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

Sous-Vide Steak and Salt Experiment

So why bother with another experiment? Why not? This is; at least to me a lot of fun. This experiment has two purposes. It can verify what we already know and possibly debunk traditionally held beliefs.

My first experiment involved Sous-Vide VS Reverse Sear with some additional stuff on Salt and moisture loss. Comparing the results from the above experiment and this one could pose interesting.

I belong to several Facebook groups that discuss Sous-Vide cooking and on occasion the conversation turns to experimentation with salt. The argument goes like this...Should we SV with no salt?, Should we salt right before we SV, is there a benefit to dry-brining or not? Although the first experiment covered some of these issues it was necessary to do another one. As always I thought it would be fun to run another experiment but focus primarily on salt, flavor and moisture loss. Of course flavor is subjective but hard data will provide some insight. What role does salt play when it comes to meat? We're about to find out.

Before you read further you need to understand how I conducted my experiment and what were some of my ideas and protocols.

• All Prime steaks came from Costco and were similar in size. All about 11/2 inches.
• I used Diamond Kosher Salt.
• I used exactly and I mean exactly 1% of salt by weight. I.E if the steak weighed 400 grams I used 4 grams of salt. I have a very precise gram scale so this was easy. 
• I coated the steaks evenly. Every square inch was covered with the measured salt.
• Each steak was coated with salt at a precise time. 
• I made 8 steaks {first experiment) and all had different dry brine times (or not) Steak number #1- Received Salt 40 hrs prior to SV, #2- 24 hrs, #3- 12 #4- 6 hrs #5- 2 hrs, #6- 1 hrs, #7- salted and placed in Vacuum bag and #8- was naked, no salt.
• Note- #8- received salt at 1% and pepper before sear.
• Second experiment- Steak #1 Received Salt 40 hrs prior to SV, #2 Salted and placed in Vacuum bag and #3- was naked, no salt. 
• Note- #3- received salt at 1% and pepper before sear.
• No plastic wrap was used during the dry-brining. All naked on a try. Plastic wrap does not aid in the dry-brining and it may pull off some of the salt and rub. 
• All steaks were cooked at the same time.
• All steaks were SV at 128 degrees right right after they were vacuum sealed. 
• The first 8 steaks were in SV for 75 minutes and in the second experiment for 150 min. 
• All steaks received a Cold shock.
• All steaks were padded with paper towel prior to being weighed after SV.
• All steaks received a little pepper before hitting the grill. 
• All steaks were grilled at the same time. None of the steaks received a robust sear.
• All steaks were allowed to rest 2 minutes before being weighed after sear.
• 
  

What is dry-brining? Read here 

Results will be at the bottom following the gratuitous pictures. 

Ahh the results. First let me say this whole experiment and results are somewhat abstract because it's not just about percentages but taste and texture. If you were to look at the chart #6 had the least amount of moisture loss but was not my favorite. I did not like #8 at all. #2 was OK, #1-4 were the best tasting to me. #1 was my favorite because the salt managed to get into the center of the meat. The salt and the obvious moisture evaporation caused the meat to have a slightly more concentrated flavor (Beefylicious).

Some interesting observations. Having done this many times now this is what I have learned. There are many variables to these experiments and if you change just one of them you will get different results. Fat content, size and thickness of steak, how long you sear the steak and at what temp..etc will yield a different outcome so take this experiment with a grain of salt...pun intended. 

I want you to consider these numbers for a moment. Steak #8- which was SV naked at 128 degrees for 75 minutes lost 8.97% moisture and in the second experiment Steak #3 lost 10.53%. Why??? Steak #3 in experiment #2 was SV for 150 min instead of the 75 minutes. What can we take away from this little experiment? Dry-brining can reduce moisture loss but only under certain conditions.... time and temp variables need to be considered. As you increase the time in water bath more moisture will be lost. In addition if you increase the temp of the SV more moisture will be drawn out. In my opinion dry brining gives a flavor boost and increases the flavor of beef.  

Moisture retention is not always indicative of a great steak. Sometimes less moisture and greater salt penetration will yield a better steak I.E Steak number one. 

A couple more things about the percentage of salt used. In my opinion if you're going to dry-brine for more than 6 hours you should cut the salt down to about .50-.66%. The salt penetrates so well you need to use less. Of course this is my opinion and you may want to experiment yourself. 

My pronouncement is to Dry-Brine for at least 6 hours. In the end it was about flavor and not moisture that produced the superior steak. 

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