I have a few pieces of NY strip steak. This morning I have an idea what to do with them other than the usually ways. I decided to give sous-vide a try. Sous-vide has been in rage in recent years, started with restaurant chefs. Now there are specialty equipment for sous vide that comes in all price points, complexity, and quality.
this is one examples of a decent sous vide water bath - electronically controlled (via a PID controller) heating and built in water circulation - all for a princely sum of $999 usd
For my first sous-vide experiment, I only want to invest $0.20. While I have no qualms in buying cooking equipment, I am not a believer of small kitchen appliances in general, with the exception of time tried purpose designed few.
My recently acquired vacuum bag sealer machine make this experiment easy. Well the $0.20 investment is the cost of a 8x12 inch vacuum bag that is a consumable in modern sous-vide. Better living though plastic.
I season both side of the steak with salt and pepper, and into the vacuum bag it goes. Next is to set up a low temperature bath. The key is to be able to maintain the temperature range of the water bath between 131 F and 140 F, according to wikipedia quick basics on sous-vide. I suspect a few degrees off should not be a big deal, as in most cooking, unless you are in the molecular gastronomy thing.
I know from experience with my cooking equipment that I can set this up without too much fuss. I have hacked the burners on my Dynasty gas range so that they can be set to the slowest flames without going out. In fact they are so low that initially after being lit, the flames will goes out. Only once the hob is hot after a few minutes that a thermal conviction is built that I can lower the flame to the minimum. It is so low that the 5 tiny flames in the center of the hob can be blown out just by me walking pass the range.
I selected one of my French made copper Dutch oven as the vessel for the water bath. I place a stainless steaming wire rack on the bottom to prevent the vacuum pack of the steak from sinking to the bottom of the vessel where the temperature would be tens of degrees higher. After the chef done the prep, the remaining cooking is left to the sous chef Chronos.
I monitor the temperature of the water bath in the copper Dutch oven periodically. It takes a bit of elbow grease initially to bring the temperature up - that of the water bath as well as the latent thermally poor conductivity of the bag of steak. However after about an hour the temperature stabilized and I have to offset the vessel from the burner hob so only about 35% of the hob area is used. My choice of the copper Dutch over turns out to be excellent.
I measure the water temperature in many spots and depths in the vessel and they read consistently within close to 1 degree F, thanks to the excellent heat conductivity of copper - even with the Dutch over offset on only 1/3 of the burner hob. I want to point out that during all this time the Dutch over is covered with the lid to maintain a very constant temperature inside. I was very surprised that I could easily keep the temperature at 140 F within 1 degree through out the entire cooking duration. My fine adjustment of the temperature is the amount I offset away from the burner hob as the flame was at the minimum.
I'd like to think of sous-vide as a process of two-variable integration, in which the variables are time and temperature. The longer the time, the lower the temperature. The higher the temperature, the shorter the time. The super-expensive sous-vide equipment vendors like to tout the sub-decimal accuracy of their PID controlled heating and circulation system. I think in the grand schemes of things this matter few except those in the pursuit of molecular gastronomy feeding the hedge fund executives dining on financiers' expense account.
I did some research on the web to get a rough idea how long this inch-thick steak take to cooked. I settled on 4 hours. I can see there is quite a bit of juice released from the meat when I retrieve it at the 4 hour mark.
the appearance after 4 hours at 140 F
I capture the juice and used it to stew some Napa cabbage and reduce it to concentrate the flavors.
The steak does look quite dull on the outside. To cure that I pan sear the two sides on high heat to bring it to life, and the dinner is ready. There is no letting the steak rest as the temperature is already lower than you would normally eat a piece of steak.
juicy, tender, and beefy in flavor
I was aiming for a closer to medium doneness and it was what I got. Sous-vide steak with no specialty equipment.
I can see if you run a restaurant, an investment of a very good sous-vide would be a no-brainer for the time and trouble it saves. For me for now, I don't see a reason to.
I can see how you can turn a cheap cut of meat into very tender and tasty meal with this technique. Chinese has a cooking technique that is in effect a low tech sous-vide. The technique has been used for centuries. It involves placing the ingredients with water in a deep ceramic pot with lid. The ceramic pot is in turn half submerge in a water bath on a much larger vessel also with lid. By letting the water of the large vessel heat at a temperature much lower than the boiling point, the ingredients is cook slowly and gently. Most important, like in French sous-vide the nutrients are not destroyed and the fragrant molecules are not driven away. Most often the ingredients use are very expensive delicacies. I will write a post about it in the future.
see also:
sous-vide experiment 真空低溫烹調法 - part 2
