I first want to note something I found interesting. David Chang basically tells you that he doesn't think you'll ever make this recipe, saying "A little reality: This recipe is not a reasonable proposition for the home cook unless you are willing to buy a vacuum-sealing machine and fabricate a water circulator situation. Even then, 48 hours is a world of time to cook something... But here's how to do it anyway." I find this particularly fascinating because the Momofuku cookbook came out just over a year after Thomas Keller released his sous vide masterpiece, Under Pressure. I guess I'm surprised that Chang would put it past the enthusiastic home cook to do whatever it took to make whatever food it is that they want to make... but I'm glad he decided to tell us how anyway, because (spoiler alert) this rocked. The first step is a seriously delicious marinade, which Chang tells us is his mom's
kalbi marinade.
This consisted of light soy sauce, pear juice, apple juice, mirin, sesame oil, sugar, black pepper, onion, carrot, scallions, and garlic. You'll note that there are apples above because I couldn't find any apple juice at Russo's and I didn't want to make another grocery store stop, so I made my own...
It's probably the best apple juice you can find, in the end, so I may do that again next time even if I have the option of buying some. All of those ingredients go into a pot to simmer for about 10 minutes...
The solids are strained out, then the marinade is cooled before use.
The meat you'll be using it on is a beautiful thing to behold: The Short Rib.
This was the minimum amount of short ribs that I could buy at H-Mart, so I now have 2/3 of that vacuum-sealed in the freezer. Since the marinade was enough for that full amount of meat (I figured I might as well make a whole batch), I weighed it out into thirds: one for now, and two to freeze for later...
I tasted the marinade at this point and realized that it was a good idea to make this dish. A very good idea, indeed... Because I don't have a chamber vacuum (grumble grumble), I once again did the ol' seal-in-a-zip-top-bag-them-vacuum-seal trick to get my short ribs vacuum-sealed along with the delicious marinade.
I've used the
Sous Vide Maestro (a homemade contraption rigged up for me by a friend) in the past, but there were a few flaws that could not be overcome by engineering. The largest issue was that the slow-cooker just isn't designed to apply the kind of heat necessary to rapidly come to temperature, but it also wasn't a system I would feel comfortable trusting for 48 hours (which, as Chang notes, is a world of time...). The Sous Vide Maestro did a very important thing for me, though, which is to teach me that I love this technique enough to upgrade to the real deal:
That picture above is my new Sous Vide Supreme (sitting in its lovely home in the laundry closet in my kitchen, where it lives on a shelf when not in use and hangs out on the dryer while working its magic). In a word, it is awesome. It comes to temperature almost instantly and maintains that temperature perfectly throughout pretty much any length of cooking. I put my vacuum-sealed marinade-and-short-rib packet into the 140°F water bath on Friday night and started looking forward to dinner on Sunday...
The other two components of this dish that I prepped in advance were the pickled carrots...
... and the pickled mustard seeds (which we've seen
before)...
On Sunday afternoon, I started work on the dashi-braised daikon. I made up a batch of dashi, then got to work on the daikon. The daikon were supposed to be 1-inch in diameter and cut into 1-inch-thick slices. I couldn't find any daikon that skinny, so I used a round cookie cutter to get them to the right size...
These rounds simmer in the dashi until very tender, and are then set aside until go-time. Maybe it's just me, but I find daikon to be extremely funky-smelling, so the uber-funkiness of daikon combined with the smoked-dried-fish-and-seaweed smell of the dashi simmering away for a half hour was not my favorite thing ever... Anyway, finally, after 48 long, anticipation-filled hours, the short ribs were ready to come out of their hot water bath. They go straight into an ice bath...
... then into the fridge until chilled.
When you cut the bag open, the marinade is strained off into a small saucepan to start reducing, and you're left with the short ribs. As is always the case with meat cooked sous vide, they look pretty sad initially...
Bones are removed and excess fat is trimmed away as needed...
The short ribs are then cut into pieces a couple inches long and the final garnish (blanched scallions) is prepared...
It's now time for the final step, which I totally did not see coming: You deep-fry the short ribs. Seriously. Because with all of that marbling you saw above, they just weren't decadent enough yet... I opted out of using my deep fryer, since it was only for about 3 minutes total of frying.
I actually considered just pan-searing instead of frying, since it's sort of a hassle to deal with the oil, but damned if the frying didn't perfectly brown that formerly-janky-looking short rib meat and turn it into something you can't wait to get onto your plate and into your mouth...
All that's left is the plating. Here's the picture from the book for reference:
... and here are a few shots of my dinner...
The meat was pretty unbelievable. This is exactly what the sous vide technique is so perfect for. Typical braised short ribs are
really cooked and falling apart... whereas these had the texture of the most absurdly tender steak without losing that nice steakiness, for lack of a better (or real) word...
I didn't fully understand the pickled carrot (if it was there as a palate-cleanser then I get it... but if it's supposed to be combined with the other components to form a perfect bite then I'm sort of confused...), but everything else played beautifully together... even that stinky, stinky daikon. I especially loved the pickled mustard seeds with the marinade and meat. I am officially in love with these short ribs... So very very very very very good... Thanks, David Chang, for including the recipe, despite your doubts about whether or not I would ever use it...
This recipe wasn't at the top of my queue initially, but shot to the top of my queue immediately when I bought myself a new toy: the Sous Vide Supreme. I'll rave about that as it comes up in the post, but let's start with the food...
I first want to note something I found interesting. David Chang basically tells you that he doesn't think you'll ever make this recipe, saying "A little reality: This recipe is not a reasonable proposition for the home cook unless you are willing to buy a vacuum-sealing machine and fabricate a water circulator situation. Even then, 48 hours is a world of time to cook something... But here's how to do it anyway." I find this particularly fascinating because the Momofuku cookbook came out just over a year after Thomas Keller released his sous vide masterpiece, Under Pressure. I guess I'm surprised that Chang would put it past the enthusiastic home cook to do whatever it took to make whatever food it is that they want to make... but I'm glad he decided to tell us how anyway, because (spoiler alert) this rocked. The first step is a seriously delicious marinade, which Chang tells us is his mom's kalbi marinade.
This consisted of light soy sauce, pear juice, apple juice, mirin, sesame oil, sugar, black pepper, onion, carrot, scallions, and garlic. You'll note that there are apples above because I couldn't find any apple juice at Russo's and I didn't want to make another grocery store stop, so I made my own...
It's probably the best apple juice you can find, in the end, so I may do that again next time even if I have the option of buying some. All of those ingredients go into a pot to simmer for about 10 minutes...
The solids are strained out, then the marinade is cooled before use.
The meat you'll be using it on is a beautiful thing to behold: The Short Rib.
This was the minimum amount of short ribs that I could buy at H-Mart, so I now have 2/3 of that vacuum-sealed in the freezer. Since the marinade was enough for that full amount of meat (I figured I might as well make a whole batch), I weighed it out into thirds: one for now, and two to freeze for later...
I tasted the marinade at this point and realized that it was a good idea to make this dish. A very good idea, indeed... Because I don't have a chamber vacuum (grumble grumble), I once again did the ol' seal-in-a-zip-top-bag-them-vacuum-seal trick to get my short ribs vacuum-sealed along with the delicious marinade.
I've used the Sous Vide Maestro (a homemade contraption rigged up for me by a friend) in the past, but there were a few flaws that could not be overcome by engineering. The largest issue was that the slow-cooker just isn't designed to apply the kind of heat necessary to rapidly come to temperature, but it also wasn't a system I would feel comfortable trusting for 48 hours (which, as Chang notes, is a world of time...). The Sous Vide Maestro did a very important thing for me, though, which is to teach me that I love this technique enough to upgrade to the real deal:
That picture above is my new Sous Vide Supreme (sitting in its lovely home in the laundry closet in my kitchen, where it lives on a shelf when not in use and hangs out on the dryer while working its magic). In a word, it is awesome. It comes to temperature almost instantly and maintains that temperature perfectly throughout pretty much any length of cooking. I put my vacuum-sealed marinade-and-short-rib packet into the 140°F water bath on Friday night and started looking forward to dinner on Sunday...
The other two components of this dish that I prepped in advance were the pickled carrots...
... and the pickled mustard seeds (which we've seen before)...
On Sunday afternoon, I started work on the dashi-braised daikon. I made up a batch of dashi, then got to work on the daikon. The daikon were supposed to be 1-inch in diameter and cut into 1-inch-thick slices. I couldn't find any daikon that skinny, so I used a round cookie cutter to get them to the right size...
These rounds simmer in the dashi until very tender, and are then set aside until go-time. Maybe it's just me, but I find daikon to be extremely funky-smelling, so the uber-funkiness of daikon combined with the smoked-dried-fish-and-seaweed smell of the dashi simmering away for a half hour was not my favorite thing ever... Anyway, finally, after 48 long, anticipation-filled hours, the short ribs were ready to come out of their hot water bath. They go straight into an ice bath...
... then into the fridge until chilled.
When you cut the bag open, the marinade is strained off into a small saucepan to start reducing, and you're left with the short ribs. As is always the case with meat cooked sous vide, they look pretty sad initially...
Bones are removed and excess fat is trimmed away as needed...
The short ribs are then cut into pieces a couple inches long and the final garnish (blanched scallions) is prepared...
It's now time for the final step, which I totally did not see coming: You deep-fry the short ribs. Seriously. Because with all of that marbling you saw above, they just weren't decadent enough yet... I opted out of using my deep fryer, since it was only for about 3 minutes total of frying.
I actually considered just pan-searing instead of frying, since it's sort of a hassle to deal with the oil, but damned if the frying didn't perfectly brown that formerly-janky-looking short rib meat and turn it into something you can't wait to get onto your plate and into your mouth...
All that's left is the plating. Here's the picture from the book for reference:
... and here are a few shots of my dinner...
The meat was pretty unbelievable. This is exactly what the sous vide technique is so perfect for. Typical braised short ribs are really cooked and falling apart... whereas these had the texture of the most absurdly tender steak without losing that nice steakiness, for lack of a better (or real) word...
3 comments:
I do my short ribs at 56°C for 72 hours with saffron, salt, sesame oil and champagne vinegar. They come out decadently delicious.
I have the Momofuku cookbook so I'll have to try this recipe.
Ooh. I may have to try the 72-hour version myself... Short ribs are definitely the the kind of cut that sous vide cooking is perfect for.
What a process. Not sure I'd have the patience (or even all the proper equipment) to make this dish, but it looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing!
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