j biesinger
TVWBB Platinum Member
For my birthday, my wife surprised me with an Anova immersion circulator, which was a big upgrade over my previous set up which was a large electric food warmer with a PID controller. The Anova is way fast, more consistent, and takes up less counter space when running. It pains me to think that at $200 it's cheaper than my old rig, that I put together a few years ago.
I figured I fire it up right away, as I had a nice little pork shoulder steak from local farm stashed in the freezer. It seemed a bit on the small side to feed the three of us, so I grabbed a pack of chuck steak that had been similarly stashed away. When I do chuck, I follow the time and temp for the short rib recipe in Momofuku (135* for 48 hours): it's about as low as I'm comfortable going for long periods, I find it works well for tough cuts, and the timing is convenient. So, both pork and beef shoulders took a 2 day swim.
here's the pork shoulder steak on the grill. I had hit it with equal parts of salt and sugar before bagging, so I only peppered it before grilling:
I don't like to salt beef before bagging because it can end up having a cured taste which reminds me of corned beef. These were salted and peppered and brushed with a little Korean style bbq sauce (in Momofuku it's referred to as red dragon sauce). You can see the bright red sides where the two pieces had been packed together in the bag. The exposed sides darkened during the 48 hrs:
We served the pork shoulder with a pickled shallot, buttermilk ranch sauce:
The beef was served with more of the red dragon and I garnished with some Trader Joe's freezed dried kimchi:
Both were pretty awesome: full flavor, very tender, with plenty of fat. You can see the single muscle I picked for the chuck was very nicely marbled, like high grade prime, or even a low grade wagyu. It's fun to think you are getting a premium amount of marbling at a bargain price, that you can treat just like a regular steak.
And I'll throw in another plug for the Momofuku cookbook. Everything here was based off of recipes in the book. I've been cooking out of this book for some time now, and find most of the recipes pretty easy to do, and many of the elements and techniques applicable to other things (as I did here with the beef dish)
I figured I fire it up right away, as I had a nice little pork shoulder steak from local farm stashed in the freezer. It seemed a bit on the small side to feed the three of us, so I grabbed a pack of chuck steak that had been similarly stashed away. When I do chuck, I follow the time and temp for the short rib recipe in Momofuku (135* for 48 hours): it's about as low as I'm comfortable going for long periods, I find it works well for tough cuts, and the timing is convenient. So, both pork and beef shoulders took a 2 day swim.
here's the pork shoulder steak on the grill. I had hit it with equal parts of salt and sugar before bagging, so I only peppered it before grilling:
I don't like to salt beef before bagging because it can end up having a cured taste which reminds me of corned beef. These were salted and peppered and brushed with a little Korean style bbq sauce (in Momofuku it's referred to as red dragon sauce). You can see the bright red sides where the two pieces had been packed together in the bag. The exposed sides darkened during the 48 hrs:
We served the pork shoulder with a pickled shallot, buttermilk ranch sauce:
The beef was served with more of the red dragon and I garnished with some Trader Joe's freezed dried kimchi:
Both were pretty awesome: full flavor, very tender, with plenty of fat. You can see the single muscle I picked for the chuck was very nicely marbled, like high grade prime, or even a low grade wagyu. It's fun to think you are getting a premium amount of marbling at a bargain price, that you can treat just like a regular steak.
And I'll throw in another plug for the Momofuku cookbook. Everything here was based off of recipes in the book. I've been cooking out of this book for some time now, and find most of the recipes pretty easy to do, and many of the elements and techniques applicable to other things (as I did here with the beef dish)
