Being the BBQgeek, I am no stranger to low and slow cooking. In fact, I think low and slow might be exactly what drew me to buy a SVS and launch this blog. It's familiar territory. As I did my research on sous vide cooking, one cut of meat seemed to hold holy grail status - short ribs. Thomas Keller even included a tremendously sexy recipe for short ribs in Under Pressure. Keller goes to the extreme by cooking his short ribs for 72 hours. That's right, he cooks them for 4,320 minutes. Setting whole hog aside, the longest cook time for a cut of meat you will find in the BBQ world is roughly fourteen hours for a beef brisket. So, three days is seriously low and slow cooking. Sous vide short ribs appealed to me immediately. I've never anticipated a whole bunch of hurry-up-and-wait so much in my entire life.
Here you see everything required to cook sous vide short ribs - short ribs, Foodsaver, Sous Vide Supreme. I wish I could tell you about the hours I spent laying out my mise-en-place, and then tell you about the sweat, toil, and the labor. Sadly, sous vide cooking just doesn't go that way. The basic flow is season the protein, bag it, drop it in the cooker, wait.
Here you can see the short ribs after being given a quick dose of kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and then vacuum sealed in a Foodsaver bag. The SVS is set for a cooking temperature of 132 degrees Fahrenheit.
This is a simple shot of the bagged short ribs once they have been placed in the SVS. From here, all that is left to do is to put on the lid, push the SVS into the corner, and check back in a few days. Since we have a 72 hour window to wait while the short ribs cook, I thought I would mention one issue I've noticed with the SVS. Since sous vide involves cooking in water, there really are no cooking aromas to let you know you are actually cooking. It's a little disconcerting to the practiced cook. I'm used to using my sense of smell as well as my sense of sight as I cook just about anything. With sous vide, you can pretty much rely on sight. In fact, you can just watch the clock, and in this case the calendar, to determine doneness. But with the SVS, or at least mySVS, there is a smell. I can't really describe this smell. It's vaguely chemical and kind of industrial. My guess is that my SVS smell is related to the heating element located below the water bath tank. It's not an offensive smell, but it is not really a kitchen smell either. It's a smell you would expect to experience if you were in a teacher workroom next to a laminator. It's just kind of funky. But the good news is that when you finally extract your bags from the water oven, the smell of the cooked food will override the other smell and life will be good.
It's more than a little weird to cook something for three days. I've brined, marinated, smoked...you name it....but never for three days. I found myself walking in the house, catching the SVS smell, throwing a glance at the glistening silver water bath, and thinking .....really?. Three damn days? But if Keller, and Carol, say go three days then fine. Above, you see the short ribs after being cut out of their plastic prison after 72 hours. There was a slight brown quality to the outside, but the interior was clearly still medium rare pink. That's an amazing thing for those of you who understand. Three days at 132 degrees, but we are still yummy pink. The only thing left to do was to sear off the short ribs and plate them (a common refrain with sous vide cooking).
So, let's have a little Alton Brown moment and discuss why these short ribs have to be cooked for 72 hours. Low and slow cooking is about converting collagen to gelatin in a low temperature environment, aka low and slow. In BBQ, low and slow temps are usually around 225 degrees Fahrenheit. With sous vide, the cooking temps are significantly lower - in this case a perfect 132 degrees. So,the cooking times have to be longer. To the positive with sous vide, there is no loss of liquid in the meat. It is trapped inside the cooking bag. So, the short ribs are taking a nice, long bath in their own juices. There is no need for mop sauces, injections, or any other BBQ trickery. But, as you will see below, making use of those cooking juices is no easy task.
This is the cooking juice from all three short rib bags. Looks glorious right? What this iPhone quality photo doesn't accurately portray is the fat and scum floating around in that brown, beefy goodness. Try as I might, I was unable to make this chef's gold into a usable sauce. But, I learned a couple valuable lessons in my mistakes and I'm confident that I can make it work next time. My first mistake was to not use a fat separator. Pouring from the bottom makes a big difference. Past that, I think a standard pan gravy made with the bag juices should work fine.
In my opinion, this is the easy bit with sous vide cooking - searing off the meat to give it that delicious Maillard crust. I decided to plate mine with a little hoppin' john and call it a day. But let's discuss the results for a second. What is different about sous vide short ribs as opposed to the traditional braising method? Texture and color are the difference. Instead of being vaguely brown and totally shredded, these short ribs had the texture of an expertly cooked prime rib. Succulent, beefy flavor and bite were all I could think about. I almost made a joke about them being toothsome, but I figured my wife a )wouldn't get the Collichio reference or b) would get it and throw a fork at me. Were three days worth it? Absolutely, as compared with my standard short ribs. Was it a rewarding cooking experience? Not so much. But, I'm learning sous vide isn't a "cook's " technique, in the fire and flame sense of the world. Should you try it if you have the means? Hell Yes. This was completely delicious. I'd hate to hog it for myself.
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