Slow cooked lamb shank with gremolata and butternut squash gratin. These lamb shanks were the first in what I’m sure will be a long line of tests to find the best way to cook them sous vide. Last week’s 72-hour short ribs made it clear that very low temperatures and very long cook times could do wonders for these tougher, more flavorful cuts. The problem is, most of the recipes online tell you to cook lamb shanks at 180 for some number of hours. At that temperature, what’s the point? I want to use sous vide to make sure these babies come out medium rare and tender, not just super tender. But, lamb shanks also have all kinds of connective tissue that only just begins to break down at 140 degrees.

So, that’s where I started with my first test—a 140 degree water bath for 48 hours, with nothing other than salt and pepper. A quick sear at the end leaves the shanks looking like you see in the picture above. The results are delicious, but not quite right yet. On the plus side, the flavor is incredible. Braised shanks will never have such a deep lamb flavor or be cooked to a perfect medium rare like these are. But, at this temperature and duration, too much of the connective tissue remained in tact. It was fine and didn’t detract too much from the experience, but I would never serve them to guests that way. The plans for future testing include extending the time to 72 hours, raising the temperature a degree or two, and adding fat to the bag to essentially turn the process into confit.

Turkey breast, cooked sous vide with herbs and rendered bacon fat. I picked up a two pound turkey breast at Whole Foods for some sous vide testing. For this version, I removed the skin, seasoned the breast with kosher salt and pepper, and dropped it into the vacuum bag with a couple of ounces of chilled, rendered bacon fat and some herbs (sage, thyme, whatever). I cooked the breast for 4 hours at 145 degrees. This was a good test—the bird came out very moist and flavorful with great texture. It’s going to be great for sandwich meat as well.

Eight-hour duck legs sous vide. I eat duck all the time. Part of it is that I can get amazing duck from Hudson Valley Duck Farms every weekend at the Greenmarket. But, I also just love duck for it’s rich flavor that can vary quite a bit by breed, relative healthiness, and moderate flexibility. Anyway, I’ve only just started exploring cooking duck sous vide. It seems there are a couple of basic camps on what to do: either cook the duck at high heat (176-180F) for 6-10 hours or cook it low and slow a la confit. So far I’m working out of the high heat camp, and the results have been great.

If you have a setup that can keep water at 178F for 8 hours, there is no easier way to make delicious duck legs. Simply vacuum seal the legs with salt, pepper, and any herbs you might like, then cook for 8 hours. Then remove from the bath, pat dry, and crisp the skin in a nonstick pan as I’m doing in the photo. If you’re serving the duck with risotto (which you should be!) transfer the liquid that accumulated in the duck bag to pyrex cup, skim the fat, and use it in place of the last half cup or so of stock that you would’ve added to the risotto.

After a little over a year of beer cooler sous vide, I finally graduated to the Sous Vide Supreme when it became available at Costco (with Costco’s return policy and pricing the decision was pretty easy!). There are enough articles about sous vide cooking and these machines that I don’t need to bother going into that here. After a few weeks of use, there are a lot of things I like about having a dedicated sous vide setup, but here are two that I hadn’t thought much about before. First, the ability to take food straight from the freezer and into a water bath is an amazing convenience. I’m horrible at remembering to defrost all of the great things in my freezer. Second, it’s ridiculously hot in NYC right now, and I’m loving that I can cook almost anything I want without adding any heat to my apartment.

In this picture are a couple of chicken breasts happily cooking at 148 degrees. One for me with salt, pepper, and thyme, and another for the cat (don’t judge) with no seasoning. I’m convinced that it’s impossible to cook a chicken breast using any other method as well as you can with sous vide.

Extra thick Kurobuta pork chop from Lobel’s. These pork chops from Lobel’s are amazing—and the thicker the better. But really thick pork chops require a little extra care in cooking so they don’t dry out. First, I rubbed the chops on all sides with kosher salt and chipotle, then put each into a ziplock bag with a quarter cup of my favorite BLiS Bourbon Barrel Maple Syrup, making sure all of the air was sucked out. Then, they went into a 141 degree water bath for about an hour and a half, until the internal temp was 140 degrees, perfect medium rare. Finally, they went into a super hot cast iron skillet for about a minute per side of browning and caramelization of the syrup that stuck to the outsides.

I recently made a discovery in my sous vide cooking: I have a big stock pot that when filled with water and placed over low flame will maintain a 141-degree water bath for hours on end. If I put my ingredients in a submerged steamer basket, I don’t have to worry about them getting too close to the heat source and cooking unevenly. It’s lucky that this is the ideal temperature for cooking pork, but it doesn’t work for much of anything else. Until I move out of Manhattan and into a kitchen large enough to support a dedicated immersion circulator station, hacks like these and the beer cooler are incredibly useful.

Bryan Flannery beef rib cap sous vide. I snapped this photo as we were plating these at a dinner at Steve and Patti’s a few weeks ago, but I just keep forgetting to post it. I first wrote about cooking one of Bryan’s rib caps sous vide almost a year ago, and it’s been one of the most visited pages on my blog in spite the fact that I didn’t include much actual info. Here’s a bit more.

Searching around the web, it seems that most people—including Bryan—suggest cooking beef rib caps to medium rare, perhaps in the 135F-145F range to render and integrate as much of the fat as possible. This makes a lot of sense, but Steve and I have come to the conclusion that cooking them sous vide to a lower temperature puts the steaks in just as good of a place while keeping the rare beef eaters (aka, us) happy. In this case we cooked the meat in our beer cooler set up at a temperature range of mostly 120F-125F for 3 hours and 40 minutes. It came out at 120 and we seared it for a couple of minutes in a smoking hot skillet, so the final internal temperature was probably more in the 125-130 range. It really is as easy as that, and the result was perfect. Rib caps are rich enough that you can literally serve them on their own with salt and pepper. They do pair well with other rich garnishes and sauces—try gorgonzola butter (pictured here) and a red wine reduction.

This week we imported many, many pounds of salmon and halibut from Pike Place Fish in Seattle. We enjoyed butter poached halibut cheeks over Israeli couscous with red and green chiles, BLiS Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup glazed king salmon filets sous-vide, and cedar plank grilled coho salmon steaks.  The halibut was great, despite having been frozen. The bourbon-maple king salmon was also really good, although we are still working on this and Stephen has a great post about this round of salmon sous-vide. The cedar plank coho (my only photo of the night as I was being social) was also great, but sadly led to the demise of the cedar plank.

The salmon from Pike Place was good and certainly better than any we get out east. But, Bryan Flannery’s from previous meal was better.

Rib Cap Sous Vide. As part of the great sous vide experiment, we wanted to try some beef. We went back and forth on cut; we wanted something that would benefit from the sous vide method but also didn’t want to have to cook it for 48 hours (like Wagyu short ribs, mmm). Anyway, Bryan Flannery hooked us up with one of his excellent rib caps. The idea was that the sous vide method would get the rib cap cooked uniformly just above rare and melt/ integrate a good portion of the fat into the meat. I’d say our idea was solid, and the execution was almost there. There is no question this was delicious and cooked through perfectly… really this was better than any rib cap we’ve done before. But, I think a bit more time in the cooler might have integrated more of the fat.

This was pretty easy. The beef came vacuum sealed, so we just dropped into the water bath and let it go for 40 minutes. Out of the water onto a super hot grill for about 2 minutes total for a good sear all around. Sprinkled with salt and pepper and let rest about 15 minutes.

Maple-Bourbon Salmon sous vide and sauteed ramps. My pictures of this meal are terrible… but despite the pics, this was an incredibly good piece of salmon. Here’s what we did:

First, we brined the salmon as per various recommendations. Next, the salmon was patted dry and dropped in a ziploc bag along with about a tablespoon each of decent bourbon and maple syrup. At this point, the air gets sucked out of the bag, which turns out to be the equivalent of some kind of bourbon vapor bong hit. Then, into a 61 degrees Celcius water bath for 14 minutes. Out of the bag, onto the plate, sprinkled with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. This is seriously one of the best pieces of salmon I’ve ever eaten.

We also tried fish with no maple or bourbon added to the bag that was excellent but missing that little something extra. Next time, I think it is worth exploring doing something with the salmon (and syrup and bourbon) post sous vide. Maybe really quickly searing and glazing it in a non-stick skillet with some of the liquid. Will also try this with BLiS bourbon barrel aged maple syrup rather than the combo.