Sous Vide In Butter ??????

[Jon B.]

Wow......THIS is over the top!

(I think MacKenzie should try this one)

[MacKenzie]

The clarified butter would cost more than the steak.  

[tony b]

Much simpler version is to put the butter & steak in a ziptop bag and do it regular SV water bath. Uses a lot less butter to achieve the same results. I've done that many times. I don't use clarified, but just regular unsalted butter - 1/2 stick (4 Tbl) per steak with a big pinch of the rub that I'm going to put on it before I sear it off. 

[Shuley]

Much simpler version is to put the butter & steak in a ziptop bag and do it regular SV water bath. Uses a lot less butter to achieve the same results. I've done that many times. I don't use clarified, but just regular unsalted butter - 1/2 stick (4 Tbl) per steak with a big pinch of the rub that I'm going to put on it before I sear it off. 

I'm assuming you do this with solid butter to aid in the sealing process?


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[tony b]

Yes, but you could do it with melted ghee/clarified butter, but use the water immersion method to seal the ziptop bag.

[Syzygies]

One of Thomas Keller's famous tricks is to cook lobsters just far enough to remove the meat, make stock from the carcasses, and simmer the lobster meat ever so gently in a mixture of mostly butter, some water, very French name. People returned the lobster all the time as undercooked, though it wasn't. The idea didn't actually originate with him. Plenty of words have been written about this.

A Chef Invents a Lobster Dish, And Pots Start Boiling All Over

As for sealing bags for sous vide, I've MacGyver'd this entire landscape. (You don't think the smoke pot was my first try, do you?) In the 1980's, reading Harold McGee on the arbitrariness of the boiling point of water, and hearing some French chefs used their vacuum packers to help steam fish, I nearly cobbled together sous vide equipment from a chemical supply catalog before I knew it was a thing. I got by for years with PID controllers and modified soup warmers, before mainstream equipment became affordable, and I broke down and bought a chamber vacuum machine. Which everyone should do.

So I can make A/B/ comparisons, and you should trust me. Yes, I know all about dunking ziplocks in baths of water while singing Dylan songs, or however you do it. That gets old very fast.

Buy a $30 impulse sealer such as Metronic 12" Heat Sealing Hand Impulse Poly Sealer (just an example, search for the one you want) and some chamber vacuum sealer bags. Practicing first with water, figure out how to burp the air out as you seal. For the rest of your life this will be how you freeze stock, even if you own a $8,000 commercial chamber machine and have a staff of twenty. You'll instruct the staff to do it this way.

Now, anything with enough liquid can be sealed this way, then sous vide in a Cambro / Anova circulator or your version of same.

Stock. Add enough stock, then strain it afterwards. You now have double stock. This is considered a good thing.

Olive oil. Add enough olive oil, and compute how much olive oil you can buy with the money you saved by not getting a chamber vacuum machine. Tell yourself you have the money, you just don't have the space.

Butter. Ditto. Melt it first.

Red cooking Chinese liquid. Go find a recipe. If the Chinese had sous vide machines 5,000 years ago, the recipe would tell you to do exactly this.

[Aussie Ora]

Syzygies you do my head in lol

Outback Kamado Bar and Grill

[tony b]

Don't fret it, Aussie, he does that to everybody! 

[MacKenzie]

Yes, but it is always a great read and reread.

 

 

[Paul]

Looks like a bit of a waste too me. I like the butter in with the steak process. And their SV steak doesn't even come close to looking as good as MacKenzie's.

[MacKenzie]

Thanks, Paul. I was expecting much nicer colour from the butter cook too.