Tag: sous vide

Categories
beef

brisket beef sous vide

It’s not very fashionable in posh restaurants, but BBQ and American restaurants know it: brisket beef is a brilliant and tasty cut. And for perfect results every time, cook brisket beef sous vide.

I’m a big fan of brisket, just click the link to find more recipes I’ve already raved about. I love its loose texture but distinct flavour, the excellent gelatinous taste of the fat. So when Great British Chefs offered the opportunity to ask a question of professor of culinary arts and executive chef of Simpsons Luke Tipping specifically on meat, I had to ask about lovely brisket.

It seems the question was popular, CookSister and Karen Burns Booth asked similar things! Here’s what chef Luke had to say:

It sounded great. Frankly it would be rude not to give it a try. So in summary: brine for 5 days, sous vide for 1 day.

I didn’t have any liquid smoke to hand so I improvised a bit, but if you had that I’m sure it would be fantastic.

I was a little concerned when the meat came out of the water bath. It’d lost a lot of mass and was perhaps three quarters its original size. I needn’t have worried; it was succulent, tender and packed with meaty flavour. I planned to do exciting things with it, but the beef was so good all I did was reduce some of the juices and served it in a bun.

Oh, I also torched it up to try out my new fancy blowtorch.

A fantastic way to cook brisket and I’ll be doing it again. For more information on cooking beef brisket sous vide, I have to recommend the Serious Eats guide which is comprehensive as always, and lets you know which temperatures are suitable for shredded beef as opposed to beef that holds its shape.

Definitely keep this recipe on standby to feed a lot of people. You’ll be very popular.

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sous vide brisket beef

Course Main Dish
Cook Time 5 minutes
Total Time 11 minutes
Servings 4 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 500 g brisket
  • table salt for brine
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon mustard powder
  • BBQ sauce

Instructions

  • First brine the beef. Make up a 3% brine solution. The easiest way to do this is to put your beef in a container (I use a large lunchbox), cover with water and remove the beef again. Pop on the scales and weigh the container + water. Work out 3% of this (the weight multiplied by 0.03) and add that much salt. Stir well, pop the beef back in and cover. Leave for five days.
  • After five days, remove from the brine and pat dry. Preheat a water bath to 68C. Mix the sugar, paprika and mustard and rub all over the beef. Seal in a vacuum bag and cook sous vide for 24 hours.
  • After 24 hours remove the beef from the bag but reserve the liquid. Pop this liquid into a pan, pop on a high heat and reduce by half. Stir in a tablespoon of your favourite BBQ sauce (I'm digging the Tesco Louisiana at the moment)
  • Meanwhile, blowtorch the outside of your brisket to give a smoky char. Slice thickly and dunk into the sauce, before serving in a toasted bun with pickled gherkins and salad, with extra sauce on the side.

Notes

If you don't have access to a sous cide machine, you could do this in a low slow cooker for 12 hours. If you don't have a blowtorch, finish on the BBQ or in a hot pan.
Categories
pork

sous-vide pulled pork tacos

I love a taco dinner. Loads of little pots of things to DIY your plate: a blend of crisp, cool, spicy, chewy, but all tasty. These pulled pork tacos, or to give them their proper name carnitas, are a great alternative to mince or chicken.

Want to know more about sous-vide? Find out all about vacuum sealing, water baths and brilliant techniques! Browse all my sous-vide recipes here

I went sous-vide with this; you could slow cook these shoulder steaks but sous-vide gives you the perfect and controllable combination of tender and bursting with fatty flavour. And of course you could leave it in there longer than needed and it wouldn’t be a problem.

Any combination of citrus and spices would work well. I’ve used lime and coriander as a classic combo but lemon and chilli would be good too! And no taco meal is complete without your fixin’s. Make sure your beans, salsa, salad or whatever else is on the table ready for people to help themselves. My flatbread recipe is here if you want to make your own too – not quite the same as a corn tortilla but it’s hard to get mesa in the UK.

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sous-vide pulled pork tacos

Course Main Dish
Cuisine Mexican
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 600 g pork shoulder steaks
  • 2 limes
  • 1 onion sliced
  • 1 bulb garlic split into cloves
  • 1 tablespoon coriander
  • 1 tablespoon sea salt

Instructions

  • Preheat the sous vide to 80C.
  • Combine all the ingredients in a vacuum pack bag. Slice the limes and squeeze out the juice into the bag too. Seal the bag and cook for 8 hours.
  • Strain off the pork and discard the liquid. Shred with two forks. The next step is optional but adds a tasty, charred element: pile the pork into a baking tray lined with foil and grill for a couple of minutes to crisp up. Serve with all the accompaniments you like.
Categories
celeriac cod vanilla

sous-vide vanilla cod with escabeche vegetables

Sous vide might be the best method for cooking skinless fish. It allows a fish to be cooked to and held at the perfect temperature, without overcooking it to mush.

That was the message from chef Russell Bateman at an event hosted by Great British Chefs at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school. Whilst I’ve played around with lots of sous vide recipes, I’ve not tried white fish. Chef Bateman had composed an excellent recipe of halibut on a bed of escabéche vegetables. Both were cooked sous vide and complimented each other beautifully: the fish was soft and sweet but rich in beurre noisette; the vegetables still al dente and tangy.

I had to give it a go at home. I made a few changes according to what my fishmonger had, and incorporated another element we tried of Le Cordon Bleu’s Master Chef Eric Bediat’s creation: celeriac fondant to give the dish a starch. It’s an impressive dish when assembled, but due to the sous vide cooking requires little skill on your part.

There are some elements you can change: I add the burnt onion powder because I wanted a sweet, smoky seasoning but you could forego it. You’ll also need the bath to be at two different temperatures. Personally I’d cook the vegetables at the high heat, then let the bath come down to a lower temperature so the fish can be cooked and served immediately. It’s possible to do this in pans but this recipe shows off the versatility and flexibility of cooking sous vide.

Find more sous vide recipes on the Great British Chefs website.

If you’re interested in cookery courses, look up Le Cordon Bleu in Bloomsbury – excellent facilities for courses run by professionals.

Here’s TikiChris’s write up of the same event.

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sous-vide vanilla cod with escabeche vegetables and celeriac

Course Main Dish
Cuisine English
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Servings 2 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the cod

  • 1 fillet cod skinless
  • 30 g sea salt
  • 1 lemon zest
  • 1 orange zest

For the escabeche

  • 2 carrots
  • 1 fennel bulb
  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 50 ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 25 ml white wine vinegar
  • 25 ml white wine
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon coriander seeds crushed
  • Fresh coriander leaf

For the celeriac

  • 1/2 head celeriac

For the beurre noisette

  • 250 g butter
  • 1 vanilla pod scraped

For the onion powder

  • 2 onions sliced

Instructions

  • To make onion powder, roast the onions in 150C oven for 2 hours or until it crumbles to the touch. Allow to cool and blitz in a food processor to dust. Store in an airtight container until needed.
  • First cure the fish. Mix the salt, sugar, orange and lemon zests. Pile on to the fish and rub all over. Leave in the fridge to cure for 30 minutes. After this time remove from the fridge, wash off the excess and pat dry.
  • Now make the beurre noisette. Put the butter and seeds from the vanilla in a pan and melt on a medium heat. Cook, swirling the pan until it is nut brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
  • Preheat your water bath to 52C. Put the fish and half the beurre noisette into a vacuum bag and seal. Sous vide for 20 minutes, drain and serve.
  • For the escabeche, preheat the water bath to 80C. Finely slice the carrot, onion, garlic, and fennel. Pop into a vacuum bag along with the liquids and coriander seeds and massage well to mix. Seal and cook for 20 minutes. To finish, pour the bag into a warm pan and mix through the freshly chopped coriander. Check seasoning before serving.
  • For the celeriac, peel and dice into large cubes. Preheat the water bath to 80C. Add to a vacuum bag with the remaining beurre noisette. Seal and cook for 45 minutes. Drain and serve, topping with burnt onion powder.
Categories
competition

competition: win a sous vide gadget

This month is a sous-vide special on BigSpud! Find out all about vacuum sealing, water baths and brilliant techniques! Browse all my sous-vide recipes here

To celebrate, I’ve teamed up with Grant Creative Cuisine to giveaway this amazing gadget, an Uno Sous Vide Controller worth £129.

I’ve used one of these before and the Uno Sous Vide Controller is a great way to get started with sous vide. It uses a gadget you already have such as a slow cooker or rice cooker and turns it into a sous vide cooker. First fill your gadget with water. You put your plug into the Uno, then plug it in the wall socket. A probe goes from the Uno into the water. Set your temperature, and off you go. The Uno will stop and start the heat in your device to keep it at a constant temperature. It’s a very clever device and looks gorgeous to boot. You can buy one here.

Here’s your chance to win one: fill out the Rafflecopter gadget and away you go! Good luck.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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