Page 26 - OCT 2020 Barbecue News Magazine

sous vide que
What Is Sous Vide Que?
Meathead, AmazingRibs.com
Sous vide is a fairly new cooking technique that is all about precision temperature control. We added the “Que” because, well, we love the way the process marries with barbecue and grilling. We love it so much that we wrote a whole ebook on the topic and you can get it on Amazon for only $3.99 here: https://tinyurl.com/sousvideque
Sous vide is a concept that barbecue fans know well: Low and slow cooking. In sous vide the meat (or eggs or veggies) is placed in a plastic bag, the air is removed, it is sealed, and the bag is slipped into a water bath that is warmed by a small heater to the precise temp you want, say 135°F, perfect medium rare for a steak. And it can stay there at that temp for hours!
With most conventional cooking the temperature of the air is much hotter than the target temperature of the food. Getting food cooked properly is like jumping off a train that won't stop at the station. You have a narrow window of time to jump, and it is easy to miss the station and overcook or undercook.
When cooking sous vide you are sitting in a chauffeured limo and the driver stops exactly where
you want and stays there until
you are good and ready to get
off. You set the finished tem- perature and the food goes to that number and stays like a well-trained dog. You cannot over or undercook.
It takes time to melt tough connective tissue, to render fat, and for enzymes to kick in and tenderize. With sous vide you can hold the food at the target temperature for hours, giving enzymes the time they need to do their thing, yielding extremely juicy and tender food.
The problem with sous vide is that the meat comes out of the bag butt ugly. Gray. No brown- ing, and brown is beautiful. Brown is from the Maillard re-
action. It happens when energy changes the sur- face chemistry of meat and creates a crust of great new flavors. Enter searing or smoking.
Searing
Many people sear in a hot pan or on a griddle. We like to sear on the grill. For that you need to ex- pose the meat’s surface to direct infrared radia- tion (IR) in the form of red glowing coals or flame. While not as quick as searing on the hot metal of a frying pan or griddle, IR transmits a lot more energy than hot air and heats food almost immediately. That’s why you can get a better sear from a $30 charcoal hibachi than a $1,000 pellet “grill” which heats mostly by indirect convection air energy like an indoor oven.
We love what a charcoal grill does for sous vide. It makes top notch sous vide que. Charcoal grills generate more IR than most gas grills, and the heat gets more intense as the layers of charcoal get thicker. Charcoal, especially if it is stacked 2 to 4 briquets deep, produces massive amounts of IR. Take the meat out of the sous vide bag and let it cool a bit so you don’t overcook the cen- ter, pat it dry so it doesn’t steam, and then toss it over the flame.
BarbecueNews.com - 26
OCTOBER 2020