Quick post – I’ve been on the road for work all week, with little time to blog. Geez, real job getting all in the way and stuff.
I’ve been cooking a fair amount lately, including having plenty of fun with my sous vide cooker. I did a beef chuck roast for about 40 hours at 137F. I read that you’re not supposed to put herbs in direct contact with the meat in the bag, as it gives it an intense and unpleasant herb flavor on the points of contact, but I wanted to see what would happen if I did. I could have just read Under Pressure and accepted that statement as fact, but I think it pays to figure things out for yourself. So I chopped up a bunch of thyme and parsley and threw it in there.
The result – it did have an odd flavor, but I couldn’t pin point the herbs. It had an odd, game-like flavor, which could be a result of the herbs, but perhaps it was just a function of cooking it for so long. Really, it wasn’t super savory, juicy, or satisfying. The flavor was intensely beef-y. I should have done some of the chuck without the herbs to compare. It’s still fun to experiment though.
Eggs continue to provide the highest return on investment from precise temperature control. I like the white to be somewhat firmly set, with a yolk that is not super runny, but not approaching gummy either. Somewhere between 63 and 64C.
I took a video to show how the yolk looks. Sorry it’s blurry at times; it’s tough to manually focus, hold the camera, and fiddle with the egg at the same time.
This weekend I’m going to prepare some duck breast sous vide, I’m hoping that works out well. I like duck at a very precise level of doneness – a true medium rare. Too rare and I think duck breast is too chewy, but I certainly don’t want to approach medium as it becomes dry and lacking in flavor. I may also try a quick “confit” of duck legs in the bag with a few tablespoons of duck fat, and compare those to a true confit.
