Beef roast done in a crock-pot - awful stuff. I mean, the way I’ve made it, it’s yummy that night, but the next day the leftovers are nearly inedible. All the collagen and fat have cooked completely out of the meat, leaving it stringy and dry.
By contrast, if you cut that meat up into bite-sized pieces and cook it in the sauce, and keep the leftovers in the sauce, it’s OK.
Grilling doesn’t have to be fast by any means. Are you going to cook pork ribs as fast as you can? Yuck.
And many tough cuts are terrible cooked quickly. But if the choice is a slow oven roast vs. slow grill, the grill is always going to have better flavor.
ATK talked about sous-vide and said that the steak was great, if you didn’t mind the lack of maillard browning. I found the very idea revolting. Then they suggested the sous vide and finish with a quick trip to the pan for the browning.
That whole sous-vide thing freaks me out and I do NOT understand it. How in the world can you possibly maintain a consistent temperature (or to say it the way Alton Brown does: tempachur) for hours without the food continuing to cook??? They insist it can be done so I guess I have to accept it, but I don’t understand it.
This is the key that has to be solved: tenderize while retaining or adding moisture.
One answer is fat. Lots. You don’t have to eat it, but you do have to cook with it. A friend who is a great cook does brisket every year for Channukah, and this is the first year he left all the fat on for cooking and it was by far the most moist and delicious brisket he’s ever made.
Brine is a wonderful thing for poultry and pork, not so much for beef. Salting beef is good.
I have done a NY strip sous vide, and it was wonderful. Great texture, good flavor, delish. However, I agree that searing the meat after the sous vide is essential.
I’m a fairly recent convert, and no expert, but the technique does work. In fact, I use the beer cooler method, since as a long time back yard griller I’m quite fond of low tech cooking, and I find it amusing to actually cook steak in a goddamn beer cooler. Try it: a ziplock bag, a beer cooler, some hot water and an oven thermometer is all you need, and a little willingness to experiment. And a good iron skillet to finish. Good stuff.
Good Point. 
Oh, it could go much, much longer than that. My 9-10 pound butts generally take 7-9 hours at around 250. I know some folks that go lower and slower, up to 18 hours or even more.
Well, if you maintain a temp of, say, 125 degrees in your sous vide, your meat is not going to cook to beyond 125, no? I mean, how could it?
The thing I can’t figure out about sous vide is how it doesn’t turn into the Mother of All Culture Media for bacteria. Do they alter the acid or salt content of the fluid to make it bacteriostatic?
For the OP, fois gras hasn’t been mentioned yet.
lots of meats cook well quickly in a pressure cooker.
My understanding (as a not-expert) is that above 125 degrees bacteria doesn’t grow. I do my sous vide at >= 130F.
Oh for fuck’s sake–there is no such thing. It’s a KC strip, full stop. Look, y’all on the east coast have culture, transcontinental ties, global networks, etc. But you don’t get to have steak.
I don’t know why “New York strip” pisses me off so much, but it does.
I grew up in cattle country, I raised steers in 4-H for 11 years, my family has run cow-calf for four generations. And my hometown is centered on the rail lines that ran beef to the east off multiple trails.
Trump: I have a brand.
Repeat after me: there is no such thing as a New York Strip.
[/rant]
Beyond that heresy, you’re correct. A KC strip should be medium rare. I’ll make allowances for medium, rare, and blue, but nothing else.
You can cut the shoulder into a “steak” that is pretty tasty. However, a nice butt is best slow cooked in a smoker.
Why not rant all the way and just call it a Strip Loin. Shesh
Sous Vide isn’t really slow cooking in the long slow breakdown of collagen use of the term it’s more arrested cooking. You bring the meat to a specific temperature and hold there until it’s convenient to finish. I can’t imagine eating any Sous Vide meat without finishing it by searing, it just looks horribly unappetizing. It is however the most consistent results I’ve ever had and in terms of effort time at dinner time the easiest.
It’s not really less effort but it lets me time shift the effort earlier so that when we’re rushing around trying to get dinner on the table there isn’t much to do. Great for entertaining.
You can rant and rant and deny its existence as much as you want, but it’s called a “New York Strip” by a lot of people. It’s certainly “New York Strip” here in Chicago, and “KC Strip” would give you funny looks if someone ordered it.
Ditto here in the San Francisco area.
Slow cooked ≠ overcooked.
I’ve cooked a chuck roast in the slow cooker and it’s always turned out excellent (though better in the oven). I’ve also cut up chuck steak and threaded onto metal skewers with green peppers and onions, thrown them onto a hot charcoal grill till charred all around, and have never had so much as one bite left over. You’d think the chuck steak cooked quick would have been tough, but I never found that the case - maybe a bit chewy, but hey! It’s red meat! (something we don’t have very often). Chicken overcooked dries out to sawdust. I cooked some cut up pork in a sauce in the slow cooker and let it cook, added cut up chicken during the last hour, and even so, it (chicken) was still dry.
You have be a little more explanatory. I think most of the posters here would agree with that.
Chicken thighs will hold up quite well to long cooking. Breast is a mess if you hold it for too long, and gets stringy very easily. Not a good choice for long, slow cooking. But thighs? They do well. They don’t take anywhere near as long as pork shoulder or beef chuck, but if you just want to dump some chicken in a crock pot, go to work, and then come back to dinner, thigh or leg quarters will survive that treatment relatively well.