Cooking: April 2008 Archives

It been a while since I have made pizza. So sad. I was distracted by high-tech gadgets. Don't worry though, Mr. Pizza. I would never put you in a vacuum bag and submerse you in water!

Next up with the sous vide experience was cooking Salmon. I bought a half of a pound of Atlantic Salmon and brined it in a 10% salt water solution for ten minutes (to help prevent the albumen from leaching out during the cooking). After patting the salmon dry, I then cut the it in half. I salted and peppered the fillets, poured a little bit of olive oil on them, and also put some garlic power on them. In one bag, I placed some tarragon. In the other, nothing else was added.

I cooked the fillet in 116 degree Fahrenheit water for an hour. When I removed the fish from the bag, I patted the top dry with some paper towels and then used a culinary blow torch to brown the top.

So here is my recipe for cooking steaks sous vide:

• Take a one inch thick cut of steak. T-bone, Porterhouse, strip, tenderloin, rib eye -- it does not matter.
• Preheat a grill as hot as you can get it. While the grill is heating up, place the steaks in a freezer to cool down. But make sure that they do no actually freeze. We don't want any ice crystals forming that will rupture any cell walls.
• Sear one side of the steak for 30 seconds. Flip it over, sear, flip and rotate, sear, and flip. You are not actually cooking the inside of the steak at this point. You are only forming a savory crust.
• Liberally salt the outside of the steaks and vacuum pack the steaks with a Foodsaver (in my case, a V2830). My hope here is that the salt will create a brine when the liquid comes out during cooking.
• Cook the steaks at 130 degrees Fahrenheit for at least an hour. What is great about this stage is that you can forget about the steaks. You cannot overcook the meat!
• Remove the meat from the bag and plate it. Enjoy!

Mmmm, juicy! The only problem is that I have yet to find non-gristly steaks in Texas. As you can see in the picture with the prominent connective tissue running along the steak.