Shallow fried 72 hours sous vide short ribs
Beef short ribs are often used as an example of what can be achieved with sous vide cooking and a couple of days ago, I actually understood why. Last Saturday I picked up a couple of short ribs at my butcher. Usually I braise them at low heat for a rather long time in my oven. This time I decided to go sous vide. I always hesitated to cook stuff for more than 24 hours, just because I have only one immersion circulator and I want to have access to it when I want and if I have something cooking, I just can’t.
My son who leaves in France came to spend a week with me in London. He has a couple of favorite dishes that he always wants me to cook for him so I knew that I wouldn’t sous vide much during the week, that was the perfect pretext to go with a 72 hours dish.
Shallow fried Sous vide short ribs with shiitake duxelle, balsamic vinegar glazed pepper and goose fat sauté potatoes. Serves 2- 2 nice pieces of short ribs.
- Shiitake mushrooms.
- 3 bell peppers.
- 4 potatoes cubed.
- Goose fat.
- Butter.
- Modena balsamic vinegar.
- Shallots.
- Garlic.
- Lemon juice.
- Kosher salt.
- Black pepper.
The first thing you have to do is to prep and cook the meat. Short ribs can be cooked for 36, 48 or 72 hours, for this recipe I went with 72 hours, just because… I could! I vacuum packed the meat and set my circulator to 59°C for 72 hours.
Once you’ve done that, you can go ahead and live your life for the next three days. My kitchen is quite small, so I decided to put my circulator on my living room table, it’s another aspect of cooking sous vide I like, I can cook in any room I want, try to move your oven to the bedroom.
Three days later the meat was ready. It was time for me to get the rest of the dish ready as well. I prepped my bell peppers and the mushrooms that would later become a duxelle.
Duxelle is a mixture of finely chopped mushrooms with garlic and shallots, often used in the confection of Beef Wellington. If this case I went for a coarse chop.
I also started my potatoes, I peeled them, and blanched them in salted water until almost cooked.
For those of you who are helpless in a kitchen, first: What the hell are you doing here? then, here’s a simple trick for blanching vegetables. Every vegetables that grow underground need to be started in cold water and brought to a boil, every vegetables growing over ground need to be submerged in already boiling water. It’s a simple rule and it works.When the potatoes were tender but not entirely cooked I shocked then in cold iced water to stop the cooking and left them on the side for later use.
I turned my attention to the bell peppers and the mushrooms. In a first pan I sauté-ed the peppers until tender with a little bit of sugar, then de-glazed them with Balsamic vinegar until the peppers were all coated with the resulting syrup.
In the second pan I melted a knob of butter and added the mushroom when he butter was foaming. left them alone until they got some colours and tossed in the shallots and the garlic.
Then it was the turn of the meat. At first I just wanted to sear it in a touch of oil, but because I was planning on using goose fat for the potatoes I thought that it wouldn’t do the meat any harm to be subjected to the same treatment, so I melted a good inch or so of goose fat in two cast iron skillets and heated them up to 180°C.
Goose fat as a high smoking point, around 190°C [375°F], so it can be used in the same manner you would rapeseed oil [Canola oil] or corn oil or any other high smoking point oil.I took the pouches off the water, opened them and sliced the incredibly tender short ribs. I quickly shallow fried the meat in the goose fat enough to get a crispy outside and in the second pan I sauté-ed the potatoes.
It was time to assemble the dish.
It was absolutely fantastic, the meat was so crispy on the outside. Imagine a Maillard reaction on acid, fork tender inside and to top it all up, it was cooked to a perfect medium rare.
So was the 72 hours of cooking were worth it? I have to say, taste wise it was definitely worth it. But it still a very high planning dish. I read online other recipes calling for 24 or 48 hours cooking time and I will try those out to see if there’s a difference in tenderness. When I’m saying that it was tender, I’m not ,kidding it was more tender than the most tender braised version I ever done. My son was in heaven and wanted me to cook it again the next day, which of course wasn’t possible. I think that next time I’ll cook a bigger batch and will freeze some for later.
As a side note, if you attempt very long cooking, be wary of evaporation, even at low temperatures the water will evaporate, the SWID that I’m using has a fail safe that stop the machine if the level of water reach a certain minimum point, so there’s no danger of overheating, but it is still a pain to wake up a morning or come back after work and finding your circulator off for an unknown amount of time. For those of you who don’t have a container with a lid I would recommend to use plastic film to seal the vapor in.
English
French
Coucou, c’est ta soeur, la plus p’tite, la chieuse et celle qui cuisine comme une quiche (expression bien française qui sous entend que je cuisine mal, voir très mal). Alors si j’avoue ne pas savoir cuisiner (comme mon frère et ma soeur), en revanche, je sais très bien déguster les plats qu’on me sert. Alors si tu veux bien Nico, je commande un travers de boeuf, (tout carré comme sur la photo) pour le mois de mai quand je vais venir et en dessert un truc au chocolat étonnant comme tu sais faire, voilà ! A nos papilles !
Bisous
Dida
These look really good and i really want to try a 72hr sous vide (24hr has been the longest yet and that was great)! I’m struggling to find “short ribs” in the uk, the local butcher isn’t great and i can’t find them online anywhere …can you point me in the right direction – are they sold as a different cut in the uk?!
Many thanks
…ps – i’ve enjoyed browsing your blog!
If you’re in London, Whole food market is the best place for Short ribs. Selfridges on Oxford street is another good spot. I’m surprise that you can’t find them at your local butcher.
If he doesn’t have them in store he should be able to order them for you.
Cheers
N.
If you’re in London, Whole food market is the best place for Short ribs. Selfridges on Oxford street is another good spot. I’m surprise that you can’t find them at your local butcher.
If he doesn’t have them in store he should be able to order them for you.
Cheers
N.
Hi
In the UK they also call them thin ribs or Jacob’s ladder. Any decent butcher that breaks down his own carcasses will be able to get them for you. Good luck.
J