sous vide round tip asada tacos. coffee. 55C 32H

This taco might be a bit different from your usual asada taco but amazing nonetheless and if you love meat and you love tacos and you love sous vide cooking… then, yes, you must try this.

By definition most asada tacos feature carne asada which is grilled or pan-seared flank steak. I didn’t have any and as much as I love flank steak I tend to take sides with the less popular tougher cuts when cooked sous vide.  Why? because they can be transformed into something that’s quite possibly superior in flavor and texture via sous vide. And you’re still within rare to medium rare range… which is just amazing. 

Yeah, that’s the thing… I love rare or medium rare steak and without sous vide cooking, it’s nearly impossible to achieve the doneness level I’m looking for when cooking these tougher cuts. You can choose to sous vide your steak to whatever level you want but most of my posts on this blog are about applying the least amount of heat to cook ingredients. Just enough to ensure the food is cooked, the texture is what I like and proper pasteurization is achieved.

Enough with this sous vide babbling.  Get your gear ready because this is extremely simple once you have all the components ready. This is not a recipe per se. More like a reference guide if you’re interested in this kind of cooking. Let’s do this. 

pork centre loin sous vide : 57C 12h : 5% sugar %5 salt

If you’ve ever cooked pork loin this way you know it makes a terrific cold-cut. It also makes me wish I owned one of those fancy meat slicers. Since it’s cooked sous vide it’s extremely juicy. Some of that juiciness comes from gelatine/collagen so in order to get extreme juiciness you probably wanna apply some heat.  I’ve prepared pork this way in past occasions (see my previous boneless pork centre loin sous vide post) usually sticking to pasteurization-to-core cooking times which are usually less than 12 hours but out of convenience I decided to let it go overnight. I was a little worried the long cooking time would have a negative impact on the texture but to my surprise it was actually an improvement.  Another thing worth mentioning is that one if not the most important reason behind me buying this meat was the beautiful fat layer covering the top of it. I had to.  There was nothing I could do.

Easy Guinness Beef Stew

I’ve been wanting to post about this for a while and finally today found the time and the will power. This time I decided to photograph it instead of eating it before I could grab my camera. Beef stews are quite possibly my all time favorite thing to cook/eat/snort/drink/stare at during cold days and I’m documenting this recipe just in time before the hot weather returns to California and ruins one of the greatest winters this state has ever seen. The whole ritual is extremely relaxing and the outcome well… as you know… who doesn’t love a good beef stew. I thought about a sous vide version… but nah… I wanted that comfort factor pretty high. 

Christmas Bolognese Pasta

If you know or you know of somebody that holds the true original recipe for bolognese sauce please report back in the comment section if you can. I’m really curious. A simple google search returned over 200,000 result and after checking the first 2 pages of results it was obvious everybody has their own idea of what an authentic bolognese ragu should be. There are obviously the usual suspects in the ingredients list which I tried to keep in mind but seriously, cooking by most common denominator ingredients is plain boring, at least to me.

The absolutely required ingredients in bolognese ragu.

hmm…. meat? I think that’s mainly it. Which kind? well… in today’s world beef because it’s easier to find although historically veal is probably more proper. Pancetta can also be found in pretty much all the recipes I looked at. Then we have the aromatics like onion, celery and carrots. Carrots being fairly popular and onions being in pretty much all the recipes. Wine? hit or miss really. Milk? yep… another one that is popular but not standard. Garlic for sure. Nutmeg… yep. I think nutmeg is probably the only spice being added to this sauce in modern times. No bay leaves apparently. Pork? yep, it does appear but not consistently. Stock? yep… here and there although I should say.. if I can avoid it I will refrain from using stock unless absolutely necessary in a recipe.  

Hello World…and Hello Steak and Eggs

Just when you thought I would finally shut up, I come back again for more food blogging. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to blog about. Plenty has gone on but I don’t have a kitchen of my own yet. I left my old apartment, the rain and my job in Vancouver and decided to go back to LA which is where I currently am and the city in which I started my blog a few years ago. I won’t bore anyone with the details of the last 2 months of amazing and much needed time off. I’ve been relaxing , exercising , cooking and going to the beach. I’m pretty sure this idilic existence will be soon be over as I will need a source of income and a dose of reality but I will enjoy it while it lasts. Without my own kitchen (I haven’t rented a place yet), blogging and cooking have been less than usual but never come to a full stop. I have been posting a few things on instagram (hopefully you’re following me!) and I wanna share those here in the next few posts as I catch up.

I have posted about steak and eggs previously but I haven’t documented a more traditional presentation of this dish yet, well.. until just now. Facts about steaks and eggs. Yes, my favourite breakfast period. Any hour of the day is a good time for steak and eggs. Sunny side up is the path to enlightenment. Takes 10 mins to make, or 15 if you make home fries from scratch (the one in the picture took a lot longer but that’s because I wanted to get all fancy with my sous vide equipment and prolonged fridge curing times, but you can do without and it would seriously take like 10-15 mins).

Recipe list? seriously? eggs and a steak. Ok, throw some potatoes in there and bunch of rosemary. Fish sauce for those who aren’t afraid of the dark side. 

Oven Roasted Pork Shoulder.

I have posted on this same subject in the past at least once. It was one of my first posts so be kind. At the time,  I was cooking frantically then. I was reading a ton of stuff and trying to learn as quickly as possibly how to cook. It’s been a little over 4 years now. Constantly blogging about food has made the experience more rewarding. Without it it would have been well… just ok, not as fun. Oh, plus I got into the whole food photography thing which has been extremely fun and met a ton of really cool people.  Anyways, how about that roasted pork shoulder? Tonight, I watched 2 movies while this thing cooked away in the oven. Yeah, it’s that hard. The movies were The Martian… watched it twice.

Had I had the time to brine this thing I would have. But I didn’t. Well, more like I didn’t want to. I wanted it all over with by midnight. Only one way to get there this fast (I’m sure there are tons of ways but it wouldn’t sound as cool). Inject a lot of salt and garlic into the muscle with a needle. Nothing new here, but I’ve never done it. It was fun and kinda worked but will definitely need some fine tuning. Brining, marinading or dry curing is the way to go but it could take a few days with a large piece of meet like this one and let’s not get into equilibrium brining. Injecting the brine into the meat will cut down the time dramatically but it won’t be as good. Salt and time do wonderful things to meat. Reduce time, reduce awesomeness. I could do without all the awesomeness tonight seriously though. I’ve been waiting to use this bad boy (the needle that is) for a long time and tonight is the night.  Here’s what went down:

The Wings of Change! Miso Glaze. Game On!

Never thought it would come to this but here we are, game day, chicken wings. I officially joined the other 3 trillion food blogs featuring wings today in America. Nothing wrong with that. I love those marvellous things so why not make my own wings my own way. I have to be honest. I don’t know anything about football. I plan to keep it that way too. I’m more of a soccer guy… like every 4 years for a couple of weeks and then I’m left with ZERO interest in watching sports again.  But we’re here to show off these little sticky guys not to talk about sports, so hang in there. Who won this Super Bowl? The correct answer. I don’t give a S###.

This recipe like any other wings recipe is simplicity in itself. Wings are the fattiest part of the chicken. They only have a bit of meat and a delightful amount of awesome fatty chicken skin. They are packed with flavour and make the best finger food when prepared correctly which like I said, it’s really really simple. 

Sous Vide Beef Tenderloin Medallion. 52C 1h

Really quick post. Not really a recipe. I mean, the recipe is in the title if anything. Not much more to it other than mentioning that the golden brown crust came from flash frying the whole medallions in Ghee @ 450F for about 15 secs. I just wanted to log this to keep record since is probably the best piece of steak I’ve cooked in a long time and I am very proud of it. Salt the steaks. Add to the sous vide pouches right away, and add vegetable oil . I don’t have a vacuum sealer here in Vancouver, so using the water displacement method is good but isn’t great. Adding fat to the bag gets around the issue of having some pockets of air around the meat and it probably helps the meat retain its shape better. A theory of mine…. 😛 Anyways, cook away. Remove from baggies and serve immediately. No need to rest the steaks. They are already at the serving temperature. Happy Sat. I had fun taking some pics. Hope you enjoy.

Ox Tail Sous Vide. 100h 60C

I’ve been eating ox tail for a while. Specially when I was a kid. This is the kind of meat that is used to flavour beef soups and makes some wonderful stews. My mom loved using it a lot but hated eating it. She literally set it aside. Not a true carnivore… obviously. Me and my cat didn’t mind its rubbery cartilaginous texture. In fact, I truly love this stuff. Many awesome dishes can thank the humble Ox’s tail for their success. Its flavour is unique and doesn’t need much help from any seasoning to bring out its boldness. This is no shy cut of meat and it’s relatively inexpensive.

 

Like any super tough cut, long cooking times are required to break down the collagen and make the meat tender to eat. After reading a post from my friend Stefan on Ox tail cooked sous vide I was encouraged. I’m not gonna lie, when I read about the cooking time I was … ok, I was sold! It will require more or less 100 hours of slow cooking so plan ahead… like a real far ahead, specially if you’re planning on feeding other human beings at a dinner party.

If you are obsessed about meat and don’t fear the the oceans of time between the ordinary and the awesome then this article might be of your interest. Besides, at the next potluck when the subject of slow cooking gets brought up (which I’m sure it will since you’ll be there), guess who’s gonna blow them all away.  That’s right.

But joking aside, cooking ox tail this way has definitely taken this cheap cut to a whole new dimension of wow. The meat almost melts in the mouth. Another thing to notice is the presence of some maillard reaction or at least what seems to be so. I hope that’s the case. I know this reaction can happen at very low temperatures over a long period of time… basically what happened here. Wish I knew but maybe is just oxidation. 

Lamb Chops and Broccoli Pesto Spaghettini.

I’m not a fan of broccoli. I eat it. It’s green. Looks and tastes better smothered in ranch sauce for sure. I’m sure I’m not alone out there. I’m also pretty sensitive to bitter tastes. I drink coffee only because I have to, I can’t enjoy it. I hate dark chocolate, I seriously hate it.  You get the idea. So back to broccoli. When broccoli is cooked, things change for the better. The bitterness becomes more pleasant and when mixed with fat, then it goes from pleasant to delicious. It’s a stupid simple recipe but one that I adore. Probably why I adore milk chocolate too.

But wait, thought it was a pasta recipe, who invited lamb chops to this party? They don’t need no invite. I love them.  They looked awesome at the supermarket and I couldn’t resist. I got them 2 days ago. They have been curing in the fridge with some salt so I had to use them. I didn’t have time to figure out a way to incorporate all these ingredients in a clever way (a composed dish?… maybe another time) so I threw them together. I did drizzle almond oil all over the dish and that kinda helped me feel better about the final result. The thing is, taste-wise?  This dish was one to remember.

Now, a question arises. To deep fry or not to deep fry these chops? the correct answer is yes, specially if you’re time pressed and not hoping to earn a michelin star anytime soon. But the truth is, if you want acceptable results in a matter of 2 minutes which includes a golden brown crust from heaven then this is probably the way to go. Sure, there are fancy ways to ensure a perfect outcome but I have zero access to that fanciness so I proceeded with my rudimentary approach and hoped for the best. And great it was. Could be better? Sure. In less than 2 minutes. Nope.