Mystery Meat

It seems a general consensus among most senior cooks that meat cookery is the easiest. It is a simple matter of heat transfer, nothing more. An experienced cook will - through years of experience - be able to easily intuit the doneness of a piece of meat.

We've come to the point technologically where we are able to affordably and precisely control our cooking temperatures to an exact degree. Intuition is traded for cognition. Thus the question: what is the optimal temperature at which we cook beef? what is the optimal temperature at which to cook an egg? pork shoulder? a potato? lentils? lambs tongue? chicken thighs?

Stephen Baldwin's comprehensive guide to sous vide cooking contains great recipes, temperatures and times. However, they are contradictory with personal experience and other reearch.

I'm finding myself in my kitchen about to make a braise sous vide and not knowing what temperature to cook it at. Should we go 55C for 48 hours? 60C for 24 hours? 80C for 8 hours? Every source calls for different times and temperatures. Since the method of sous vide cooking is relatively new and not widely used outside professional kitchens, recipes can be difficult to come by. While I can braise a short rib to amazing succulence using a traditional method, I can't honestly tell you what to set the dial to before dropping the bag in the water.

Preliminary Research:

I use short rib as an example because it is very popular tough cut of beef. I've seen recipes that range from 4-36 hours at 55-90C. Short rib is likely optimally cooked to a range of a few degrees. Why, if we can control temperature to the exact degree, is there a 35 degree discrepency?

Beef contains natural enzymes that weaken the connective tissue that makes it tough. These enzymes are most active between 50-55C where they become denatured (mcgee 152). However the protein mysosin coagulates at these temperatures which accounts for some of the firmness of underbraised short rib (mcgee 150). A traditional pot roast or braise will be cooked until the collagen dissolves into component proteins, gelatin which creates a succulent mouthfeel characteristic of braised meats even though the meat itself is somewhat dry. The temperature at which collagen dissolves, 60-70C, also causes muscle fibers to shrink and squeeze out most of the moisture (mcgee 150).

Cooking tough cuts of beef between 50-55C creates a curious product. The meat is medium in doneness and takes on a wonderfully tender texture like tenderloin. The surface acquires an extremely unnerving greenish color. Will people be thrown off by a tender pink short rib? Cooking it over 55C on the other hand will result in the denaturing of the tenderizing enzymes without necessarily dissolving the tough collagen. In theory one could braise short rib indefinitely between 55-60C and never have a tender product. I actually did this by mistake and was very confused why my 18 hour braise was tough as nails.

A possible solution might be to cook the short rib at 50-55C for several hours to allow for tenderization and then raise the temperature to 60-65 for a shorter time to denature the collagen.

This is all very interesting to learn the science behind cooking meat. However, when I'm in the kitchen I just want to know the temperature at which to set the device and could care less about myosin, collagen etc. I don't believe in a magic temperature, I do however intend to answer all these questions I ask above.

Elements of Chili

What's in chili you ask?

"Well, its a stew."

Go on.

"Its got lots of meat, beef, pork."

Yes.

"Its got lots of cumin, and spices."

Ok.

"You usually put beans of some kind in it too."

So lets cook the meat the best way we know how - under vacuum at a precise temperature so as to denature the collagen and increase tenderness without over coagulating protein causing the meat to "dry out."

Lets cook the beans the best way we know, soak them overnight and braise them slowly with lots of aromatics in a highly seasoned liquid.

Lets take the additional aromatics, spices, onions, garlic and tomatoes and cook them but keep them fresh so they contribute to the dish.

Then we can put it all back together. That's chili right? What's the big deal?

This is a dish I've probably made 100 times but never like this. Always a tomato based stew heavily spiced with cumin and chili powder. I've had a standard method - sweat the onions, garlic, add spices, tomato etc. Add the beans and meat and braise until tender. The book was essentially closed on chili.

I would never be so pretentious as to "deconstruct" something. Nor was it a premeditated disruption of method, just a curiosity, caprice and circumstance that led to a "composed braise." I'm finding this idea of isolating technique interesting but so completely unprofound the more I think about it. The oxymoronical notion of an "instant stew" is equally amusing.

A major initial concern is that it would eat disjointed, taste composed, but this was not the case. All the elements of a great chili were there they just came together at the end - the savory richness of the pork from both the meat and the cuisson, the heartiness of the beans and the sweetness and brightness from the vegetables and spices.

What was most exciting is it had a vibrance and a freshness difficult to impart on braises. I've folded in raw purees and used various acids to achieve the same effect without as much success.

For the meat:
1400g pork shoulder
7g salt
2g sugar
2g paprika
.5g cumin
.5g chili powder
.2g cinnamon

rub the meat with spices and seasonings. Cook sous vide until very tender. 80C 8-12 hours. 60C for 24-36 hours. Chill, freeze or use immediately.

For the Beans:
250g dried pinto beans
120g medium onion
4 cloves garlic
60g smoked bacon
1 chili brulee
1 sprig thyme

Soak the beans overnight. Take care to make sure the water is clean and changed at least twice through the process.

Combine all ingredients and add 750g water. Bring to a simmer. Make sure the liquid is well seasoned. Cook at 85C for 8-12 hours. Chill the beans in the cuisson until ready to use.

To finish:

100g onion small dice
50g smoked bacon, baton
5 cloves garlic, minced
30g tomato paste
40g brown sugar
230g red wine vinegar
90g tomato puree
3g paprika
1.5g cumin
1.5g chili powder
.2g cinnamon

Render the bacon in a little olive oil over low heat. Cook until crispy. Add the onion and sweat until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook another 5 minutes. Add the spices and tomato paste cook 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Add the sugar and vinegar and reduce au sec. Add the tomatoes and cook until for about 10 minutes. add the liquid from the pork and a little of the bean cooking liquid. Add the beans and meat back in to finish.

Strawberries

1000g strawberries
150g sugar

full vacuum. Macerate at room temperature 1 hour. 90C for 15 minutes. Depending on the time frame and desired result you can simply refrigerate for a few days or freeze and thaw to extract the juice.

Were using this as a base for a jam.

Guerilla Food Photography

As I began to piece together my "studio" in chicago, I found myself greatly satisfied at how much one can accomplish at very little expense. The photos I post are prepared with skill and great care, however, I am not using a professional studio or thousands of dollars of specialized equipment.

The beauty of digital photography is the process is greatly simplified from the convultion that is film. The lab, the processing, the printing are all consolidated to a home computer. White balancing film is difficult and expensive. It requires special equipment, high temperature resin gels and filters. With digital you can manually white balance to literally any continous spectrum light source - especially shooting in .RAW. This makes it possible to use a $5 worklight from the hardware store for shooting. Tungsten studio lights, on the other hand, cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Are there drawbacks? of course.

My backdrop is a $.50 piece of white poster board supported by a cardboard box I got for free.



I used to spend a lot of time searching for nice photo plates. A high end restaurant will easily spend $40 or more on a single service piece. Most of the time I erase the plate anyway in post, for one reason or another. So instead, a 12x12 white square of plexiglass ($2) stands in for bernadaud china.

There is no way around the cost of a camera and adobe photoshop. I shoot on a canon rebel xsi. However - before switching to a digital slr, I used a canon powershot that cost approx. $300 for years. These were difficult shoots because of the limitations of the camera. My point is that it is possible to create a high quality image without a prosumer digital camera.

New Photos

It occurred to me at some point over the last few weeks of building the website that all of these images are at least a year old. The last time I had an actual shoot was last summer. I also realized how much I miss it. A new studio is already in the works - as impractical as it is in this tiny chicago apt. Hopefully I'll have some new material soon.