Go to the Recipe: Sous Vide Pork Shoulder Chops
What is your time/temperature recommendation for sous-vide reheating? How much is it depended on type of food?
It is totally dependent on the type of food. There are many types of foods we don't recommend reheating such as fish and tender vegetables. However, things such as braise meats and purées tend to be a little more resilient. We tend to recommend reheating at or below cooking temperature, just to achieve core temperature.
I have a bone in pork shoulder. Would you recommend removing this before cooking sous vide?
It depends on your end goal. If you want some delicious pork shoulder cooked sous vide, it is not necessary. If you want to replicate this recipe, it would be recommended as it will be easier to slice in the post treatments.
This recipe looks amazing, and I can't wait to try it. I have a couple of questions. Are there any other cuts that you think this faux-steak idea works particularly well with (or does it work equally well with all tough cuts)? And can the ChefSteps low-oven roasting technique be used for the reheating stage, to give the meat a particularly developed crust?
Have you used activa to reform the shoulder in the video?
Yes we cheated and sprinkled a little activa in there. It is not necessary, but does help to keep things a little tighter.
We list a few of our favorite cuts in the description of the recipe. As for reheating, I think using the low temp oven would not only work great, but yield a pretty amazing piece of meat!
How will the lamb shoulder work with this technique? Any reasons you did not include lamb in the list ?
Lamb shoulder will work great. The list we included was meant to be inspirational and get the creative juices flowing rather than be comprehensive and complete.
what would be the time for a lamb shank ?
let's say I want to do it as a thai red curry dish or a Indonesian rendeng dish or Moroccan lamb shank ? should I add the spice to the pouch and vacuum seal it then cook it sous vide ?
Why does this recipe say to cook it at 140 degrees F, but the Time & Temperature guide says 144 degrees F for pork?
Any advice on seasoning? I have done before with short ribs and always just season like a steak after cooking. How does brining affect meat when cooked sous-vide for 24+ hours?
I just got my pork shoulder out of the water oven today, chilled it for one hour and droped it out of the bag. I had to go back to your video just to confirm and from what I can see you also get this dark brown/green-ish color on some parts of the meat. Having done some sous vide proteins before I normaly just sear those areas and get a good presentation, since we cut our meat up in steaks now though we wont really put much sear on that side of the steak. Do you guys trim that of or do anything else with it or just leave it like it is?
Also, after i've chilled the meat and cut it up in steaks, is it safe to vacuum them individually and put them in a fridge for a couple of days even though the fridge might get to say 5 degrees celsius, or is the risk for botulism big now even after repackaging?
Thank you for a great site and awesome videos/classes!
I really like 80°C/16hr for lamb shank.
The Time & Temp guide is meant to be just that, a general guide. It is meant to get you started and begin exploring. For this recipe, I like to cook the whole shoulder a little lower so it comes out a bit steakier. It works just as well at the higher temperature, it is just bit softer/not as chewy.
I will usually leave the sides be or just give them a quick sear and get them good and crunchy. Your steaks should be ok for a few days in the fridge, however you will have some risk of spoilage if you leave them for too long. See our section on food safety for more information
Do you mean the food safety section in the Sous Vide Class or somewhere else?
So when I vacuum-pack allready cooked food and store it in 5 degrees celsius, the only thing I'm worried about is spoilage and not botulism?
The FDA 2013 Food Code [3-501.17(A) and 3-502.12(D)2.e.ii] – among others – is fine with storing ready-to-eat or sous vide food for 7 days at 5 °C / 41 °F. This is more conservative than what's required for Clostridium botulinum, which my web guide advises storing
• below 36.5°F (2.5°C) for up to 90 days,
• below 38°F (3.3°C) for less than 31 days,
• below 41°F (5°C) for less than 10 days, or
• below 44.5°F (7°C) for less than 5 days
based on Gould's (1999) and Peck's (1997) research.
Any idea how to adjust timing if I am able to grab "steak" cuts of the tough-cut versus a bigger piece? I ask because I saw at one of my local shops some really nice lamb shoulder already cut in to steaks (about 1.5" thick). I imagine the timing goes down, but not sure how to estimate.
I stopped at the store today and saw they had some ~6 lb pork shoulders that were already vacuumed packed. Am I safe to assume that it would be ok to pull off the label and then just cook it in the bag it comes in?
I'd be curious about this too.
I second this question!
Hi. This is all so great and super inspiring. I have a couple questions:
– I don't have bags big enough for the shoulders, is there a good reason why I wouldn't just cut the shoulder into steaks and then bag individually?
– I imagine if I did cut the shoulder down, the cook time would be quite different, any pointers on how long to cook a pork shoulder steak (roughly the same thickness as those in the video)?
– If there a particular reason you brined in the belly recipe, but not this one, other than to achieve a more hammy texture?
– This is a little off-topic, but can you comment at all on brining and Activa? In Dave Arnold's transglutaminase primer, he warns that "TG and salt can make food rubbery," but doesn't go into significant detail – if I glue my shoulder, as you have done, and then brine it, do you think it'll have a negative effect on the texture?
I couldn't find a pork shoulder without committing to 15 lbs at Costco, so I bought a 5.6 lb pork loin and cut it into 1.5" steaks (12 or so). I vacuum packed all but the 3 we were going to have for dinner, and put those in Ziplock bags. For one of them I put a temperature probe, closed the bag as best I could, and clipped it to the side of the pot to keep water from getting in. When it reached 140 degrees I knew the others were cooked. I actually turned the water bath down 1.5 or 2 degrees near the end because I was busy making two other dishes and wasn't ready to deal with the pork yet (I had set the water bath 2 degrees above the temperature I was seeking). It came out great.
How long did you cook it for?
oh never mind I just saw you bought loin so totally different ball game I think
Great course and website! If I don't own a vacuum sealer and made a large chuck roast to be used as steaks, would I better off slicing and freezing individual portions or leaving the cooked chuck whole in the fridge and slicing off pieces to order? If I left it whole in the fridge, how long would it be good for?
since you're just cooking it at 60C you may be able to do that!
but the bags you use for a vacuum sealer are designed to handle heat.
so if you can help it, package it yourself.
Just tried this yesterday and the problem I had was that when the meat was done cooking it gave off a really bad odor. I checked online and it looks like the problem is caused by lactobacillus bacteria. Anyone else have this issue? My two questions are: 1) is it safe to eat (from what I've read the answer appears to be yes), and 2) how do I avoid this in the future?
just curious why this wasn't brined, or even seasoned till it was plated?
We didn't wan't to "ham" the shoulder. By not brining it maintains more of that "steaky" texture.
I would recommend slicing and freezing portions. You run a higher risk of spoilage and contamination by taking it in and out of the fridge all the time.
You can totally cook steaks individually. The cook time won't be greatly affected because this cooking process is more about the time vs. a cooking to core temp process. The only reason for not brining here is for the texture and to show just how simple this technique is. TG and salt are both technically protein modifiers. In my experience the only instances that either produce "rubbery" results is when they are used to excess. Just keep in mind if you use them together you run the risk of enhancing their effects.
_S_ee the answer below.
Technically it should be fine, but you have no idea what the quality of the meat without opening the bag.
Similar to the question Rickard Fransén asked: what causes the dark olive green color that I get on long cooked sous vide? This has been bugging me for a while. It is most pronounced when I sous vide beef - short ribs for over 24 hours. It doesn't seem to affect the taste, but I'm curious what it is.
I just had to try this with a serloin steak, I cheated a little however and sat the water temp to 58C, hopefully the 24 hours will be enough anyways. If it isn't I'll just bump it up a bit the next time! Right now I'm waiting for it to chill so I can cut it up, tomorrow I'll serve it together with a boeuf bourgogne sauce and some buttery robuchon potato pure!
Let us know how it works out. 58 should be fine, you may even be able to go a little lower. Cheers.
Well, it went ok in that the meat got real tender, however it also got pretty damn dry and lost alot of liquid. I cooked it for 24 hours, chilled it for an hour, took it out of the package, dried it off with paper towels (to not have a messy piece of meat slithering around the cutting board while slicing), sliced it and vacuum packed it again, storing it in the fridge overnight. Today I put the vacuum bag with the steaks in 56C water bath for 1 hour, seared it and then served.
Did I miss anything that might have dried it out more than I have to?
However I served it with the extras that I talked about in the previous post and all in all it was a good result. I did miss the juiciness I get from "finer" cuts however.
Actually guys, it just struck me... When I vacuum packed the meat the first time around I took it straight out of the fridge and put it in the vacuum bag and then in the water bath set to 58C. I'm guessing that not allowing the meat to get to room temperature had it's negative effect on it so that the juices got squeezed out from the big temperature change?
On the question of reheating, I recently cooked some short rib for two and a half days at 60 degrees with a BBQ sauce. It came out deliciously tender.
I also had some left over which I reheated next day in a pan at a much much higher temperature. The meat was still deliciously tender.
My question is, if you have spent a lot of time cooking meat to a certain temperature, does reheating it quickly to a higher temperature completely negate all the work you did in the first place? My instinct would say yes but the short rib I reheated was still beautifully tender even though it was heated on the hob to what must have been 80 or 90 degrees.
This is just me thinking in my own way and it might be wrong, but the tendernes generated by long time cooking in low temperature is due to the collagen being gelatinized which in turn makes the protein strands easier to seperate. So from what I gather, now cooking the meat in a high temperature will not make the protein strands stick together more, the only thing it might do is melting the gelatinized collagen which can make the meat taste less and seem drier, however it will still be as tender as before the high temperature cooking.
EDIT: Actually it might even make the meat more tender since gelatinized collagen probably still makes the protein strands stick together better than no collagen at all.
As I said, not sure if I'm right but I wanted to give it a shot. Somebody with more knowledge should correct my post if I'm wrong.
Ok. I made this my birthday party last night. Cooked 18lbs pork shoulder in the bag it came in for 24 hrs, then portioned and grilled. Originally I wanted to brine it and glue it, but didn't have a convenient way to re-bag and it was going to be a huge, messy hassle in my apartment. Didn't end up mattering, though. The texture was amazing. In my case, I didn't need 1.5 hrs to reheat – more like 30 minutes, though my chops were a little bit less thick than in the recipe above.
I went trashy tiki: glazed with habanero and mango, then garnished with pineapple, toast coconut and macadamia nut.
Absolutely phenomenal. Super easy way to feed/please a crowd.
Photo credit to http://instagram.com/p/wkaNKnzem4/
p.s. note to tech team: "add your creation" button doesn't seem to work in my browser (Chrome). It also only appears when I click on the recipe from the home page, but not when viewed from within the class.
I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you. It has not happened to me but, based on the emails I've answered over the years, it happens to a few people out of a thousand and seems to happen to them fairly regularly. If you've checked the calibration of your water bath, the food remained under the water and the water had plenty of room to circulate around the food, and you cooked at or above 130 °F / 55 °C, then you're food's likely safe. Interestingly, the lists of spoilage and pathogenic bacteria don't overlap, so many (but not all) foods "spoil safe" – that is, they become too spoiled to eat before they're unsafe to eat.
Anyway, in the past I've asked the people who've emailed me with this problem to do the following and they didn't report any more problems:
(1) I asked them to make sure they use the meat well before its best-by date and looks and smells very fresh. I also asked them to make sure it remains cold from the store up until it goes in the water bath. Personally, I've had good luck getting meat from Costco but your milage may vary.
(2) I asked them to sanitize, rather than just clean, their cutting boards and counters. Some of these spoilage bacteria are really hardy and difficult to eliminate completely. So start by thoroughly cleaning your cutting board and counter with soapy water, then rinsing and drying them. Then apply diluted vinegar – 2 parts water and 1 part 5% white vinegar – to the surface by spreading it with a paper towel. Then let the vinegar solution air dry on the surface. If you'd like to read more, check out Pete Snyder's safety guide for home food preparers.
Some people like to dip their food (either just before or after bagging) in very hot water (usually above 171 °F / 77 °C) to kill surface bacteria. While a sufficiently long dunk in hot water will reduce the spoilage microorganisms on the surface, it can also activate spoilage spores that can multiply at 30 °F / -1.1 °C. So, depending on the type of spoilage microorganism, a hot water dunk may or may not help.
Thanks for this Rickard. I would suspect the same, but my short rib pieces were still nicely held together and juicy. I wonder if the time I spent reheating had something to do with it. I had cut the meat into smaller chunks so it didn't need a long time to reheat and this may have prevented the gelatin from melting away.
I'm having some problems with this, mainly with the meat becoming really dry. I did some tests with one piece of meat divided into four pieces á 400g. Two of them I took directly from the fridge, one I prepackaged in plastic wrap. The other two got to sit in room temperature for 120 minutes which brought their core temperature to about 14 degrees celsius, again I prepackaged one of those two in plastic wrap. (this is a beef serloin steak by the way).
I ran them for 24 hours in a 58 degrees celsius bath, took them out and weighed them. To my surprise they all lost the equal percentage of juices, 30%, which sounds huge to me. Do you have any ideas as to what I can do to prevent this big loss of juices? Or do you guys lose the same percentages?
Had some issues with this one...think there must have been something wrong with product or my method since it came out with a lot of "green slime". I found another example picture of a similar issue of ribs. Did not keep it.
Pork was boneless pork shoulder and had been packaged at supermarket, so not in original vacuum pack bag... and had to use water displacement method rather than vacuum this time....no issues with maintaining temperature at 60/140 for 24 hours.
Texture of the steaks was as described, pretty sweet....Now back to the Chocolate Mustard Stew.
I regret that I did not take a better picture, but the pork butt steaks were delicious. I liked the idea of serving over lentils, so prepared lentils with onions, garlic, carrots, chard, and thyme. On the side is a crostini with a mixture of mushroom, tomatoes, garlic, jalapeño, cheddar, and extra virgin.
Don't you have to worry about Botulinum spores growing since the core will be less then 130F for more then 6 hours? Douglas Baldwin said "if the food is heated really slowly – more than six hours until the core reaches 55 C (130 F) – so C. botulinum is able to grow significantly (3 generations) while cooking."
According to my Sous Vide Dash, a 4 inches thick shoulder does NOT pasteurize OR reach 130F within 6 hours. My Sous Vide Dash says "Danger: did not pasteurize to core in 6 hours"
On top of that it would take more then 8 hours to cool the thick shoulder in an ice bath to a safe 38F. So we are talking about more then 14 hours where the meat is in a temp where Botulinum Spores are growing. If a pork shoulder is 5 inches thick, it would be in temps less then 130F for even longer! Can someone clarify? perhaps @DouglasBaldwin can help?
I had great success with this method! I'm new to cooking, not all that great at it yet, but I love reading up on the science behind it, and I couldn't resist experimenting with sous vide. (It's basically cooking with cheat codes, which is perfect for a newbie like me.) My steaks were smaller than ChefSteps', so instead of reheating in the water bath, I just jumped straight to searing (salting beforehand). I was so pleased that the meat maintained its tenderness and juiciness after being chilled. On to beef next week! I might need to get a bigger freezer.
Oh, also, I seared the pork in a stainless steel skillet and made a quick pan sauce with the fond. No sense leaving money on the table.
I'll have to see if I can find it, but I read somewhere on the internet that you should not use the bags the meat came in because the material may not be suited for heat. I also read that the bag could easily lose its seal. I'll definitely do more research though.
I haven't used activa before. Would you recommend the sprinkle method or the slurry method to reform the pork butt.
I tried this recipe and it turned out great. My roast was a bit large at 8.5 pounds so I cut it in half. I cooked it at 144F for 24 hours. I sliced it in to steaks, seasoned with salt and pepper and on to a screaming hot grill. I made a very simple glaze using a hot Thai chili sauce mixed with soy sauce and local honey. This was great and I'll definitely do this again. Thanks you guys!!!
Hello
I just bought two shoulders bone in and I want to know how to de-bone them. Any body have a video I can watch?
I only have ~1400g of pork shoulder - should I still cook it @ 140 for 24 hours, or should I reduce the cooking time?
Hi all, I'm a bit late to the party, has anyone tried taking the pork from this recipe slicing it thinner (1/4 inch) and treating it like tonkatsu? flouring it, egg wash and panko, then deep frying it?
What did you do with the bag juices?
Thanks for this technique! Finally got around to finishing some of the pork "steaks" that I made and froze a while back. They went over very well!!!
I've learned so much from CS and the community. Thanks everyone, and keep it up!
Strain and defat. Combine with some good stock, bodied with gelatin, and you have a pretty AMAZING base for sauces!
really late response, however, while their is a potential hazard, you need to do research on C. botulinum. Once you've done that, you'll realize why it's not a very high risk, even though you are is the danger zone for it growing
