Jump to content
Jon B.

Sous Vide In Butter ??????

Recommended Posts

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. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...