Fresh Fish Sous Vide

Haha, wow it's been a long time.  Mostly I've been lazy and super busy at work.  Many of these posts are months old, but I will try to get them all out ASAP.

Recently months ago, I went fishing with a friend and his family.  We had an awesome time and caught a ton of mackerel!

So many that they were jumping out of the cooler!

Ready for transporting home:

I was also schooled in the ways of filleting them:

Back at home, I got out various ingredients to seal up the fish with:

I sliced up the lemons and lime, but just left the thyme whole.

All sealed and ready to sous-vide:

You'll have to excuse my inexactness; I should have written it down.  I believe I sous-vided this for about an hour at 136 degrees F.  I also sous-vided a small pouch of scallops around the same temp for a little bit less time, followed by a light sear:

Yum!

All in all a great meal, although I don't think I would sous-vide the scallops again. I like them just seared in some browned butter. It was interesting to me to see the fish portion of this meal from live wriggling creature all the way to my plate. A delicious adventure. Thanks to the JeffCP's family for taking me fishing with them!

Reheating Sous Vide Beef

Because I've been using sous vide to cook a lot of meat lately, invariably there are leftovers.  So I asked myself, what's the best way to reheat the meat?

Probably the absolute best way would be to bring it back to serving temperature in a water bath.  But that seems like it would take too long.  And waste too many of my plastic bags.

Instead, I decided to try out 3 different methods:

1. Microwave - quick and dirty method normally used for reheating a variety of foods.
2. Pan fry - reheat and get some more crust, but will it overcook it?
3. Blowtorch - reheat the outside very quickly and create additional crust, but will it warm the whole thing?

Here we have 3 pieces of meat straight out of the refrigerator.  You can see the congealed fat (yum!).

Here are those same 3 pieces after each has been reheated according to one of the methods above.  Can you guess which piece was reheated in which manner?

The microwave method took about a minute.  I was afraid of overcooking the meat before heating it to a good temperature since the slices weren't that thick to begin with.  After 30 seconds in a rotating microwave, some of the congealed fat still hadn't melted, so I did an additional 30 seconds.  I heard it pop the second time, so I'm thinking maybe 20 seconds, rest, 20 seconds might be a good amount in the future.

The pan fry method took about a minute on each side once the pan with some butter had been heated to medium low.  I actively pressed down on the meat a bit to create some extra crust.  It certainly smelled delicious.

The blowtorch method took all of 30 seconds.  I torched each side for a little while until it looked like the fat on the outside had all melted and the piece browned a little.

Which method did I like the best?  Surprisingly, it was a tie between the pan fry method and the microwave method.  The pan fry method had an amazing crust but the meat was a bit tougher on the inside.  The microwave method was super tender and definitely the juiciest of the three, but with no crust.

Sadly, the blowtorch method failed to produce a better crust than the pan fry method and also failed to reheat the meat entirely through.

Sous Vide Tri-Tip Roast

I took a different (cheaper) cut of meat, a roast that you would normally (over)cook in an oven or slow cooker for an extended period of time to tenderize it and sous vided it for 24 hours at 146 degrees F.

The result?  Amazingly tender meat!  It seriously tasted like a good steak.

And what was just the icing on the cake of this deliciously prepared steak was the juice from the meat.  Pure goodness ... just like the jellied stock from the brisket post.  Except this time I simply served it on the side, meat au jus!




This meat was also accompanied by some vegetables (shocking, I know ...).  Some swiss chard sautéed with some of the au jus!

Green = good, right??

Finished meal:

Beef Brisket Sous Vide

I think this is my new favorite meat dish.  It also doesn't hurt that Trader Joe's packages it in a vacuum sealed bag, which means almost no work for me!

Gotta love the pre-sealed meats:

I'm still experimenting with the time/temperature profile, but here's a few ways I've done it so far:

176 degrees F, ~36 hours.

Sorry, I didn't get any pre-sear pictures.  The meat was so falling-apart-tender that at one point when I was cutting it, it just fell apart rather than be sliced.  Slightly dry for my taste, actually, but still quite delicious.  Most of the fat had melted into the juices that were in the bag.

By the way, saving the juices and putting them in the refrigerator (once cooled) yields superb jellied stock (after you remove the fat layer):

The next time I tried to make brisket, I did ~12 hours at 176 F and another 24 at 146 F.  This was probably a step up from the 36 hours at 176 F, because the meat held together better and did not taste dry at all, but it had still melted most of the fat.  Sorry there aren't any pictures, I ate it too fast!

146 degrees F, 48 hours.  Perhaps the best one yet.

Here's what it looked like straight out of the Sous Vide Supreme:

There was plenty of juice in the bag to make a gravy.  At first I tried to pour it through the holes on the roasting pan I had, but that didn't work so well, so I just poured it directly into the bottom:

Here's the meat out of the bag, pre-sear:

I love this blowtorch.  A nice, strong flame.  Except that when searing the side of the brisket that had a layer of fat, the fat would actually burn and create some smoke, which is a bad thing for me since I live in a studio.  So, the fatty side did not get as much searing as I would have liked.

But I'm not really complaining that much.  Looks good, doesn't it?

A little slice of beefy goodness:

I think I let the stock reduce too much before adding some butter.  I only ended up with this much gravy (thank goodness it ended up being enough!):

Awesomely delicious!

Previous Experiments

So I thought I'd check out blogspot and see if I like it.  All of my previous experiments are located at my old blog.

Here are some good ones:

• Duck Confit Day 1, Day 2
• Bacon Test 1, Test 2
• Double Dactyl Dinner
• Tour de Texas
• Tour de Ithaca
• San Francisco Treat

Here are all my posts on sous-vide cooking:

• Sous vide experiment 1
• Scrambled eggs
• Steak
• Porkchops