Deep Fried Sous-Vide Turkey

About two weeks ago I was scrounging through my deep freezer and low and behold there it was..A Turkey I purchased back in Dec 2015. Thanksgiving is quickly approaching us so I had to cook this baby up. 

It's worth mentioning that my daughter has been hounding me to make Turkey for the past 5 months or so. Her three favorite dishes I make are Meat-loaf, Turkey and Spaghetti. Every year during Thanksgiving I cook up two Turkeys and buy two more to make during the year. I might have to buy additional Turkeys to satisfy my daughters craving.

I've made Turkey every-which way you can imagine. Just check out my Turkey posts HERE. What's missing from those posts is a Sous-Vide Deep Fried Turkey. I've made whole deep fried Turkey's before using a modified Alton's Browns technique and it came out wonderful. 

HERE WE GO......

First things first. Remove all the plastic wrap and reserve the innards for a stock or toss them in the garbage. You're gonna want to break down the Turkey into pieces. I always refer to the Chef-Steps Video on Turkey Butchering to  demonstrate how to break down a Turkey the right way. As always I dry-brined my Turkey with a sprinkle of Kosher salt. The Turkey sat in the refrigerator for about 2 days. 

Now on the the Sous-Vide process. After bagging up all the meat I had to come up with a temp that would work with the idea of me deep frying Sous-Vide Turkey. In the past I would SV the white meat at 140˚ƒ for 4 hours than Smoke, BBQ or Grill. Same with the dark meat but I would SV the dark meat at 150˚ƒ for 6 hours. 

Finishing the Turkey is a snap when I Smoked/BBQ or Grilled the Turkey. I would run the Weber at 225-250˚ƒ and take the internal temp of the Turkey back up to 140-145˚ƒ (White meat) and 150-155˚ƒ (Dark Meat) which usually took about 90 minutes. This created perfect Turkey that was glazed and dark. 

Taking everything into consideration I decided on the following. To save time and be more efficient I set the Sous-Vide at 155˚ƒ and cooked the dark meat for 4 hours then lowered it to 140˚ƒ (added cold water) and tossed in the white meat and cooked everything for another 4 hours. To recap: Dark Meat cooked for 4 hours at 155˚ƒ then additional 4 hours at 140˚ƒ. White meat cooked at 140˚ƒ for 4 hours total.

After the Turkey was Sous-Vide it was Cold Shocked (submerged in an Ice-Bath) and refrigerated for a few days. 

Before I preceded to the next step I tossed all the bags in the sink and soaked them in warm tap water to bring them up to room temp. The Turkey pieces are big and if you were to fry them Ice-Cold.....well lets just say it's not a good idea.

Remove the Turkey from the vacuumed sealed bags and rinse them under cold water. Pat dry and if you want..... dry off the additional moisture with a small fan. 

Before I continue I just have to praise the Better Breader Batter Bowl. If you plan on breading anything this makes your job easy and clean up is a snap. And the silver of course is you don't waste any flour. Toss in some flour give your food a shake and your done. Boom!!!!

Setup a breading station or do what I did and use the Breader Bowl. Place some flour in the bowl with some seasoning. The Ozark Seasoning is what I chose and I was not disappointed but you can use what ever you want. I also lightly sprinkled the Turkey pieces with the spice prior to flouring. 

First time out I used a simple breading method. I dipped the Turkey in flour then in a liquid (I used half/half) and gave it another coating of flour. I set the pieces on a rack and used that little fan I described above to dry them further. 

I set the oil pretty hot (375˚ƒ) because the Turkey was already cooked through and I was only interested in getting them crunchy and brown. 

Review at the bottom of the pictures.

Review- They came out great. I won't change anything accept maybe the flouring technique and or the spices. I will consider the following next time. 

• Maybe use the Ozark Seasoning for the dry-brine. 
• Use the Serious eats approach for deep frying chicken.  

Fauxtastic BBQ Sous-Vide Brisket

This Sous-Vide BBQ Brisket post is very similar to my previous one (BBQ Brisket #1) except for two things. If you have read any of my other posts (Found Here), you know that I am a big fan of Faux Aging using fish sauce and Warm aging.  The use of fish sauce (or fish sauce salts... see below) brings out the UMAMI (Beefiness), and the Warm Aging approach tenderizes the meat. In the previous version, I cooked the Brisket Sous-Vide for 48 hours at 135F degrees. In this version, thanks to the warm aging approach I will be able (I hope and think) to make a more flavorful much more tender Brisket without having to SV the Brisket for 48 hours.  I am going to shoot for 42 hours instead of 48 hours and see what happens. This is a time reduction of 12%.

I got lucky and found a Prime Packer at Costco. 







Here it is out of plastic vacuum home. I am going to remove all but a 1/4 of an inch of fat. I will save the extra fat for another project. Well, if you have to know, I plan on making a Pastrami Salame. 

So my choices are to use Red Boat Fish Sauce at 3% or use the Red Boat Salt at 1%. Both products are amazing and produce near the same results (see this post for more info). Depending on the application, sometimes one is better than the other. In this application, I will be using the salt. After I trimmed up the Brisket, I was left with 4237 grams or 9.34 lbs of meat. Calculating the salt needed is easy too....4237 grams (meat) X 1% (salt) = 42.37 grams (salt needed). Anyhow smear on the salt getting it into all the nook and cranny. 

After applying the Red-Boat Salt apply the rub.

Here is my experimental rub. Why is it experimental? I haven't tried it yet. Drank a lot of water as I was putting this thing together, though. You can only measure the success of a good rub after the cook. The flavor profile is completely different before and after the cook. 

If you haven't noticed by now, there is no added salt in the recipe except for the celery salt. That's because the Red-Boat Salt has plenty. If you plan on not using Red-Boat, you will need to increase the salt percentage. 

Using the percentages in the recipe is as follows, but If you want a lot of details, CLICK HERE. I.e., After trimming the brisket, the green weight is, let's say 6000 grams. Oh, yea, before I forget to convert your pounds to grams. If you want to use pounds, knock yourself out, but it's not as precise or as easy. Anyhow take the meat weight 6000 grams X  (Coarse Black Pepper) .30% (.003) = 18 grams. 

This recipe is enough for the brisket and then some. You should have about 20% leftover, which you will use with maybe some more sugar for the smoke. When the brisket comes out of the SV bath, it will be wet, and some of the rubs will be lost in the liquid. 

Note: Brown Sugar and Chipotle Percentages can be adjusted any way you like. 

I won't bore you with lots of details but suffice it to say the salt needs about 4-5 days to penetrate the whole brisket. This technique is called dry-brine. If you want a lot of details, click on the above links. Technically speaking, the salt is the only thing that will penetrate the meat because the salt molecules are smaller than the water molecules. Besides meat is about 75% water. Sugar ions are 10 X bigger than salt ions and really won't penetrate all that much. If salt takes 24 hours to penetrate an inch, how long would it take for sugar to do the same thing? Yea, I don't know either. Here is mine, however. I still like applying my rub during the dry-brine time because the rub will penetrate maybe 1/16 -1/8 inch according to Amazing ribs.com, and having done it both ways, that's my preference. Every micro inch counts in my book. 

After applying the rub, I double vacuumed sealed the brisket. It will sit in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days. As of this writing, it sat there for about 3.25 days. 

After the 3.25 days, the Brisket will be Sous-Vide at 104 f (Warm Aging) for 3 hours and 40 minutes (allowing 20 minutes to get up to 135 f). Once the SV reaches 135f, I will keep it there for 42 hours, which is 6 hours less than my previous BBQ Brisket Recipe.

All done....The Brisket will be Ice-Shocked and refrigerated for several days until I move on to the next step.







I will be using my Modified Weber Smokey Mountain for the next step. 

You are getting the fire ready. This customized grate is big enough to do a 22-hour smoke without every having to replenish the charcoal. The bricks in the center allow me to snake the charcoal, and the double size extra wide grate allows for very very long cooks. If you wanted to, you could place wood throughout the charcoal, and over time it would ignite providing extra smoke and flavor. 

Brisket out of the vacuum-sealed plastic and ready for the next step. 

A lot of the rub rinsed off during the Sous-Vide, so I applied extra rub. I also used extra black pepper. Why? Because I like black pepper. 
The pictures below speak to the next step.  Before I put the meat on, I let the smoker SMOKE (190-225 f) for about 15 minutes. I wanted to wait till there were no flames, just ash. I used a wireless temp gauge too. I planned to smoke until it hit an internal temp of 145-150 f degrees.

All Done!!! Wrapped in foil to redistribute juices and I had to wait for all the sides get done. The brisket is cooked to an internal temp of 147 f. 


Gratuitous Pictures below 

Review- It came out great. The rub was good but nothing to write home about. The rub will need to be tweaked. The Faux Fish Salt was excellent. Unless you do a side by side compassion, there no way to tell if it made a difference, it tasted mighty fine though. The Warm Aging was easy to do, but was it worth doing? Not sure at this point. It tasted great and had great texture too at 42 hours. 

Recap of what I did- 

• Fish Salt Rub and regular rub applied 3.25 days in advance
• Sous-Vide at 104 f for 3 hours and 40 minutes
• Sous-Vide at 135 f for 42 hrs
• Ice-shocked and refrigerated
• Smoked between 190-225 to an internal temp of 147 f. 

The only regret is this..... I should have made Burnt Ends from the point.

UPDATE-WARM-AGED AT 113F AT 3.5 HOURS. DID IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE? SO HARD TO QUANTIFY ON LONG COOKS. TOP OF THE FAUXTASTIC PAGE

Bombastical Sous-Vide Chapp-AZZ-Chili

I have been making traditional Chili for such a long time I can make it in my sleep. Yea, can you imagine dreaming about Chili? Well I do!! Here is my base recipe that I have been using for 25 years. It's a good place to start. The version you're about to read is slightly different from my previous one. In this version I kick it up a bit and I grind the meat. More on this later.

What is traditional Chili? There are many versions out there but when I say traditional I mean the one without beans. It's not that I don't like beans but in my opinion they don't belong in Chili. Certainly not my Chili.

For the past few months I have been playing around with Sous-Vide Faux Meat Aging and have gotten some great results. I decided to try this approach with Chili. If you want detailed info on Sous-Vide Faux Meat Aging click the link above but I will quickly sum it up for you. SV-Faux Meat Aging is all about enhancing the Umami flavors in the meat which means more beef flavor by using fish sauce and tenderizing the meat using low temps utilizing the Sous-Vide cooking approach. 

I used Short Ribs and Chuck which are some of the best cuts for chili. 




Here's a pretty picture of both the Rib and Chuck. The Top one is the Rib and the bottom is the Chuck.

Now on to the Faux Aging which requires me to measure out 3% by weight of Fish Sauce. I am not going to spend to much time explaining what Faux Aging but again if you're interested click on the link above. Using latex gloves (you will thank me later) toss fish the sauce on meat and massage getting the sauce into every nook and cranny. Massage the meat twice a day for 3 days. I did it for 3.5 days because of my schedule. You can go longer but I would not go shorter than 2. The magic number I think is 3. I noticed after 3 days the meat had absorbed all the fish sauce. 

Here's how you calculate 3%. The meat weighed 9.1 lbs which equals 4127.69 grams. 4127.69 grams X 3% (.03) = 123.83 grams.  I know what you're thinking too....why so precise? By being precise I can replicate everything exactly all the time. I do this with anything requiring measuring. 

After 3 days I placed the meat into vacuum bags and partially froze. Partially freezing will prevent any excess fish sauce being sucked into the machine. 

Using my Sous-Vide thermal bath the meat was Warm Aged at 104 f degrees for 3.5 hours. At the 3.5 hour mark I raised the temp to 133 and held it there for 12 hours. NOTE: Meat was Shocked in ICE-WATER and refrigerated for a couple of days. A lot of people will Sous-Vide Chuck and Short ribs in the neighborhood of 48-72 hours but they plan on eating them right away. Using the Warm Aging approach long cooks are unnecessary. In addition I plan on cooking the Chili for several hours which will aid in the tenderizing too. Warm Aging does something to the texture and flavor of the meat that cannot be described with words.

Here's a picture of the meat released from the its vacuumed sealed home. NOTE: Meat was Shocked in ICE-WATER and refrigerated for a couple of days. Don't forget save the purge from the bags. After I removed the ribs from the bag there was a lot of purge (the extracted liquid from the ribs aka discharge). This is great stuff so don't throw it out. Instead heat the purge in the Microwave in a proper bowl or heat on the top of the stove until the proteins coagulate making what looks like a protein raft. Almost like making a consume or clarifying a stock except you're not using eggs whites or their shells. Anyhow after all the proteins stick together strain using cheesecloth/napkin through a fine sieve. Use the purge in your sauce or gravy. For more information about the purge I would suggest more reading "What do with those juices... by Norm King" Norm runs a great group on Facebook called Sous Vide, Meat Curing and Smoking...... gotta check this group out.

NOTE: Meat was Shocked in ICE-WATER and refrigerated for a couple of days.The meat was dried off with paper towels and I used a little fan to aid in the drying. I sprayed the meat with a little canola oil and covered all the meat with Ancho powder but any chili powder would have worked nicely. Don't forget the meat is ice-cold!!!!!

I cranked up the BBQ grill and browned them to develop more flavor. Since they were ice-cold I was not worried about over cooking the meat. 

Simply gorgeous!!!!

Now on to the smoker. This will add to the complex flavors that I wanted to incorporate into my chili. Smoked at 200˚ƒ for 90 minutes using Apple. 

After the meat came off the smoker I cooled it rapidly and partially froze it for the next step. Yup that's right I am going to grind it up. 

This is first for me too. I hate ground meat in Chili because you cannot brown it up properly. My preference has always been Chunks and shredded. I decided to give this a try because I was able to properly prepare it before it went into the grinder. Grinding 9 lbs of meat took all about 60 seconds using the Lem #32 grinder. I couldn't shove it into the grinder fast enough. Note: meat went into the grinder partially frozen. Meat placed into refrigerator until I was ready for the next step. 

How many chilis and which ones? I always use as my standard 2-3 per pound of meat depending on their size. Each variety of chili brings something unique to the chili. I love all dried Chili's. Some Chili's have a unique flavor profile that I just adore and will work well in Chili. 

Well with that in mind I chose a variety of peppers to bring out that special taste that I was looking for. One Chili I chose is Cascabel Chili. They have a tendency to loose their seeds and when shaken sound like a bell hence the name. From my experience the flavor denotes earthiness, smoke, complex flavors with a little heat. 

I also chose Passilla Chili, Ancho Chili's, Mulato Chili, Chili Negro, Habanero Chili and Chipotle Chili's too. Some are sweeter than others and others have a complex and sometimes chocolaty overtones. One of my favorite Peppers would have to be the Ancho. The Ancho is sweet and smokey. I just love this pepper. The Gaujillo Chili are the bomb for Chili's and stews and was added to my Chili too. And last but not least is the Hatch Chili. Suffice it to say I used a lot of Chili's. 

I like to de-seed the chilies before I do anything. It helps later on after you roast them. Whether you seed them before or after you roast is not a huge deal. If the chilies are really dense I will de-seed them after I roast them. Roasting them brings out flavors and nuances that can't be obtained any other way.
Note: Re-Hydrate using beef stock!!!!


5-10 minutes at 300˚ƒ is all you need. You will smell them when they are done and they will puff up too. After they are seeded and roasted place them in a large vessel and submerge them for about an hour to re-hydrate them. They will be pliable and ready for the blender. 

Using tongs place the chilis in the blender. Most of the seeds will be on the bottom of the vessel. You might need to add more chili water to the blender to get it going. You want the chili paste to resemble a thick milk shake.

Strain the chili water through a china cap or fine sieve and preserve liquid. 


 

I love all kinds of fresh chilis and they add a complexity to the chili. I used a variety of chilies. Every color and every variety. Mix and match. I mostly used sweet ones and a few Poblanos and Anaheim. 











Of course you gotta have lots of onions and garlic.

My favorite pan to use. It holds 20 quarts and is 20" X 5". The large surface area allows allows for superior caramelization and evaporation.

 

Toss everything in pan and sauté. Add lots of salt and pepper.

Here comes the garlic. Add garlic only after sautéing the other veggies for a while. You don't want the garlic to burn.

Deglaze with your favorite beer. Beer adds complexities to the chili. My favorite is Stout!!!!! There is no other!! I dislike IPA's. Let it cook down for a few minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Let's build the chili. Add the meat. 

No Chili would be complete without Mexican Chocolate. I used two bars for about 12 Quarts of Chili. 

Add the Chili Sauce, the Chili water and the Mexican Chocolate. This is where we start to go a little crazy. We start to build our Chili adding things to bring about what we think we want in a chili. It's different for everyone which is why chili making and what is considered good is subjective. Of course my chili is the best.

I added some tomato paste and a little crushed tomato to add to the depth of the chili. Many chilies start out with tomatoes as their first ingredient but I think that's crazy. Chili is made from Chilies not tomatoes. 

I added Mexican Oregano (amazing srtuff) and Cumin. I also added some Black Cumin too. 

I took a page out of the Serious Eats Chili recipe and added a little Star Anise, Coriander and Cloves. Well worth doing this!








Call me crazy but I love dehydrated lime zest and Lime Juice powder. You don't have to add much but dang is it good. The powder brings in a little acid and freshens up the dish. Adding a citrus note adds balance to the dish.

I added some of my dehydrated bell peppers too. Why because I add them on hand.

Now you have to adjust everything. I added Honey and Muscovado sugar. I love this sugar and is superior to Brown Sugar. Keep tasting and adjust from here. Add more chili if you have too. keep adjusting until you get it right. I added some powdered roasted garlic because I thought it needed something extra and this added to the overall flavor. The last thing I added was cilantro and green onions. Keep tasting and remember to rinse your palate each time. If you find it needs more heat add some. I used Chipotle and Habaneros very sparingly because I knew as it cooked it would continue to get hotter. Overall I thought it was Mild-Medium but my kids thought it was Hot. My wife thought it was Medium Hot. I thought it was perfect of course.

Since we started out with tender meat the chili was fully cooked and I was able to serve it in 2 hours. Did I like the ground meat? I liked my ground meat. I love using chunks of meat but this (my version) was awesome. 

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