I have a pork shoulder roast that I’m currently cooking via sous vide and it’s going to be done around 5 pm today. I was planning on roasting it low and slow in the oven for a couple of hours to get a bark on it and having a late dinner, but my plans have been changed. I will only be home for a couple of minutes tonight, enough time to take it out of the water bath but no time for the oven and definitely not making dinner.
My question is, if I chuck it in the freezer am I wasting all that time spent in the sous vide or can I take it out of the freezer and cook it in the oven tomorrow or Saturday and still get the texture benefits of the sous vide?
Here is what I would do:
Take it out of the hot water and plunge the bag into an ice water bath for as long as you have time. Then put it in your refrigerator. Or if your refrigerator is big enough, put the meat in the ice bath in the refrigerator.
Tomorrow, oven roast it as you originally planned. If you are not sure if the meat will warm in the center (thick cuts) then you can sous vide it again for a little bit before putting it in the oven. This is just to heat the meat up a bit gently. But since you planned low and slow anyway the temp should not be an issue. The texture and protein breakdown will already be done.
I also question why you are sous vide AND low and slow roasting, but that doesn’t really matter.
Well, I’m open to suggestions, but my experience with sous vide has been that generally the meat needs some sort of finishing on the stove or in the oven to give the outside a nice crisp.
The ice bath and then fridge suggestion makes sense.
You need the crust, but why low and slow in the oven? The purpose of low and slow is to evenly cook the meat. You don’t need that with the sous vide, just a nice sear on the outside. Sear it on the stove or put it in the oven on high, just to cook the outside.
Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense to me to sous vide and then continue low & slow in the oven. At that point, just go it in the oven the whole time. It takes hours to get a good bark while slow roasting/barbecuing. But maybe there is something I’m not considering. The typical sequence is like you say, sous vide, then crisp up the crust hot & fast. Heck, you can even use a blowtorch if you’ve got one.
Hmmm…interesting technique. And, yes, it does say to slow roast for three to four hours in the oven after sous viding. I’ll be curious to hear how it turns out.
Oooooh. Interesting!
The sous vide / slow roast combo seems to be an interesting short cut to a longer slow roast. That is, do some of the slow roast as sous vide, which is less hassle. I think the traditional way would need periodic basting (mopping), which isn’t hard, but does tie you down to the BBQ.
Not to hijack, but would like some sous vide recommendations. Say top 5 things to sous vide.
For example, Steak is pretty awesome (you get the exact degree of rareness all the way through the cut, and sear the outside). BUT when I’ve tried other things like corn on the cob, Italian sausage, veggies, pork shoulder (I will check out the above recipe), etc, the results have been mediocre at best. I get the impression that Kenji Alt Lopez, Anova, and a host of sous vide sites want to insist that everything is better. Color me skeptical. Would love recommendations for Salmon, lamb chops, whatever that is clearly better sous vide than cooking traditionally (as opposed to “one can cook napa cabbage sous vide but the results kinda suck ass”).
I like sous vide for carrots since I like cooked carrots but I don’t like them too mushy. I also think the flavor is more intense, but that might just be in my head.
I had good success with sous vide cheesecake because my most favorite part of a cheesecake is the soft center. With sous vide I can get the entire cheesecake to be soft and yummy.
Eggs are also excellent sous vide. So much control, but you have to experiment to figure out the best temperature and timing for your taste. But once you do, the eggs are perfect all the time.
I want to try to melt chocolate sous vide and see if I can keep the temper that way.
But steaks are the primary reason we got a sous vide device.
Carrots are about the only vegetable I do sous-vide. You can make a mean glazed carrot if you sous-vide them with a little butter & sugar & salt, then finish in a pan.
Other than that, the best sous-vide things imo are:
Steaks, which we all know
Chicken breasts. Believe it or not, but sous-vide can make boneless, skinless chicken breasts worth eating.
Ribs. Really. They take a while, but it’s pretty amazing to have medium-rare ribs that are fall-apart tender.
Fancy shit like duck confit. Who has quarts of duck fat sitting around to confit in? Not I. But I can do confit with a couple tablespoons of fat just fine in the sous-vider.
Pretty much any big roast that you don’t want well-done, like tri-tip or even flat cuts like flank steak work out well in the sous-vider.
I’m sure I can think of more, that’s just off the top of my head.
Basting is not needed. I never baste my pork shoulder or brisket. I don’t see any reason or need to. Besides, if you want to make it “self-basting,” you can always just wrap it in foil and then finish it off the foil.
Pork tenderloin. I don’t have a sous vide, but I bought one for my brother for Christmas, and it seems like half the time, it’s some pork tenderloin variant he’s making in there. His biggest project, though, was home-cured, sous vide corned beef (which I believe took 48 hours in the sous vide.) He’s gotten so hooked on it that he actually bought a commercial vacuum sealer (like one of those giant $1200 jobbers, something like this) from Craigslist from a restaurant that was going out of business (for $300!)
I ended up not having the time to let it slow roast so I did about an hour at 350. It was very good. The outside had a tasty crisp layer and the inside was soft and tender. I would definitely do it again. One of the things I like about sous vide is that the liquid that is left in the bag is incredibly easy to turn into a pan sauce to go with the meat.