Huh. OK, the water stays the same temperature, 128F, but the oven has to be 170F to maintain the water temperature. I don’t understand why this should be the case, but obviously you’ve measured. It seems somewhat likely to me that you’re getting a cooling effect from that uncovered pot; have you experimented with a covered pot? Also, why not thaw the steaks first? That’s gotta make a difference.
Yep, threw me for a loop the first time. I originally set the oven temp at 130 and then kept raising it up by 5 degrees. There’s a bit of difference between covered and uncovered but I haven’t done it enough yet to tell. It’s easier to keep it uncovered to measure the temp. I haven’t tried an all clad soup pan versus cast iron, so maybe that would conduct better and allow for a lower oven temperature.
Thawing the steaks probably would make a small difference but frankly we don’t usually plan that far ahead. I’ve basically pre heated the oven, heated the big pot of water on the stove to 140F, then toss in the steaks and the pot into the oven. check the water temperature to make sure it is stable, and voila sous vide. Good enough for now.
So when I order a steak at a restaurant it’s likely that it started cooking hours before I ordered it, and might have been lower-quality meat than it would need to be if it had been cooked to order? If I want Utility Grade beef I might as well go to McDonalds. At least there I know it’s been cooked within the last half hour.
As far as I know there’s no relationship between a restaurant using sous vide and the quality of meat. They do it for consistency in cooking and to reduce service time, not to my knowledge to use a lower grade of meat.
It doesn’t even make sense why they would. Sous vide does not change a piece of utility grade meat into something palatable as a steak. (But if it did, I’d sure as hell invest in a set-up, although I don’t know where I would even go to get utility grade meat. “Select” is as low a designation as I’ve ever seen at a supermarket.)
And, furthermore, even if they did, who cares? The final product is all I really care about. Even if they used canner grade beef and it tasted like the best freaking steak I’ve ever had, why should I care?
About all it can do is make a tough cut more tender than it otherwise might be- longer for enzymes to work at a closer to optimal temp and all that. Same basic idea as slow-cooking, only more precisely controlled.
Still, substandard meat will remain substandard meat.
I’ve asked it before, and have yet to get an answer…
From what I understand all beef is graded after slaughter solely via visual inspection; that there are no “prime” cows, that the same herd can yield prime, choice and select, and the difference is only of marbling. I remember reading that the University of Kansas was working on a method of DNA sequencing beef samples to breed superior based on the taste of the meat - great steak, here’s the DNA of the cattle that produced that that particular cow. One of the quotes I remember from the news report where I learned about the study was that, even with the best visual grading, the consumer still had a one-in-four chance of getting a mediocre steak.
So, has anyone experimented with the old technique of “larding”, as featured in The Joy of Cooking, and can it be used to “upgrade” choice to prime?
You are partly correct that the grading process is visual and relates to the amount of marbling, but it also includes age of the cow. A younger cow gets has more tender meat and gets a higher ranking.
But after grading there are simply too many factors that can lead to a quality steak. One of which is the diet of the cow (grass vs corn vs shit). Really great steaks are dry aged for 21 days or more. This process causes some loss of moisture (shrinkage) and takes time, so it has a significant impact on cost. It’s also something that can be done at home that will turn mediocre steak into great steak. Lastly, the methods used to season and cook the steak are essential to turning raw product into beefy goodness. And it doesn’t take much to fuck this up. Using sous vide is probably the most successful way of preventing the most obvious problems.
I’m not sure if that answered your question though.
I’ve used it before, we played around with it in school, and I’ve threaded more than a few things with bacon, but overall I’m not a fan. It’s not a substitute for marbling though, works better with large cuts. A steak without a lot of marbling simple needs a shorter cooking time (unless using sous vide) and a nice pat of blue cheese butter.
The USDA grading scale is visual, and solely based on intramuscular fat content. That’s why there’s so much to-do about “Angus” <name your beef product> lately. Since most USDA Prime beef goes to high-end restaurants and a few high-end butcher shops, most people buy Choice or Select steaks at their local grocery store, and putting “Angus” on that same old steak is a way to differentiate one Choice steak from another.
My point wasn’t that it would make Select into Prime, but rather that if you got hold of a really lean, tough steak, cooking it sous-vide might make it somewhat more tender, but it wouldn’t transform it into some wonderful steak like they’d serve at a fine restaurant.
Don’t forget Costco. It varies a bit by location, but most Costcos I’ve been to have at least some Prime beef around. That said, when I look through their Choice, I occasionally find some that looks pretty damned close to Prime to me. Must be just on the cut-off point.
My point was that it’s not something you can go get at your local Kroger, Wal-Mart, HEB, Fred Meyer, Safeway, etc… You have to go somewhere special, like a high-end butcher shop, or gourmet food store. My local HEB Central Market has loads of Prime beef available, so I’m not without access.
That being said, f**k Costco. I live in a major metropolitan area, and the closest one to me is 13 miles away in BFE in one of the outer suburbs, and the next closest one is 16 miles away.
I understood your point. But I wanted to let folks know that if they’re on the hunt for Prime beef, there is one somewhat common nationwide store where you can get it. It’s an easy thing to overlook.
I’m in the middle of reading Modernist Cuisine, so I decided to bump this thread to answer a few things that I was reminded of:
According to the book, “Angus” is mostly bullshit. From Volume 3, page 39:
They suggest a cheap rice cooker with a metal pot over a crock pot because of how slowly the crockery comes up to heat.
From Volume 3, page 165:
I priced out rice cookers, and they were a bit expensive for ones large enough to cook a big cut, so I sought alternatives. Instead I got an electric roaster from Target ($17 on clearance!) that I’m very happy with. It’s big enough to sous vide quite a lot of food, and using my outboard sous vide controller, it comes up to temperature in about 15 minutes. I just did a couple racks of spareribs in it, 10 hours at 174F, and they came out awesome.
Re the green color - yeah, that’s what some googling told me. I could have seared and eaten those ribs and they’d be fine. Maybe I’ll try it again, but its difficult to get past that initial disturbing appearance.
Excellent idea. I’ll look at roasters myself.
Too Suess for me.
Will you eat them on a peg? Will you eat them on one leg? Will you eat them while you beg? Will you eat green ribs and eggs?
Pastrami?
Seeing as you bumped this thread, I’ll add in that I did 72-hour short ribs, more or less this recipe last week, and they were stupidly good. The major difference I made was doing them at 140 degrees, not 144, as Modernist Cuisine and a few other places recommended 140. Highly recommended.
So were they green/blue before searing?