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For the carnivores: Kenji does it again
I am, at this moment, cooking a steak for my lunch.
The stove is not on, nor is the oven. The grill is cold. No microwave is involved. Yet I am assured of delicious, tender steak before the end of the next half-hour.
The secret is sous-vide. And Kenji, bless his foodie heart, figured out how to easily (and cheaply!) perform sous-vide in an ice chest.
No, I'm not kidding. I pulled out the standard-size ice chest, filled it with a combination of hot tap water and boiling water, and put two gallon ziplocs full of a chuck cross-rib roast (sliced into one-inch-thick steaks) into it, along with the attendant garlic, pepper, thyme, and rosemary. With the probe telling me the water was a comfortable 136F, I put the lid on, and it's been sitting there for about a half-hour. It can continue to sit all afternoon if I need it to.
I've done this before a year or so ago, with a standard chuck steak. The cheaper and tougher the meat, the better it turns out. And boy, is it worth it, to have melt-in-your-mouth seasoned steak for $2.99/pound. I'll freeze what I don't eat today, as it's easy to thaw and sear it later.
There's just something so delightfully wrong about getting excellent steak by putting a very cheap cut in warm water and ignoring it. The only reason I don't do it more often is the hassle of pulling out and filling the ice chest... which is really not much of an obstacle. Hmm.
The stove is not on, nor is the oven. The grill is cold. No microwave is involved. Yet I am assured of delicious, tender steak before the end of the next half-hour.
The secret is sous-vide. And Kenji, bless his foodie heart, figured out how to easily (and cheaply!) perform sous-vide in an ice chest.
No, I'm not kidding. I pulled out the standard-size ice chest, filled it with a combination of hot tap water and boiling water, and put two gallon ziplocs full of a chuck cross-rib roast (sliced into one-inch-thick steaks) into it, along with the attendant garlic, pepper, thyme, and rosemary. With the probe telling me the water was a comfortable 136F, I put the lid on, and it's been sitting there for about a half-hour. It can continue to sit all afternoon if I need it to.
I've done this before a year or so ago, with a standard chuck steak. The cheaper and tougher the meat, the better it turns out. And boy, is it worth it, to have melt-in-your-mouth seasoned steak for $2.99/pound. I'll freeze what I don't eat today, as it's easy to thaw and sear it later.
There's just something so delightfully wrong about getting excellent steak by putting a very cheap cut in warm water and ignoring it. The only reason I don't do it more often is the hassle of pulling out and filling the ice chest... which is really not much of an obstacle. Hmm.