doing that with modern tech sounds fun

But for me, nothing beats a nice old fashioned braised hunk of meat. Just pulled 60 pounds of brisket from the oven at my cafe. I will use the meat for sandwiches and the liquid with the meat for beef hash and beef stew.

PXL_20230320_164232115.jpg
 
Meh, I love circulators. There was a period after I got my chamber vacuum where everything semi-aspirational I cooked was in a bag. It's fantastic for some things, not for others. The depressing thing is going to places like Reddit's sous vide section and it's just a bunch of dude bros cooking steaks poorly. The standout things for me are egg yolks and the 48 to 72 hour cooks on tough cuts.

People who say they prefer a braised short rib to a 72 hour one are comparing two different things. If you're cooking between 130 and 140F, the results will be tender yet not falling apart. You can compare a braised short rib and a pressure cooked short rib and the results can be very similar (though there's no reduction in the sauce, so you have to adjust technique). I don't know anyone who really likes doing traditional braises in bags besides Chipotle (who do all of their shredded pork and beef products sous vide in a single factory near Chicago, if memory serves). Anyway, the 72 hour 130F short rib is pretty awesome. I like to chill and press it flat, then cut it into smallish cubes and finish by giving them an epic hard fry in copious beef/bacon fat. Use that to garnish risotto. Or whatever. Anyway, I like being able to cook tender, medium rare face meat or shank or belly or sinewy whatever and then finish it in whatever spectacular way seems appropriate.

Here's some from my "everything in a bag" series circa 2015 or so. This is a Japanese inspired grilled hangar steak dish with dashi-braised daikon, spicy sesame bok choy, enoki mushrooms infused with Benton's bacon fat and smoked shoyu. The sauce on the side was onion water collected from onions cooked sous vide with 1% salt at 90C for 100 hours. That was seasoned and then set into a fluid gel so it had the consistency of ketchup. It tasted like French onion soup. The only thing not cooked in a bag at any point are the toasted sesame seeds.

dikon_beef.jpg


This is my take on pork and beans. I cured and cold smoked a pork belly, which got the 48 hour 140F treatment. Then it was chilled, portioned, and deep fried in lard. It got a nice glaze post fry. Served with Rancho Gordo beans cooked in a bag with demi glace, some ChefSteps sous vide kale, and some vacuum-pickled summer squash. The only things that didn't go in a bag were the mustard seeds I pickled and the Benton's bacon lardon garnishing the pickles.

pork_and_beans.jpg


The Modernist Cuisine recipe for the short ribs with the tamarind demiglace is ****ing bananas. I've done the full thing before with the dehydrated flank steak salad, and that was awesome but a pain in the ass and the microwaved fish sauce made the kitchen smell like death. Here are some 72 hour short ribs that are about to get deep fried in beef fat.

short_ribs_pre_fry.jpg


And here they are all coated in that tamarind demi served with lime infused cucumber planks and a macadamia chive and cilantro oil.

short_ribs_demi_cucumbers.jpg


That sauce is the truth. Nappes like chocolate.
 
Sous Vide.
I can certainly see the value and usefulness of sous vide—especially for large volume restaurant kitchens; a profitable godsend for fast food joints like Chipotle (meats sous vided in a central location before sent to individual restaurants), sadly Chipotle isn’t as good as it was, meat texture is off ever since they’ve adopted the method. I view sous vide as a good tool for busy kitchens, a shortcut to achieve consistency.
For me, I’m not a sous vide fan, preferring more traditional, older cookery methods. The sear on a sous vide steak doesn’t compare to a steak with a well caramelized crust. My anti-sous vidist opinions consistent similar to my preference for handmade knives done by traditional methods. I’ll stick with pots and pans, even when cooking for a big crowd. Also, weaning myself off plastics.
 
You can improve the sear you get on SV steaks by doing a pre-sear before you bag it, and then another post-sear after taking it out. It's still not perfect, but better than only doing a post-sear.
Theoretically you could probably also dry it out entirely in the fridge unbagged, but at that point why even bother with the SV. :p
 
Crust on sous vide steaks isn’t too hard, the mistakes I’ve seen people tend to mess up on the subreddit are generally one of the following

1) not enough heat. ‘Nuff said

2) no oil in pan. Need it to conduct heat so you don’t end up with a few low points of the steak searing and nothing else

3) not starting with dry meat. After the bath, you should pay it dry. It saves you seconds of searing and that’s less grey band

4) not chilling the meat. After drying, toss it on a rack in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. This gets your temp down a little (since you are functionally at the perfectly done stage out of the bag, any further heat is pushing it to the overcooked stage), gives you time to start turning the sous vide sack juice into a sauce, and the environment of the freezer adds a little extra drying.
 
Ditto.

Gyutos under 48 are tragically under-rated here. Sakai 210 @ 45mm are wicked nimble beasts.
Yeah, agree, enjoy the nimbleness of Sakai’s.
If I’d set such tight knife spec parameters, my collection and knife experience would be terribly limited.
 
Yeah, agree, enjoy the nimbleness of Sakai’s.
If I’d set such tight knife spec parameters, my collection and knife experience would be terribly limited.

I'd never set that as my only knife spec - it was just an example of an under 48mm that I've had that was fantastic.
 
Crust on sous vide steaks isn’t too hard, the mistakes I’ve seen people tend to mess up on the subreddit are generally one of the following

1) not enough heat. ‘Nuff said

2) no oil in pan. Need it to conduct heat so you don’t end up with a few low points of the steak searing and nothing else

3) not starting with dry meat. After the bath, you should pay it dry. It saves you seconds of searing and that’s less grey band

4) not chilling the meat. After drying, toss it on a rack in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. This gets your temp down a little (since you are functionally at the perfectly done stage out of the bag, any further heat is pushing it to the overcooked stage), gives you time to start turning the sous vide sack juice into a sauce, and the environment of the freezer adds a little extra drying.
I usually S/V the meat a little under my desired temperature and just finish it on cast iron/carboon steel.

I 100% agree with you recomendations. When I started cooking with S/V my biggest mistakes when searing meat was not cooking dry meat and no adding enough oil.
 
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