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! How to use juices after sv braising * KK 6/03/2015 bryan Found on stefangourmet.com I don’t like to throw away food and when I’m cooking: I definitely don’t want to throw away any flavor. So when I brown meat, I always deglaze the pan to make a sauce out of the browned bits that have gotten stuck to the bottom of the pan. Until recently I had not figured out how to use the juices that are left in the bag (after cooking something sous-vide. Especially when braising meat for 2-3 days. (there can be a lot of juice and since it obviously has a lot of flavor it bothered me that I didn’t know how to use it) Many sous-vide recipes simply mention “make a sauce from the bag juicesâ€, but don’t tell you how to do this. CON When you heat the juices to make a sauce: The juice will curdle and you get a lot of nasty looking scum. (What stopped me from finding the solution until recently was that I wanted to use all of the juices for a sauce. Unfortunately, that is simply not possible as the proteins in there have only been cooked to 57C/135F, so it is unavoidable that they will curdle if you heat it any further) PRO solution is simple: 1- Remove most of the scum with a slotted spoon as you usually do with scum on a stock. 2- Line a sieve with paper towels (or a cheese cloth) and filter the juices. 3- What is left is pure meat juice with a lot of flavor in it. (perfect for adding to a sauce) It is not a problem that the meat has cooled a little while you were doing all of the above steps. (because now you can brown the meat and then take the meat out and deglaze the pan with the strained juices to make a quick sauce) For a fancier sauce: Sauté chopped garlic with a few thyme sprigs and a bay leaf for a minute in the fat left in the pan. Deglaze the pan with wine. (white wine for white meat, red wine for red meat) Add the strained juices. Let it reduce a bit over medium heat and then strain. (If you like you can make it a bit thicker by whisking in some small pieces of cold butter) I like this site for go to sous vide. Check out his Tenderizing by warm ageing.

A tip on using the Guru - your top hat damper should just be barely off the seat, regardless of your desired grill temp. Let the Guru fan force the air through instead of the usual nature draw. With that 20 cfm fan, you shouldn't have any problems moving air through that tiny gap. However, on a windy day - there's an adjustable damper in the nozzle of the fan, close that down to almost closed if it's really windy out; otherwise, when the fan's not running, the wind blowing across the top hat will vacuum drag too much air into the KK and your temperature will go up above your setpoint. The Guru can't bring the temp back down, it will just stop running; you'll just have to close it down and wait for the temps to decay back naturally, which can take a while depending on how much above the setpoint the temps get and for how long. Learned this one the hard way - on a very windy day, the grill temp went almost 50F above my setpoint before I noticed. Cook was over before it came back down to where I'd set the Guru. Didn't ruin the cook (pork butt), but it did cook faster than I was planning. Moral of the story - while the Guru makes long cooks easier, it isn't foolproof, as this Fool found out!!

A second word of caution with the shop vac... Make sure the ashes are well and truly out. The KK is so efficient that I've mistakenly used my hand as an ash broom two days after a cook, only to find out she was still burning. <insert silly boy comment here>

Sorry Cookie, but boiling would remove all the alcohol, so what's the point in that???

on using the jus from the SV bag. Makes a great addition to a pan sauce or to sauteed mushrooms!

Like I posted elsewhere, Dennis really appreciates those shots of finished food while still on the grill - his "money shot" that he can post on Facebook to show off real cooks on the KK by actual users.

I try and take at least one on grill picture that shows the food, some tiles, and the handle with the Komodo Kamado plate.