Sous Vide Chili, Shortribs, and Chicken Breasts

Next post will not be about cooking, I promise.


Beef Short Ribs, Again
After the highly successful 72 hr, 55C shortrib trial, I decided to go for a more traditional braise texture. I smoked a slab of shortribs for a couple hours until they were near or at 50C, then cut them into individual ribs, bagged each, and put them into the water bath at 62C. I tried the first after 24 hours. It was tender and very good. The rest I left in for 48 hours. Even better! Very much a traditional braise texture -- flaking nicely, tender, moist -- quite different than the tender steak-like texture of the 55C version. They were not falling off the bone, but easy to eat without knife and fork. Rib meat should require a bit of pull to get off the bone anyway. To serve: coated with bbq sauce and popped under the broiler until browned and crispy.

Chili
While I had the aquarium going, I made a few bags of chili. Old-school Texas style chili: no onions, no tomatoes, no beans. Just brisket, beef fat, dried chilies, and salt. I picked up five bags of whole dried chili peppers from borough market and came up with a method for turning them into a chili paste:

1. stem, seed, and roughly chop the peppers
2. steep them in hot water from a kettle for 15 minutes or so, then drain
3. poach them in rendered beef fat over low heat for a while, then puree the whole thing

The result was very chili-y but pretty bitter. No worries.

For the meat I used a brisket flat, which went into the smoker for a couple hours, then I pulled it out and cubed it. Had to trim quite a bit but still ended up with plenty of beef. I coated the smoked, cubed beef with the chili paste and added salt, then divided between three bags. In they went -- 62C for 48 hours.

Result: really good! The bitterness went away, the chilies rounded out and mellowed out and blended beautifully with the beef. The beef got tender and the whole thing turned into a lovely, slightly fiery, smokey chili stew. Worth doing again. And I had extra chili paste I later used to make a more common pot of chili (with ground beef and tomatoes and onions).


Chicken Breasts
Well this was easy. I cut up a couple chickens, smoked the legs and wings, saved the carcasses for stock, and bagged the boneless breasts for a first sous vide chicken trial. (Incidentally, the smoked wings made fantastic buffalo wings later: crisped them in a smoking hot pan with butter, then coated and sauteed in a mix of equal parts butter and frank's hot sauce.) The chicken breasts went into the aquarium for 2 1/2 hours at 60C and turned out just about perfectly. One of them I just browned skin-side in a hot pan with butter. The other I didn't even bother, just cut it up for another dish. It's odd in that it goes against expectations. I normally do a perfectly good job of cooking chicken no matter what method I use, but here I still expected the thin end to be overdone. It wasn't of course. It was just as perfectly tender and done as the thickest part. Brilliant.