beef and whiskey

I can’t even remember the last time I had short ribs, so I’m not much of an expert on what they normally taste like. But if they are supposed to taste like the most tender and succulent prime rib you ever sunk your teeth into, then I got it right.

Thursday,  noonish
It was a rather loose plan. I dumped the short ribs into their respective bags and added whatever barbque sauce I had on hand. I set the sous vide supreme to 130 degrees.

Friday, noonish
Find out we’re having surprise dinner guests. Decided to sous vide pork chops, but there wasn’t quite enough room in the machine, what with the three bags of short ribs already in there. I moved the short ribs to the rice cooker, which luckily enough kept them right around 130.

Sometime on Saturday
I moved the short ribs back to the sous vide supreme. By the way, our guests were amazed by the pork chops.

Sunday night

It’s short rib time!

Here they are, just out of the bath.

Time for a little benzomatic action:

Let’s have another look at that torch! Love to play with fire!

See, it looks like prime rib, doesn’t it? Tastes like it too, except different. In a good way. In a very very good way.

All done:

Later that same week

I actually cooked more than you see in the pictures above. I quick-chilled  (that is, I dumped the bag into a pot full of ice water) the rest and had them later in the week. They were every bit as good.

I found myself feeling a bit peckish a few days ago, so I opened the fridge to see what I could scare up for a snack. Hmm, there’s some leftover steak, ah, here’s a few slices of cooked bacon. Let’s see, what else do we have here… arugala? no…. bell peppers? no no no…. AH HA! A nice big chunk of brie! Wonderful, I’ll make a Dean Ornish Nightmare snack: beef, bacon, and brie!

Nothing too culinarily challenging here, I just sliced up the beef, put a slice of cooked bacon each slice, and topped them off with a generous slice of brie. Into the oven for a bit, and voila, a satisfying snack.

My wife left me to my own devices this past Friday night, so I decided to take myself out on the town. I found myself near Union Square where I discovered one off my old favorite restaurants in Manhattan, Steak Frites, which had moved to another part of town a few years ago, was back where it started, on 16th street, just a bit down the block from the Union Square Cafe.

I wandered in and immediately found a seat at the bar. The decor had changed, for the worse, if you asked me. But the menu was pretty much the same. When I first came here in the early 90’s, I think the attraction for this place was that you could get a pretty good steak in a nice bistro atmosphere for a pretty reasonable price. Their signature dish, the Steak Frites (a ribeye with a big pile of fries) was, as I recall, 19 dollars. It’s 32 bucks now, and still a good deal.

Here’s how it arrived. It looked and tasted like it may have been cooked using the sous-vide technique. However they cooked it, it was a good, tender, tasty steak. Came with bernaise sauce. And a big pile of fries. I ordered some spinach on the side.

In the old days I would have eaten all of those fries. But not any more! I did have a few, of course, they were very good. But I satisfied myself with the beef and spinach. And the scotch too. (MaCallan 12 year old, if you’re curious.)

(Please forgive the foggy photography. I didnt want to use the flash on my blackberry again, it pretty much scared the shit out of everyone, including me, when I took that first picture.)

The Sous Vide Supreme arrived and I’ve been cooking up a storm. Here’s some photos and random notes on a few of my recent experiments.

Ribeye

This was a two inch thick ribeye from Whole Foods. Their ribeyes are usually very good, but the first two of the batch this one came with were on the tough and chewy side. Not this one, not after about 4 hours at 134 degrees in the SVS.

Sizzling on the stove, in butter. I do it longer than the recommended 30 seconds or so, more like minute plus per side. With a two inch steak, you can get away with that.

First bite, looks great! You can see the result of leaving it in the pan for such a long time, there’s a thicker “done” area on top and bottom.

Here it is, a few delicious bites in. It looks redder here, I think that’s because the meat has had a bit more time to react to oxygen. Whatever the case, it sure eats good!

Ah, time to chew on the bone!

Berkshire Pork Chops

My wife hates red meat but loves pork chops. Go figure. She thought this sous vide stuff was a load of nonsense, but as soon as she took a few bites of the first pork chop I cooked, she was an instant convert. In fact, she’s been asking to have pork chops for dinner almost every day since.

I use Berkshire chops whenever I can, I can’t stand the dried out so called “healthy lean” pork that you usually find in the stores. Gimme some fat on those chops, man!

For this cook, I brined the chops for a couple of hours, probably not long enough to do a proper job, but it was all the time I had. After brining, I used the “Pueblo Rub” from Nantucket, and added some butter for good measure.

After a few hours in the SVS at 137 degrees, it’s time to sear. This time I used the cast iron pan on our electric grill out on the balcony.

Here’s the result. Tender and most. Even the sections of the chop that are normally very dry (the whiter areas) came out moist and delicious.

Hamburger

I don’t normally eat breakfast, per se. My first meal of the day is usually around 1 or 2 pm. On this particular day, I decided to have a big ole hamburger for “brekky”

It’s about 10 ounces or so, maybe more. Seasoned with a grill mix and some bacon bits tossed in there too. I think I added some habanero sauce for a bit of heat.

Here it is, in the bag, ready to go.

After a couple of hours at 130 degrees, I finished it off on the electric grill. I heated up a granite slab to somewhere north of 500 degrees, and added some bacon grease. Sizzle time!

I used a low carb tortilla for the bun, and topped it off with some guacamole and hot salsa.

Here’s what it looked like a few bites in. Damn fine stuff!

Chicken Drumsticks

This was another “breakfast.” I sorta did a little personal throwdown between some of the rubs I had laying around.

Into the bags, and into the soup. I cooked these at 140 degrees for a couple of hours.

And then I finished them off on the electric grill. About ten minutes per side.

And on the plate. I have to admit, for this type of chicken, I didnt think that sous-viding added much. Tasted kinda the same to me, but I did notice the meat was cooked evenly all the way to the bone.

Oh yeah, I liked the cajun rub the best. The other two were just so so.

Scrambled Eggs, in the French Manner

This was the second try on this number, based on a recipe Mary Dan Eades posted on the SVS blog. The first time I tried it was ok, but too runny for my taste. This time I added five more minutes cooking time, and I was far more thorough with the massaging business. I also added some chopped up bacon.

And the results were much more to my liking:

RIP, Robert Cameron. He wrote The Drinking Man’s diet back in the fifties, a low carb diet book that preceded Atkins by more than a decade. He made it to 98, and as far as I know he was a low-carber all the way. Naturally an obvious source of inspiration for a blog named beefandwhiskey.com. I never met you Robert, I wish I had. Cheers and save me a seat at the bar, would ya?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/arts/22cameron.html?_r=1&hpwRest

Update Dec. 5… I found this in an article on Mr. Cameron:

“One thing he attributed to his long life was the 5,000 rounds of golf he played at the San Francisco Golf Club,” said Tony Cameron [his son]. He also was a proponent of a daily drink, a martini or gin gimlet or single-malt scotch. “We were putting a little scotch in his ice cubes last week,” his son said.

I have the drinking and low carbing  covered, guess I need to take up golf and aerial photography if I want to make it to 98….