A couple of years or so ago, my wife and I found ourselves at a Japanese steakhouse. The menu included a Kobe rib-eye for some ridiculously high price, somewhere near the $100.00 mark. For just 8 ounces. It may have been 10, I don’t remember. Still crazy expensive though.  I wasn’t really all that interested, but, for some reason, my wife, who never eats red meat, wanted me to try it. Ok darling, if it will make you happy. Sigh.

It was Kobe beef imported from Japan, or so they claimed. They showed me the raw steak before it was cooked, the thing has so much fat in it that it was almost completely white. As in practically no red.

I’d love to report that it was the best steak I ever had, and for that price, it should have been. I love eating high fat meats and I have long been convinced that the supposed perils of animal fat are non-existent. And I love rib-eyes. So what could be better than the highest fattiest rib-eye you’ve ever set eyes on?

Well, I guess there’s such a thing as too much fat. Eating that steak, after just a few bites, felt more like drinking liquid bacon fat than eating a steak. I’ve never eaten a stick of butter, but that steak tasted kinda the way I would imagine eating a stick of butter would taste.

Maybe it was they way they prepared it? It was a thinly sliced thing, cooked on the big flat “grill” of the type you see in Japanese steakhouses. I dunno, but I suspect that is just how Kobe beef tastes.

Now, according to wikipedia, Kobe “refers to cuts of beef from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle, raised according to strict tradition in Hy?go Prefecture, Japan.”  Again, according to Wikipedia, Waguy “refers to several breeds of cattle genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat.” (Ah, that irrational fear of saturated fat is everywhere, ain’t it?)

Jump ahead to just a week or two ago. We are in an Asian market, and I come across a  ribeye steak labeled as “Wagyu.”  It had a lot of fat but less than I remember seeing in the one described above.  It was $30.00 for a ten ounce steak. I decide to buy it.

Now this is not to be confused with true Kobe beef, or any other type of Wagyu beef raised in Japan (Kobe’s not the only one, just the most famous one). For one thing I’m pretty sure it was raised in the US. Apparently (and I just discovered this today), people have imported the Wagyu breed into the US and bred it with Angus cattle. This was done to make a cow that will survive in the US climate, and to make steaks from that cow that were less “white” and more “red.” Like the steak I brought home from the Asian market. This sort of steak supposedly has more appeal to the American palate.

So, you’ve got this fairly expensive piece of meat in your hands, you don’t want to mess it up, do you? Ah-ha, this is a job for the Sous Vide Supreme! It was a relatively thin steak and I didn’t want to risk ruining it by leaving it on the grill a minute or two too long. Not an issue with the sous-vide technique, you cook it to the perfect temperature, sear it, and voila: steak perfection. Every time. Still amazes me.

Here’s the steak, with salt and pepper and in the bag. I didn’t add any olive oil, like I normally would for a steak. I figured this guy already has enough fat.

I set the controls to 120 degrees, and dropped ‘er in. I meant to only cook it for about 45 minutes, but ended up cooking it for about 90. No worries.

When I took it out of the bag, it had the weirdest texture I’ve ever found in something I was about to put in my mouth. Felt more like jello than a piece of meat. I was really surprised that it didn’t fall apart. Very strange stuff.

Here it is, in the pan, with just a little bit of butter.

And here it is, a few bites in.

Sorry for the sloppy fuzzy photography. I was hungry!

And did I like it? Well.. sort of… It wasn’t as bad as the first one I had tried at the steakhouse, but it was very much leaning in that direction. The direction of just too much fat and not much else going for it in the way of flavor. Given a choice between this steak and  a grass-fed, sous-vide hangar steak, I would go for the hangar steak any day.

Which reminds me, the Asian Market did have something in the Wagyu section labeled “flap” steak, which is just another word for hangar steak. It had more marbling than my rib-eye, and it was more uniformly marbled. Even though I have very little reason to expect I’ll like it any better, something in me makes me want to try that flap steak out. Something in me wants me to try that flap steak out sometime very soon.

Why? Well first off, my wife complained about my breath. Smelled fine to me, but she wasn’t happy about it. She complained a lot. I’m willing to try some crazy shit in the name of nutritional experimentation, but if it’s upending my happy hearth and home, well, you know, forget it. There was a joint in New York City called Lucy’s a while back that had a motto inscribed somewhere behind the bar that I’ve always agreed with: “Keep the chicks happy.” Yes indeed.

There was also the issue of severe temptation in the form of very nice weather, neighbors wanting to do a cookout in our common courtyard, free flowing beer and spirits, etc. etc. You get the picture. I stumbled. I fell. I had a good time. I blew my egg fest diet. Oh well.

There’s also my sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t doing anything special for me, above and beyond what a normal low carb diet does. I wasn’t losing any faster, I felt about the same.

Anyway, I did stick to a mostly low carb, meat and eggs style diet that week, and I have managed to get weight back down to 192 as of this morning (wrote this a few weeks ago). And sometime soon I’m gonna stiffen my resolve and find a way to get rid of the extra 15 pounds or so that I would like to lose so that I’ll look good in a wetsuit, haha, not to mention, shirtless on the beach.

But that is for another post on another day. Sometime soon, I hope.

Now that that’s outta the way, let’s get to the Nutrition and Metabolism Society meeting. I really enjoyed it, although there was an awful lot of science talk that went straight over my head. And I wondered why in the word I was spending my precious Saturday in a cramped little room that reminded me of being in school. Yuk.

But it was nice, really great, actually, to find myself surrounded by real live people who actually agree with me about my diet. Of all the actual flesh and blood folks that I know and see in person in my every day life, I can count the ones who don’t think my diet is completely crazy on one, no, no, actually, on no hands. As in zero. EVERYONE I know thinks my diet is wrong and crazy and I am gonna die of heart attack any minute now. If I ever try to convince them otherwise I am accused of being a zealot, a cult member, and worse.

I feel like, in their eyes, I’m Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Only I know that those windmills really are giants. They are real. And very dangerous. They are all the official nutrition advice givers, like the ADA, AHA, etc., who have bought into the lipid hypothesis hook, line, and sinker, and who refuse to acknowledge that a low carb diet is heathy and superior to their pro-grains, low fat advice. In spite of the growing mountain of evidence to the contrary.

And here I was, in a room full of Don Quixotes. Many of whom have written books on the subject. Many of whom have published top-notch research on the subject. It was a nice feeling to spend a few hours amongst these folks.

It was particularly nice to listen to Dr. Richard K Bernstein talk about his life. I’ve heard the story before, but it was very interesting to hear him tell it in person: discovered he had diabetes when he was 12, Type 1. As an adult, he bought a blood glucose monitoring device back when such a thing cost 600 bucks and wasn’t really available to the public (It was only available to doctors, he got it through his doctor wife). Discovered, on his own, which foods jacked up his blood sugar. Discovered, on his own, that a very low carb diet was the only diet that kept his blood sugars under control. Discovered, on his own, that blood glucose monitoring was the only way to manage diabetes. Couldn’t convince the authorities of the same. (In fact, you still can’t. They are still giving out horrendous advice. The giant windmills still roam the countryside.) In his forties, went to medical school just so that he could get more people to listen to him. Published his books, etc. etc.

Here’s a couple of fuzzy cell phone pics of Dr. Bernstein, a very healthy guy in his seventies, he looks fantastic considering he’s been a Type 1 diabetic for his entire life.

It was also nice to meet Jimmy Moore – who, of course, is exactly that guy you see in his videos and hear in his podcasts. He’s no phony! Here he is:

Here’s a few more pics I managed to snap, enjoy!

This is Richard Feinman, the founder of the Nutrition and Metabolism Society.

Here’s Eugene, the only low carb blogger who posts less often than me. He apparently wants to hurt me. (Actually, Eugene is a trainer at Serious Strength, and was my first trainer there when I started about 3 plus years ago.)

That’s Fred Hahn, owner of Serious Strength, and author of The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution and Strong Kids Healthy Kids.

Here’s Jimmy’s “before-low-carb” picture:

The Nutrition and Metabolism society is having a meeting this comming Saturday right here on my home turf, in New York city, so I decided, what the heck, I’ll go… and I may learn something, who knows?

I’ll post more about this meeting later, but right now I wanna talk about the amazing Jimmy Moore. I dont agree with everything Jimmy does or says, but man, that guy is a low carb promoting powerhouse. I have a lot of respect for the energy and effort he puts into it. I also have a lot of respect for someone who’s been able to lose as much weight as he has,and has been able to keep it off (ok, he’s had some problems keeping it ALL off, but still, the guy used to be over 400 pounds,and now he’s somewhere in the 200’s. Not too shabby.)

Anyway, in honor of meeting the great Jimmy Moore, I’ve decided to embark on my own little egg-fest. (If you don’t know, Jimmy recently seems to have solved a problem with his weight creeping back up by spending a month eating virtually nothing but eggs, cheese,and butter.) I’m going to try to emulate Jimmy’s wacky diet for the next few days. The meeting’s on Saturday, I’m going to try to keep it up till then.

Not sure if I can pull it off… no guarantees… but I will try…

Btw, here’s Jimmy’s ”after-low-carb” pic:

My starting weight is 196 pounds as of this morning. Some of that is bound to be water weight, since I went face down in the pizza and tortilla chips this past weekend, not to mention the gin tonics, beer, scotch… oh my… So I expect to lose at least 3 pounds or so just by cutting the carbs back to the minimum. I’m curious what additional benefit, if any, this egg-fest might bring.

Let’s see what happens…

He also wasn’t fond of the direction his Kentucky Fried Chicken went after he sold out. They even sued him when he described their gravy as “sludge” haha. He was probably being too kind.

Ah, the things you learn from wikipedia!

KFC has been in the news a lot lately, because of their new sandwich, the notorious double down. You know, two pieces of chicken, some bacon, some sort of sauce, cheese, and GASP! NO BUN!!!

But the chicken is breaded, unless you get the grilled version. Both versions, however, are fairly low in carbs, and I would certainly eat one or the other, were I to find myself in a jam and really hungry and had no other choice… But for the most part, I think I’ll avoid this mess, it’s bound to be full of all sorts of things, including the bad fats. I’m not worried about saturated fat, mind you, but I’m sure vegetable oils are in involved somewhere along the way with this thing. And who knows what kinds of chemicals are involved.

After stumbling over my 999th blog or news article about this ridiculous sandwhich, it occurred to me, why not make my own? Why not, indeed? But I’ll make it the healthy and fun way-I’ll sous-vide the chicken (organic chicken), using some cajun spice and grass-fed butter, I’ll use some Italian hot sausage, some home-made mayo, along with some brie cheese. Dean Ornish would love this!

Not a drop or spec of anything I consider unhealthy in there! Ok, well, I don’t know exactly what all’s inside those sausages, but hey, let’s live dangerously!

Here’s the chicken in the bag with butter and spice rub. Btw, that’s the Sous-Vide Supreme vacuum sealer in the background, finally decided to step up from the ziplock hand pump bags. And glad I did, I love this thing.

Here’s all the sammich makins-organic chicken, home-made mayo, hot Italian sausage, cheese:

And the assembled monstrosity! Yes, I actually ate all of this. For Breakfast. At around 3 in the afternoon.

Next time I think I’d better slice those huge breasts in two, maybe use the jaccard to flatten them a bit, and if I get really ambitious, I’ll brine them over night.

Since I was in double down mode, I decided a few days later to whoop up a double down burger. Pretty much the same approach, but I used bacon this time. Sort of a double-sous-down-shack-vide burger…

Update May 1, 2010

Here’s some pics of my second version of the double down, this time with a single breast sliced into two, berkshire bacon, cheese, home-made mayo, and a couple of fried eggs.  Oh yeah, I used the jaccard gizmo to flatten out the chicken some and to let the seasoning and butter seep in while it was cooking in the sous-vide supreme.

Here’s the recipe I was using:

a few ounces of water

a couple small chunks of frozen banana

a handful of frozen blueberry

2 and 1/2 scoops protein powder

1/2 can coconut milk, that I had poured into an ice tray and left in the freezer overnight

1 raw egg

1 tablespoon Torani sugar free vanilla syrup

However, grass-fed, whilst being the more ethical and sustainable and healthy choice, has three problems:

• It’s more expensive.
• It’s a lot tougher.
• It has a lot less fat in it.

Not much you can do about the first one, really.

But you can do a lot about the toughness and the low fat content.

All you need is a Sous-Vide Supreme (or a similar contraption), some butter (grass-fed preferably), and some patience. Just season the meat, put it in the bag, add a generous amount of butter (or beef fat, or duck fat, or whatever!), drop it in the bath, and when it’s done, sear it and enjoy!

In recent days I’ve been cooking up a grass-fed storm. Here’s my notes and pics on each one.

I used the same basic approach for all of these: season, add a boatload of butter, bag ‘em, and cook at 130 degrees in the sous-vide machine for 24 hours, give or take a few. The only exception was the burgers, no butter needed for those (they were 75% lean),  and I only cooked them for 2 -3 hours.

All of the meat you see here is grass-fed and came from US Wellness Meats.

[Note: I don't receive a dime for plugging either the Sous-Vide Supreme or US Wellness Meats, but, if they really want to, they can send me money... or free steaks... or a second SVS... really, guys, I wouldn't object...]

Hangar Steak

This one was hands down the best of the batch. It was a revelation. Amazing flavor and super tender.

Ribeye

This was really good too. Super tender, nice flavor.

Delmonico

Not quite as good as the hangar or the ribeye, but still, not too bad.

Strip Steak

I tried an old favorite grilling recipe: coat with olive oil, cover with mustard powder, add some hot sauce (I used habanero sauce, but forgot to include it in the pic). This tastes great for grilling, but I gotta say the effect somehow got lost in the sous-vide process. And the strip steak was only so-so. Not bad, not by a long shot, but not great, either. Not sure if it need more time in the SVS, or less. Maybe more butter. I may try using the jaccard gizmo with it. We’ll see.

Burgers

Ah, it’s pretty hard to ruin a burger. Or two. I had these with some guac and salsa on top. A hearty breakfast, indeed.

Like, wow, dude, that burger is totally gnarly, man! Like, totally. Fer shure.

I’ve been back to LA a few times in recent years, and each time I’ve been trying to get back to the Shack to see if the famous Shack burger lives up to my memory of it. Which is admittedly very faint. Lots of beer and whiskey and burgers and time between now and the last time I had one, which must be, hmm, lemme see, way back in 1986 or so.

But fate keeps interfering.  I got really close a couple of months ago, with my wife. We parked, walked in, she took one look around the place, and refused to stay.. (it is kinda ramshackle… I tried to sell her on the beach shack charm angle, but she wasn’t buying it.)

There was also the time before that, a couple of years ago, I was supposed to land at LAX in the evening, plenty of time to pop over to the Shack. But my flight got delayed and by the time a friend and I walked in the door, dreams of greasy shack burger sausagey goodness dancing in my head, we were informed that the kitchen had just closed.

Damn.

And I am still peeved about the time in 1989, just after finishing a biathlon (running/biking/running-yeah, I used to do that kinda crazy shit…) that finished practically right in front of the place, I thought the perfect post race meal would be a shack burger or two washed down with ridiculous amounts of beer. But my idiot friends felt differently. I think we wound up at a Pizza Hut. A god*(&mned Pizza Hut.

I will get back to the Shack one of these days. Oh. Yes I. Will. On my next trip to LA, I’m gonna ditch whoever I am with, and get my ass to the bar, order up some beer and a shack burger, and finally settle this for once and for all.

But since I live 3000 miles away, I decided to make do for now by making my own shack burger. I dropped a burger into the Sous Vide Supreme for a few hours at about 120 degrees, then I seared the top and bottom, then I added some hot italian sausages cooked in my Breville indoor grill, which does a nice job of flattening the sausage. And this time, I kept it truly low carb and grain free by using a homemade “bun”, known as the “ooopsie roll.” It’s made with eggs and cream cheese, you can find the recipe here.

Oh yeah, I added cheese and mayo and mustard. And a fried egg (of course!) Damn fine burger. Probly better than the real thing.

One of the things I do miss from my pre-low carb days is french fries.

Whilst preparing a burger at home the other day, I spied a single hot italian sausage in the fridge, all by itself and lonely. And inspiration hit! Well, maybe not exacty inspiration, but…

Anyway, with no further adieu, I give you….

PIG FRIES!

I like vegetables as much as anyone I suppose. I try to stick mostly to the low starch low sugar ones, of course. My mainstays are mushrooms, eggplant, squash, spinach, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, tomatoes, etc. The usual suspects. Usually take them slathered in butter. I mean, who would eat this stuff if it weren’t for butter? And salt too. And pepper. And garlic. And sometimes basil. Nutmeg. Thyme. You get the picture.

But I also can just do without the damn vegetable. Like tonight, I’m probably gonna be on my own for dinner, and I’m not sure if I can be bothered to scare up some sort of plant matter to go with my steak (sous-vide flank steak, btw).

But I might have some sausage with that steak. Yessiree.

I know, I know, everyone thinks you need vegetables, you need those magical phytonutrients, blah blah blah. You need fiber, blah blah blah (I dont buy the fiber argument, but that’s probably a subject for another day).

Personally, I think maybe there’s some stuff in some vegetables that are good for you, but that’s not why I eat them. I eat them simply because I like them. Spinach goes nice with steak. So do mushrooms. Asparagus goes great with fish. And steak. Especially when coated in olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped with bacon, and grilled.

For me then, the true role for the vegetables on your plate, and more importanty, in your mouth, is to provide a flavor and texture that compliments and contrasts nicely with the whatever meat/fish your enjoying.

Armed with this definition, I hereby declare that sausage is indeed a vegetable! It may not grow on trees or in the dirt, it may actually just be a mix of pork and spices in some sort of suspicious casing, but I’ll never hold that against it.

It’s a vegetable dammit!

I will not be persuaded otherwise!

In the spirit of that Top Chef show that my wife makes me watch, where they are always deconstructing and re-imagining traditional dishes, I give you Porkios!

In place of the cheerios: Leftover pork sauted in bacon fat along with some jalapenos, onions, mushrooms, etc. -

In place of the milk: Sour Cream!

In place of the bananas: Cheese!

Now that is a hardy damn bowl of cereal!