DIY sous vide short ribs

What is sous vide?  Sous vide is a method of cooking where food is vacuum sealed in plastic bags and then cooked in water at low temperatures for extended periods of time.  Some benefits of cooking in sous vide are: precise temperature control (imagine a ribeye cooked medium-rare all the way through), zero loss of moisture and increased tenderizing of meat (imagine a flat iron steak cooked to the texture of a filet mignon).

For this post we’re testing out Momofuku’s 48 hour braised short rib (I’m not a big fan of the traditional kalbi marinade so I’m doing my recipe for short ribs, subbing the oven with sous vide).

If you’ve read Momofuku’s new cookbook then you’d know that David Chang does his short ribs for 48 hours with an immersion circulator such as the one from Addelice which is pretty reasonably priced at about $643 US dollars (shipping is free worldwide).  However, I can’t afford such a luxury so am using an $89 soup warmer from my friends at Chef’s Toys in Fountain Valley, a $140 PID controller from Auber Instruments and your basic run of the mill fish tank pump for about $10.  This is an example of what a lot of people are calling “ghetto sous vide” with alternatives such as a rice cooker instead of a soup warmer.

Some methods I’ve seen and done in professional kitchens are blanching pots with digital thermometers or running tap water, a lexan and a thermometer.  Both methods work pretty well but the temperature control is not very precise which is why I prefer to use a PID controller.  A PID controller’s accuracy is +/- 1 degree C between 10 to 100 degrees C (immersion circulators are +/- .05 degrees C).  I cannot stress how important the difference between 1 degree is when cooking sous vide.  Take an egg cooked sous vide for example, cook one at 63 degrees C and another at 64 degrees C and you will get two completely different eggs in terms of texture and appearance.

*I will compile a list of sous vide equipment at the bottom of the page.

shot of the soup warmer and pid controller setup

picture of the vacuum sealed bags of short ribs in sous vide

*For those of you who wish to know more about sous vide cooking, I recommend you look up Douglas Baldwin’s site, he goes into detailed explanation of how the process works and the safe ways to do it along with cooking and pasteurization times.

I hope to have more pictures up soon (40 hours to go!).

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Sous Vide equipment:

Soup warmer, Auberins PID controller (+/- 1 C temp. accuracy between 10 -100 degrees C) & fish tank pump combo:  $239.00

Soup warmer, SousVideMagic PID controller (+/- 1 C temp. accuracy) & fish tank pump combo:  $259.00

Immersion Circulator (Addelice): $643.00

Immersion Circulator (Polyscience): $935.00

Immersion Circulator (Julabo): $999.00

Thermal Bath (Polyscience): $1035.00

Sous Vide Supreme Water Oven: $449.95

*Let’s not forget, everything you sous vide needs to be vacuum packed so here’s a list of alternatives:

FoodSaver: $159.99

FoodSaver bags: $39.99

Ziplock Bags and Pump: $39.99

~ by chefxyz on December 23, 2009.