Sous-Vide Beef-Back-Ribs

This will be a short post because it's so straightforward to do.

Purchase Ribs!!! 

Unpackage Ribs....yea I am a smart ASS. 

Using your favorite Rub plus sugar (I prefer brown sugar) coat your ribs thoroughly. 

Vacuum Seal and place in the refrigerator for 24-36 hours. Don't skip this step!!! It's essential!!!! That's if you want them to taste great. Ok, now the important part!

 

Sous-Vide at 149˚ƒ for 48 hours. Shock in ice-bath and refrigerate until you want to BBQ. 

Out of the refrigerator on to my Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker (choose the wood you like to use). I like to coat my ribs with BBQ sauce. This is not essential, just a preference. They're smoke at between 160-200 degrees for about 2.5 hours. I add cold water to the trough to keep the temp down in the smoker. Since the ribs are already cooked to perfection, smoking them at low temps adds lots of smoke and color without cooking them.

Gratuitous pictures to follow with a review at the bottom.

Review- Great!!! I Won't change a thing (probably...LOL!!! So why did I chose 149˚ƒ? My experience has taught me that this temp is perfect to render down the fat and connective tissue. I have SV ribs at 131˚ƒ and 140˚ƒ, and although they turned out pretty darn good, they were far from perfect. The majority of the connective tissue rendered down but the fat stayed the course. If you like biting into globs of fat use a lower temp. If you want succulent ribs that are basted in its own fat use a higher temp like I did. I've been asked before to compare SV-Smoked ribs to the more traditional Low and Slow method. The SV version is better. The meat comes out perfect every time. Yes, they have the conventional bark too, although not pronounced. The traditional way would take a very long time and not add anymore smoke flavor. After a couple of hours of smoke the meat stops taking on smoked....unless of course, you keep the ribs wet. Anyhow this is a preferred way of cooking Beef Ribs. 

Sous-Vide Beef-Back-Ribs Revisited

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MORE PICS

Fish Roulade

After using Transglutaminase over and over again for beef and lamb I decided to give it a try for fish. Overall it worked out pretty good. The fish idea was a food epiphany that emerged during my trip to costco. While walking through costco I saw these Fresh Sockeye Salmons in the fish case so a thought crossed my mind....why not roulade? But did I want to take a risk on a new food concept using Fresh Sockeye? So I made Sockeye for for dinner and I purchased farmed salmon for this experiment. 

Nice large piece of Fish for this experiment!!!

Breaking it down by removing all the bones and trimming it down for the next step. I planned on stacking them and using TG to bind them together. Its important that they were roughly the same shape. 

I decided to brine the fish for two reasons.  It keeps the fish moist during the cook and it will remove the unsightly patches of white albumin which I hate!! Albumin is a protein that oozes out of the muscle as it cooks coagulating on the surface. How do you brine? I use a 10% brine (5% sugar) for about 25 minutes. Simple.....do the math.  I used 1600 grams of boiling water and to that I added 320 grams of kosher salt and 160 grams of sugar. After the salt and sugar were dissolved I added 1600 grams of ice to cool it off. I added the fish once the brine was cold. I did a lot of fish that day but you can use less brine if you want. Just do the math.  I.E 800 grams of boiling water 160 grams of salt and 80 grams of sugar. Toss in 800 grams of ice and you got the same brine but just less.

Coated the first piece of salmon with TG. I know the picture is skewed but the fish pieces are about the same size and shape.

Stacked and ready to be rolled tightly in plastic wrap. Instructions on how to wrap can be found HERE.

Here are the pics out lining everything I did. Stacked, rolled and vacuumed sealed. 

Some steps that are essential to this process. After rolling up Fish and applying Transglutaminase (TG or Meat Gloo) it needs to be refrigerated for 24 hours for all the proteins to bind. After rolling up fish and tying it off with string to secure shape I vacuumed sealed it to get it ready for the Sous-Vide. 

I Sous-vide fish at 113°ƒ for 30 min. I  shocked fish in cold water which is not necessary for SV but I wanted to bring down temp because I knew I was going to sauté at a high temp. I wanted to keep interior fish rare and this is one way to prevent over cooking. Fish was very tender. I wish is was a little firmer. I am gonna try this again on a different fish.

Sliced into medallions.

The next set of pictures are gratuitous at best. I decided to go a little asian on the fish. Very simple. Some spices, black and white sesame seed coating and a quick sauté in some fat. I made orzo with some veggies and a ginger garlic and sesame oil sauce. 

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