Extreme Cooking Blog

Left-over pizza dough + leftover toppings + hot wood-fired oven = panouzzo.

I’ve had a couple of requests for a post about my sous vide battery. Here are the details:

• GE Countertop Roaster Oven.
  I purchased this at Walmart for around $30. This particular model doesn’t seem to be available, but GE and others such as NESCO make similar products. I particularly like the 18 quart capacity compared to the ~11 quarts of the SousVide Supreme. When the temperature of the water stabilizes, it doesn’t budge.
• Auberins Temperature Controller
  I purchased this from Auberins for $140. Although the large mass of water in the roaster maintains an extremely accurate temperature, it can take some initial fiddling to get it to stabilize. With this device, I just set it to the desired temp and it goes there with very little bounce. Of course, the moment you add the pouches to the roaster, the temp is going to drop, but the controller recovers quickly.
• Water Circulator
  This little immersible pump was $22 from Amazon. I’m not sure how necessary it is since the the large thermal mass of water isn’t going to permit much in the way of temp gradients. It probably isn’t going to help pockets of water trapped between pouches, but the large capacity and horizontal orientation of the roaster makes this less of a problem. It is VERY IMPORTANT to note that this pump is rated to 95F. I have had no problems running it for a few days at 146F, but I keep a close eye on it. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Maybe someday I’ll get a professional-quality immersion circulator, but for now I see no reason for it.
• Chamber Sealer
  This is definitely the most important part of my setup. There are many who say a FoodSaver or other household-class vacuum sealer is adequate. I’ve used one for several years with OK results. The main problem is that the FoodSaver really, really wants to suck out any liquid in the pouch along with the air. Even when there is no additional liquid, you can see juices being sucked out of the meat. Freezing the liquids helps some, but trapped air is often released during cooking. The resulting air pockets can produce uneven cooking since heat transfer from air is different from that of water. Floating pouches can also be pain, although racks and other other kludges can help. I purchased the VacMaster VP210C from Sam’s Club for $932 including shipping. I use it for so many different tasks. Perhaps not as good as the higher-quality commercial grade ones that cost a few thousand bucks, but I haven’t encountered any limitations. (Well, there was the time I didn’t have the sealing time set long enough, When the pressure equalized, some of the marinade shot out of the pouch and covered every inch of the interior of the chamber with sticky sauce.) Lots of swearing and paper towels later, all is well. Many of the recipes in Thomas Keller’s magnificent book, Under Pressure, really require a chamber sealer. My sous vide efforts have been an order of magnitude more successful since I started using one.

So I’ve long been a big fan of pastrami from scratch, but this corned beef – cured beef brisket – was amazing after being cooked at 146F for 48 hours. Tender, juicy, and delicious.

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Peter Reinhart, in his Brother Juniper’s Bread Book, claims that these are the kind of sticky buns they make in Philadelphia. I would have no way of knowing. But I can tell you that these are sensational – so much better than the empty, fast-food versions.

Reinhart’s book is much more than just a collection of recipes. It includes essays about baking as a metaphor for many aspects of our lives. In the case of sticky buns, which are loaded – really loaded – with unessential ingredients,  the profound satisfaction from eating them converts them to something which is totally essential. I agree!!!!!

Took some of the leftover pork from yesterday (see below) with the caramelized pineapple and some Oaxacan cheese and stuffed them into roasted poblanos.

Of course carnitas and tacos al pastor are different dishes. And they definitely do NOT involve sous vide techniques. But stay with me here and see what may be the best dish I have ever cooked.

I took a big pork shoulder roast (picnic portion) and cut it into big chunks.The skin/rind was removed. The pork chunks went into pouches with my standard al pastor marinade, sealed, and left to marinate overnight. The next day the pouches went into a 154F water bath and left for 24 hours. The chunks were throughly dried and then fried in very hot lard for about 1 minute to form a nice crust.

Meanwhile the skin/rind was cut into small pieces and fried in lard for cracklings (chicharrones). Some dried chile-spiced pineapple chunks were sealed in a pouch with some orange juice to rehydrate for a few hours in the water bath. These were then caramelized with some onion with the cracklings:

The pork was fall-apart tender and extremely juicy due to the lower cooking temp.

Served on very fresh corn tortillas with some of the marinade that had been cooked down into a “manchamantel”-like sauce.

I love burrata. When I saw some at Trader Joe’s, I was excited. When I got home and tried it, I was bummed. No flavor. Yucky texture. Pizza was OK, but I won’t be buying this stuff again:

Did the buttermilk brine & all that, but with a major departure. I love big, meaty chicken thighs – skin on/bone in. The problem is that the crust can be almost burnt before the inside is completely cooked. So I brined them in buttermilk in a plastic pouch, and then cooked them sous vide @ 170F for a few hours; they were completely cooked, but still big and juicy. Then breaded them as usual, but only fried them for a few minutes until the crust was done. Very tender and juicy – not greasy. Much easier also. With mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, and green peas

The shell has some toasted almond flour in it. Just because.