Sous Vide Tenderizing

Modernist Cuisine mentions holding beef at 39 c, then 49 c, before cooking to a final temperature in order to increase enzymatic activity and make the meat more tender. Some people have compared this to quick dry aging.

I've not tried it yet, but was wondering if anyone here has and if so, was it worth the extra effort?

If anyone can vouch for this method, do you presear, and could you Presear a cold or frozen steak and still use this tenderizes toon method?

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Chris_Young_80640

@Lou — Since I was the one who wrote about that technique for MC, I believe I can answer your question. I always strongly advocate presearing when using this technique. It makes it much safer because the searing eliminates nearly all potentially harmful bacteria. I then suggest holding at 49 °C for a couple of hours, and then raising the temperature to your desired final core temperature. I find that this works well for moderate tender cuts, such as strip steak, which benefits from the enhanced tenderness. For an already very tender cut like filet or ribeye, the benefit is much more modest.

Lou_34544

Very cool. What about not so tender cuts, like flank?

Tom_Champion_14732

Interesting. My butcher does 21 day dry aged steaks for us. A bit expensive; but amazingly tender. Trims our requests for brisket & pork shoulders. My son & I love to smoke brisket & pork. He does bacon; I think his temps r too high because of the design of the the smoker.

Any thoughts about sous vide and smoking meat?

Johan_Edstrom_5586

Yep, cold smoke and cook sous vide.

Use Amazen for good cold smoking cartridges.

t.stanoulis

I don't intend to derail the thread, but, if your butcher is willing to dry age the steaks for more time, a rib steak dry aged ten to twelve weeks is a thing of beauty.

Brendan_Lee_56950

60 is as long as I've ever gone myself but I came across this interesting article when I was first researching it. Some helpful information in it.

http://www.beefresearch.org/CMDocs/BeefResearch/Dry Aging of Beef.pdf

Tom_Champion_14732

10 to 12 weeks aging would be costly. Certainly will lose a lot of the outer flesh. I'll talk to him about trying it. I've turned him on to this site. Sous vide rae a porthouse aged 21 days & the tenderness was amazing. Could cut it with a fork & no tough (dried) spots to cut off. I seared after sous vide the next one will before.

Johan: cold smoking is probably the answer. What about smoking to internal temp of 140 F & then oven roast wrapped in foil till it hits 170? Still too cold here to start my Webber.

Tom_Champion_14732

Brenden Lee:

Thanks for the link to dry aging. I do think dry aging does add to the tenderness.

Brendan_Lee_56950

@tom champion, it definitely does because it allows the enzymes time to work their wizardry, I think the interesting part of that article is the time at which the flavor becomes indistinguishable from longer aging times which would obviously save us a lot of time