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Reheating SV pork shoulder

Matt_H_63094

Hi folks,

I've been doing sous vide pork shoulder and struggling to get the 'perfect' result.

This is what I'm doing currently:

Cook for 48 hours at 63'c
Ice bath >2hours
Remove from bag, apply spice rub
Smoke for 5 hours at 66'c
Cool in ice bath again
Remove from bag, shred meat while cold
Portion and reserve
Reheat for service @ 63'c, roughly 30 mins

The reason for the long winded process is that I want to reheat the meat and serve immediately for a street food business. Hence I need it pre-pulled, fat removed and ready to go. But the current process results in a good but not incredible result - between coming out of the smoker and service the meat goes... Chewier.... Not as beautifully tender and juicy as it once was.

My guess is that it's possibly due to shredding the meat allowing for moisture loss? But since it's still very cold at that stage it shouldn't lose moisture? Reheating is gentle and takes about 30 mins in the bath at 63'c - surely not enough to change the texture? It seems to be more of a physical change... The meat is simply less tender. I've tried a lot of variation with little success.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Perhaps a less stupidly complicated method? This is the best solution I can think of for rapid service, bearing in mind I'll be working alone and won't have time to do the pulling/shredding in my van.

Different times, temperatures, change the steps around?

Maybe I'll just have to accept that's the best I can do when using this process!

Any thoughts are welcome!

Cheers,

Matt

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Comments

Brendan_Lee_56950

My first thought would be to smoke the meat first before the SV process. And an additional brining step will definitely help with moisture retention. So the steps would be 1) brine 2) rub with seasonings and smoke 3) sv meat

The part I'm not sure about and hopefully @chris or @grant can comment, is whether it is best to shred hot and then chill in it's own juices or to cool first and then shred.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Welcome to the site @Matt H.

When I smoke/SV pork I do the smoke first then the SV. Time and temps seem in the ball park for cooking pulled pork. Retherm for service seems high, you can easily be 5C lower. If you are selling the food from a food truck you will need to watch your times and temps for food and still be in code.

A few options I see are to bag the meat in individual portion bags and either drop in hotter than cooked water on order, or drop in colder than cooked water prior to service and hold at times and temps your local health department allow.

I assume you are mixing the pulled pork in a sauce and heating both in the one bag. Unsauced meat will seem drier and less tender.

Matt_H_63094

Thanks for your thoughts and assistance guys. Much appreciated.

I've been generally leaning towards post smoking the meat, I think there's benefits to both options, pre smoking seems to give a firmer better coloured rind, but the smoke flavour isn't as evident... plus smoke always seems to permeate through the bags, leaving me with stinky brown water. I've tried a variety of bags but it seems to persist...

You're right about the unsauced meat being dryer. I'm serving the meat without sauce, then giving customers the options to pick for 3 or 4 regional and original sauces, so it really needs to stand up on its own. And they say that the best barbecue doesn't need sauce so I'm doing my best to achieve that accolade. As for the lower temps, unfortunately UK food reg's state that I have to hit 63'c for reheating or hot holding any foods

I've tried brining numerous times, and I agree that it helps with moisture retention, giving a juicier bite but I've never been blown away by the texture... I equilibrium brine, but it's a little chewier, whereas I think the untreated meat has a better mouth feel.

I made a bit of a breakthrough though... I seem to have stumbled across the result I was looking for more through luck than judgement.

The bag juices which I reserved when the meat went into the smoker were reduced down until really thick, then trained, then mixed with... marmite. Yes, that's right, marmite. I'm sure BBQ connoisseurs would shudder at the thought (that is if they could get over how I'm cooking it in the first place), but when it's mixed into the "pork juice," it's incredible. A massive hit of porky umaminess and no real trace of marmite flavour. Fortunately in the UK we're not bound by regional US traditions, so it's more open to interpretation... and if no one asks they'll never know anyway

That gelatinous sauce mixed into the meat really seems to help.

Secondly, I tried a full rehearsal, which included dumping the 1 kg bags of pulled meat (enough to serve about 8 people) into the bath for a reheat, then transferring the meat into a bains marie for service - into sandwiches or boxes. My crappy bains is woefully inaccurate, i.e it has 2 modes, hot.. and hotter than the surface of the sun. On hot mode it keeps the meat up in the 70 to 75'c region... This generates a reasonable amount of steam. This seems to help the meat strands separate further, and combined with the aforementioned marmite jus, has resulted in... heavenly delicate, tender, juicy porkness. Just the right amount of bite, a big wallop of smoky porky flavour and a big smile

Feeling rather happy today. If a little concerned that I ate the best part of 1kg of pork last night...

Next job... brisket.

seijoed

That's a normal american bbq lunch, nothing to worry about