The Longest I've Ever Waited for a Bowl of Soup

Ramen with pork belly and a 66˚C (151˚F) egg.

We made pork belly once before, plain, just to taste it.  And it IS fatty.  It is tender.  It is intense.  And it clearly is made to be a vehicle for flavor, the lynchpin of a dish, rather than the center.  (Does that even make sense?)

What did make sense.  Advice to cure the pork belly, to roll it to keep the meat tender - surround the meat with the fat during the sous vide so it doesn't dry out*, and to slice it thin in soup.  But the majority opinion for the rolled pork belly is Japanese flavors - for ramen, which is umami and sweet and salty (predominantly).  Now I'm not complaining, but some smoky, and spiced and crispy appealed to me as well.  So off the rails I went.

For 2 lbs of pork belly:

the cure was -
1/2 C salt
1/2 C brown sugar
1 Tbs chinese 5 spice (less if you make it fresh)
and 1 tsp black pepper

Actually not a stretch at all for a pork belly cure,
just a little different for a ramen destination. 

coat the piece and make it look crusty

Pop it in a zip top bag, 

and use a sophisticated assortment of items to weight it down in your fridge for 3 days.

Then wipe it off well with a few paper towels (you could even rinse it, I suppose.  I didn't because I'll be slicing it thin.)  Tie it up all nice with string - butcher's twine - and pop it into a sous vide appropriate bag, and vacuum away.

I threw in a few garlic cloves and a dried aji amarillo chile
a medium, fruity chile - because it sounded good.

 And then 36 - 48 hrs at 142˚F.  (I saw temps ranging from 136˚F - 155˚F.  I cook my pork tenderloin at 140˚F**, so 142˚F sounded like a good spot for me.)  36 hours seems to be good, but that meant getting up at 2am (due to when I had gotten things going) and that wasn't on.  So I let it go until about 6:30 am the next morning.  Close enough.

Into the fridge.  This was another piece of good advice.  DO NOT open the hot rolled pork belly and expect to do anything.  All you will make is a mess.  Check.

So that piggy cooled down all day while I had my life.

When school was over and we were all gathered and dinner prep commenced, I opened the package, tossed the expended garlic and chile, and gingerly peeled off all the porky gelatin and reverently set it aside.  This was so concentrated it had the texture of gummy bears. 

I cut the roll into thirds, and froze two of them for later.  The last is going on to soup tonight.

Some assembly required.

Cut the pork belly into slices.  (Next time freeze it first?)  I couldn't cut the whole roll as thin and I wanted, so cut the roll in half and when from there.

Cut up radish, scallions, lettuce, and sous vide 1 egg per person at 151˚F, or go old school and soft boil or poach it.

Bring  6 C chicken broth (or one of those 4 cup carton thingies + 2 cups of water) and add the porky gelatin.  I guess I could have made "real ramen broth" but I'd already waited nearly 6 days!  Come ON!  Have you seen Tampopo?!

While this is going on, find a large slab of cast iron and torch the dickens out of your pieces of pork belly - 1 side, then the other.

Old School:  heat up a cast iron fry pan rocket hot
and crisp the surfaces quickly.

Bring it all together - noodles, slices of pork belly, scallions, radishes, lettuce, egg (my son went for kamomboko - Japanese fish cake - instead of egg).  Pour on the hot broth.  Eat messily.

Best bite of the meal:  Egg yolk, pork belly, scallion and noodle.  Whoa.

*Warning: science and/or trivia.

How can meat in a sous vide dry out, especially at those comically low temperatures?

If too much lubrication - collagen, fat, blood and any other connective tissues are melted away from the muscle fibers during the cooking process and into the porky gelatin, the muscle fibers will, in fact be dry.  This is why sometimes chicken IN chicken noodle soup or beef IN beef stew can somehow be dry.  All the things that feel unctuous or juicy to our mouths has been dissolved into the broth leaving none on the muscle fibers.

**Multi-tasking win.  Since this was taking awhile, I used the 142˚F water to sous vide the meat for another dinner the day I started the pork belly.  Totally allowed.

Why bother with a sous vide for beans?

So, I’ve done a little reading on the sous-vide bean thing, and much of the writing says that there is no real advantage to cooking beans in a sous vide.  My experience says otherwise.  The texture may not change particularly, but there are a few distinct advantages.

1) The amount of liquid the beans are cooked in is reduced a bit, and the amount of time the beans soak is increased a bit, so you can flavor the beans more than in the stove top method – by making very flavorful baths for the beans.

2) By placing multiple canning jars of different beans you can cook several varieties of dried beans all at the same time – even if their cooking times are different.

2a) The canning jar method lets you check on the progress of your beans – and you never need to worry about opening a bag and finding under (or over) done beans.

3) No scorching or boiling over worries – ever.

Sous Vide Beans

Not as fast as a pressure cooker, but another way to cook beans that requires very little attention from the cook.  And this way you can cook beans with different cooking times – all at once.

Equipment:

sous vide – or other water oven

2C or 1Q canning jar for each sort of bean

rings and lids for each jar (need not be “new,” just clean)

jar lifter or waterproof hot pad/oven mitt makes things easier.

 

Ingredients:

bean of choice

water

flavorings of choice

(see below for suggestions)

Prep: 

For 2C Jar

     0.5 C beans - your choice

     1.5 C water

     aromatics and/or herbs

For 1Q jar

     1C beans - your choice

     3C water

     aromatics and/or herbs

For making chili - I used 1 clove garlic, 1 bay leaf, and part of a dried ancho chile in each jar.

1 clove of garlic is likely ALWAYS a good idea, and then add spices as they appear in the dish your beans are destined for.

Cook!

Set your sous vide to 195˚F.

Bean times:

lentils .75 - 1 hr

black beans 3.5 - 4.5 hrs

cranberry beans/navy/Yankee beans 3-4 hrs 

garbanzo/chick peas/ceci beans 5-6 hrs

great northern/kidney/cannellini beans 3.5 - 4.5 hrs

pinto beans 4-5 hrs

Check them at the early end - because you can!

Drain them when they are done - and forward with your recipes.  

Well – now I have a bunch of cooked beans.  Now what do I do?

1. Make chili.  (Yes I know, for many chili has NO beans.  But mine does.)

2.  Make soup

3. Make bean salad

4. Garbanzo bean special :

Make hummus – and if you make it with the hot beans, it becomes especially creamy.

Make Falafel.  How... well, look it up!

(OK... I may get there, but not this week)

Think that worked well?  Check out Yogurt and Caramelized Onions

Happy cold weather cooking!

When is a Sous Vide not a Sous Vide?

When you are using it like a crock pot! (Insert evil laugh here)

Well, ok it's always sort of used like a crock pot, but as I was scratching my head over the whole cooking dried beans problem, and the making chili problem, the time I spent using the SousVide as a yogurt (and dulce de leche) maker came floating back into my head.

Is it so important to have a package that conforms to the ingredients if your ingredients will conform to any package?

-or-

Attacking the "SousVide a liquid" problem

So what is the vacuum doing anyway?


The magic is in the lower pressure created by the vacuum!  Right?
I, like many others, have labored under the mistaken idea that the vacuum sealer was imparting some superior virtue to the "food stuffs + flavorings" combinations in those vacuum sealed bags.  My main mistake was bolstered by the correct but completely out-of-context knowledge that water boils (changes from liquid phase to gas phase) at lower and lower temperatures as the pressure on it is decreased.  The pressure has somewhere between NOTHING and Practically Nothing to do with the magic of Sous Vide.

(thanks MIT)

But the vacuum pump is sucking out all bubbles so all the food surfaces contact water through a solid with out the interference of air.  We're not creating an importantly lower pressure.
The magic is in the full contact of the highly efficient heat-transfer-medium (water) to the surface of the food.  And the plastic vacuum bags allow the water to be in contact without draining the food-of-choice of flavor by water logging it.  (And protecting it from the the drying and oxidizing properties of hot air.)

So not magic at all - just poaching with a barrier to the liquid.
Similar experiences in texture are available through poaching, but keeping the water at the desired "just below a simmer" is quite a trick on a stove top.  And the liquid is still above the optimal cooking temp.  Braising and stewing get one there as well, but again, water logging, and losing luscious flavor and texture (come back gelatin!).  Wrapping in foil and baking at low temps works too, but always risks drying the food out and is horribly inefficient (air is a low density, low heat capacity, heat transfer medium.  Seriously, would you rather stick your hand into a box of 400˚F air for 5 seconds or 400˚F liquid for 5 seconds?)

So that explains why fried fish is the best!
Frying does it exactly.  Wrap the food in an oil proof coat (batter), and fry until it floats.  This occurs because an appreciable amount of the water in the food has converted to steam (gas) and pops the food to the top of the liquid (lower density).  This also explains why frying is best with small pieces of food, or objects with a large-surface-area-to-actual-amount-of-matter ingredients (don't plug the hole in that turkey you are planning to fry), but isn't so poplar with large chunks of stuff (french fry, YES!  entire potato, NO!).  And whatever you do, keep water away from the hot oil, or you are a Mythbusters Episode without the insurance.
But when the cooking is complete, there's all that hot oil.  And not all foods respond well to that quick cooking. Deep fried dried beans anyone?  (Yes, the Chinese and Indians have made this good too, but that's another topic for another day.  And they are no longer the low-fat nutrition delivery systems they began as.)

The real magic is just better technology.
Two words, temperature control.  By today's standards "old fashioned" (Ya' know, ancient times, like from the 1970's) crock pots have wild fluctuations in temperature, but manage to make a go of it since they depend on the slow-motion-power of the ceramic crock to keep the transfer of temperature fluctuations to the food encased within to a minimum.

Today, when I sous vide my chicken breast to 140˚F (60˚C), I want it at 140˚F.  Not 138˚F (58.9˚C), not 142˚F (61.1˚C).  With eggs, the same thing. 64˚C (147.2˚F) means just that, and let me tell you, a degree of difference makes a whole different egg (protein folding thermodynamics, of course).

Which brings me back to the dried beans.

Crock pots are great for cooking them.  Long, low and slow with minimal power input.*  But I only want a small bowl of beans - enough for 3 people, not an entire baby-bathtub of beans.  I'm not feeding a hockey team here.  Which is what kept me from using my crock pot most of the time.  Sure if I were part of bigger family, large amounts of food at one time would make more sense.  But I've chosen the minimalist route, so my food needs on a given day are smaller.  And I can only eat the same meal so many days in a row before I go a bit batty (never would have made it as a wild-west prospector).

What your are saying is, cooking beans is different from cooking meat!
I know, crazy, right?  But the time/temperature/liquid combinations that are good for fresh meats are are different than for dried plant protein sources. (Hmmmm, bacalao?)  But the real key here is the beans are already in a liquid medium.  And all I need is a way to keep my small amount of liquid away from the large amount of heat bearing liquid.  Canning Jars!  They are supposed to be boiled - or even pressure canned.  (That is, heated to above boiling.)  So having them hang out below boiling for several hours seems like a great idea.  And they are easier to clean than the darn bags.  And they are in exactly as good a shape the second or tenth time as they were the first, no curly edges and problems shutting them.

Well, what do your experiments reveal?
Using 2C jars, I filled each with 1/2C dried beans and 1 1/2C liquid (water).

Ratio - 1:3 beans to water
A garlic clove, a pinch of red pepper flakes and some cumin seed

I popped them in the SousVide at 195˚F (90.5˚C) for the recommended 6 hours.

I placed the lids on top and barely screwed on the rims so any gasses could escape easily, same as when canning.

After 6 hours....

I did cook with the lids on.
This was removed for peeking in and testing purposes.

Black eyed peas!

They looked cooked...











Delicious, tender beans!  The long cook did make them extra flavorful.

Pro Tip:  The jar lets you test the beans along the way.  Especially handy if you are working with a new sort of bean.  You can take them out early if you need to, and let them cook longer if they need to.





Next: Hacking the Caramelized Onions

Yogurt results - Sous Vide style

How do you like your yogurt? 

I'm a thick, slightly tangy yogurt lover.  Like the kind I met in Greece, and is (for me) best replicated by the Fage brand.  They are one of the few companies that actually strains their yogurt of enough of the excess whey to give it the right consistency.

Plenty of other people like theirs softer, more liquid or tangier. These are also completely in your reach even without adding gelatin, seaweed extracts, starch, or other odd bits added to the grocery store stuff that keeps it dependable and more shelf stable as it travels about.

Tangy?

The tanginess has to do with the length of fermentation.  The longer the little milk digesting bacteria are left to do their work the more acid they produce.  

Lactose, the main sugar in milk is digested and turned into lactic acid.  This is why "lactose intolerant" individuals can eat yogurt.  The lactose is eaten up, gone!  Turned into lactic acid.

This is also why coconut milk yogurt works - there are sugars and proteins in there.  The bacteria eat the sugar, and produce acid.  These acids will then coagulate (turn solid) the dissolved proteins.  But there are  fewer proteins in coconut milk, so you get a thinner yogurt.

Soy milk can be made into yogurt only if there is some sugar added to it.  The bacteria need something to eat and and turn to acid if the soy proteins are going to coagulate.  (Most soy milk you buy at the store has some sort of sugar, so it is all set to go.)

Thick or Thin?
So what mediates the thickness?  How hot you get your milk.  The warmer the milk gets, the more the protein strands unravel, so they can recombine tighter, and in larger groups resulting in a thicker yogurt when hit with the lactic acid.  If you heat up your milk to a lower temperature, the resulting yogurt will be looser.

Creamy?
This is all down to fat content.  If you have non-fat milk, there will be no fat.  The yogurt will be good, but it won't have the creamy richness of the fat.  It's not a problem, just understand there is no way to simulate the particular mouth feel of fat.
Straining the yogurt to concentrate the solids will give it a richer texture, but it is still not the same as the creaminess you'd get with whole milk.

So what milks work?
For dairy milk - all of them. The stuff in the cartons, raw milk, box milk, powdered milk.  I've seen claims that ultra-pasturized or UHT milks won't work.  Not so.  Milk turns to yogurt because you introduce particular bacteria into a liquid full of nutrients and relatively empty of other bacteria.
The bacteria are individual cells on the hunt for sugar, and when they find it, they eat it.  Well fed, warm bacteria multiply, sending out more copies of themselves to find and digest the rest of the sugar.

Regular milk, the stuff we think of when we think of milk, has a pretty low concentration of bacteria.  Since we keep it cold, what bacteria that is still in there has little chance to grow and ferment the milk.  But as we all know, given long enough this milk will go bad.

Raw milk has more bacteria, but it is largely person friendly since its source is an animal that lives closely with humans.  What's good for the cow gut is good for ours as well.

Powdered milk in its powdered form is free from any active bacteria since there is no water for the bacteria to live in.  Once you rehydrate it (add water), it is just as open a canvas for the bacteria to move in.  So populate it with your yogurt culture, and you'll get what you want.  The down side?  It'll still taste like powdered milk.

Ultra-pasturized and UHT (Ultra High Temperature) dairy products are super squeaky clean, (neither is sterile - that's a whole different ball game), but are so barren of bacteria they will keep extra long before going sour.  And if that's what you have to work with they will do just fine, providing the materials your yogurt culture needs to live and grow.

'Nuff Biology.  How Do I Make Yogurt? 


Get your milk. 2-4 C is a nice amount to start with.
Not too much yogurt results, but enough to make it worth all the fiddling about.

Choose your fermentation container of choice, it needs to come with a lid.
Heavy glass jars are nice since they are reusable and easy to get super squeaky clean.  I like 1 C canning jars (but only fill them about 3/4 full or a little more) so I end up with individual servings.  And the canning lid rests on top nicely.  No need for the screw on part.
There are special yogurt jars, but - ehh?
Glazed pottery works fine too, but you need to find a lid.  In China they rubber-banded wax paper over the top - so it need not be high tech.

Get some (plain) yogurt with live active cultures.
These days most yogurts have the live cultures, but read the label just to be sure.  Plain yogurt just simplifies things.  (Dairy free people - get coconut or soy - still works!)

Get a cooking thermometer
I LOVE my Thermapen, a digital instant read

but a candy thermometer will serve as well.

A small bowl, a fork/whisk and a ladle
These are for mixing warm milk with the yogurt and moving hot milk about with the least injury to people.

Heat the milk to:  Stir over medium to medium-high heat.  Watch the temp with the thermometer.

120F - 160F super loose.  In fact if you want "yogurt" like you are used to you'll need to add some powdered milk, gelatin or tapioca starch.

165F - 175F for loose yogurt.  This can be drinkable after it is stirred.

175F - 180F for firmer yogurt

180F - 185F the thickest yogurt, but not yet grainy (185 is my sweet spot)

190F - boiling (212F) - starts to get a grainy texture.  You are entering fresh cheese territory here.  It will make a quick and dirty firm yogurt, but the texture won't be smooth.  (How do I know?  I tried.  Not my fave, but I will be straining it to make yogurt cheese.  No reason to waste those tasty coagulated proteins).

Let it cool:  Either set it over an ice bath, or do other stuff in the kitchen and check on it until it hits

110F - 100F  If it gets below 90F, you'll need to go through the heating part all over again.  I got super paranoid my first time, worried it wasn't exactly 112F.  Yeah, not such a big deal.  Just keep it over 90F.

Ladle some of the warm milk into the small bowl.  Use the fork/whisk to stir the still warm milk with 1Tbs plain yogurt for each cup you are making (more or less).  Pour this back into the big batch of milk.
Ladle this into your fermenting jars.

Ferment!
Sous vide style - Pop your jars into a warm water bath somewhere between 100 - 115 (108 is the nice middle where I like to hang out).  Cover the jars so condensation doesn't drip in.  Let it go for 4-8 hours.  (Depending on temperature, culture and how tangy you like it, 3-12 hours is a realistic range.)

Higher temps mean faster fermentation - thus faster coagulation and more whey, and sometimes a grainier texture.
Lower temps mean slower fermentation - so the curd forms more slowly, and typically incorporates more whey, and a generally creamier texture.

Cooler & a bowl of boiling water - 
Line a cooler with a towel/towels.  Place a large (8-12 C) bowl in one side, and the yogurt jars in the other. Use the towel to wrap and prop everybody up sturdily.  Fill the bowl about 2/3 with boiling water, close the lid and let it sit about 6 hours.

Blanket and a heating pad - 
This was the first way I made yogurt, and I didn't love the result.  But it was definitely yogurt.  It was a high temperature ferment of a mix that had powdered milk and honey added.

This works best if you have all your milk in a cylindrical container.  Wrap a heating pad around the container, then insulate it in blankets.  Set your heating pad to medium to start, and keep an eye on the temp.  Adjust to low or high to keep the temperature at the range you want for 4-8 hours.
(For me - if I'm going with a hack, I want a low maintenance one.  This one wasn't.)

In all cases - take out your jars.  Does the yogurt look solid-ish?  If so, pop them in the fridge, let them cool down the rest of the way.

Ta-Da! you have yogurt.

Then add honey, fruit whatever.  And use it in place of sour cream.  It has the same tang and it won't break apart when heated.  I tried adding honey before I fermented. Not worth it.  Just top your yogurt with what you want when you want to eat it.  Again, it makes the whole thing simpler.

So many options!!!!!
The thing that struck me are the ridiculous range of options out there when making yogurt - how high or low to heat your milk, fermentation temperature, additions (powdered milk, honey, gelatin, starch...).  But what it comes down to, yogurt is the kind of thing that happens even when you aren't trying.  So the recipe is very forgiving, and all that really matters is what you prefer.

And if you made yogurt, but want it thicker, wrap it in a tea-towel or plop it in a coffee filter.  Put in in a colander over a bowl for a few hours.  Ta-da thicker yogurt.  Or yogurt cheese. depending on how long you left it.

Like I said... so many options.

If you are not a fan of the thermometer, and have a crock pot, check out this recipe:
Crockpot Yogurt
and then the add-on
Coconut Milk Crockpot Yogurt (will most likely work for all sorts of other non-dairy milks)

Starting the New Year off Right!

For Christmas I got a new Sous Vide.

This machine smacks of "geek-with-a-good idea."
Built mainly by engineers rather than designers,
the plug is even a standard computer power-source cable.

On one hand it is a glorified slow-cooker/crock-pot, and yet another kitchen gadget to take up EVEN more counter/cabinet space.  But the the fact that this slow cooker takes advantage of the high heat capacity of water, and has "within-a-degree" temperature control makes it so much more.

The Instruction Manual

So what to do first?  

Well, getting this book was a great start. 

But still, what was the perfect thing to wake up to on New Year's Day?

Dulce de Lèche of course!  

I may have had to taste for quality first thing.

How to do this?  Hunt and Gather through the internet and get THIS recipe 

"Sous Vide Dulce de Lèche" from SVKitchen.

The basics - Sweetened condensed milk, 180˚F, 13-15 hours. I threw in reusable jars while I was at it.

Pro-Tip: Start the caramel at 7pm. 

Then you don't need to wake up at 2am and 4am

 to check on the progress and 

remove the jars from the water bath.

 I'm going to make you go look at the recipe they worked out.  They spend their research time in a whole different world of food than I do.  And have been doing so for years - LOTS of good ideas, and well thought out and written.

Everything you could want in a caramel, plus some other things you didn't know were available - like warm-butter like spreadability, a "not-to-sweet" flavor that is like no other caramel you've ever tasted, and by getting up at 4am to take it out and let everything cool, it is ready for buttermilk pancakes!!!!

Yes, I still get name pancakes....

We had Apple Cider Vinegar Syrup as well, so Caramel & Apples with a tang...  Well, I'm ready for anything now!
Maybe even some sous vide steak, and later a crack at sous vide Crème Fraîche.