[HN Gopher] Science of Slow Cooking
___________________________________________________________________
Science of Slow Cooking
Author : colinprince
Score : 103 points
Date : 2021-10-22 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scienceofcooking.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scienceofcooking.com)
| chomp wrote:
| > Since enzyme activity increases up to those temperatures, slow
| cooking can provide a significant aging effect during cooking.
| Meat should however be quickly seared or blanched first to kill
| surface microbes.
|
| I want to call out shio koji here. I prepared a steak dusted in
| it for 3 days, and it tasted identical to a 40 day dry aged
| steak. If you're looking to maximize enzymatic processes, dust
| your meat in mold!
| gremloni wrote:
| Prepared it in your refrigerator? What's the process? Sounds
| very interesting.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Serious Eats has some coverage of this.
| https://www.seriouseats.com/shio-koji-marinade
| chomp wrote:
| Sure, so I grabbed a normal ribeye, dusted it with shio koji
| powder (might be at your local Asian food market, definitely
| on Amazon) and put it covered in the fridge for 48 hours.
| Make sure you get the actual powder, because if you get
| inoculated rice, you'll have to grind it up into a powder and
| it's a pain. The steak should look like a giant slab of brie
| when you put it in the fridge.
|
| I then washed off the powder, and cooked the steak like
| normal (read: sous vide). Steak had the familiar nutty day
| dry aged flavor (I compared with a dry aged steak I had
| cooked previously), and caramel coloring with the slightest,
| almost imperceptible sweetness of miso. It was magic. Be
| careful with the sear though, because I think some of the
| sugars are left behind, and it takes only maybe 30 seconds on
| each side instead of a minute. It'll get crusty much quicker
| than normal.
|
| Highly recommend if you're ok with molded food (e.g. blue
| cheese, brie, miso), and it's way way cheaper than getting
| something off the shelf as dry aged.
| gremloni wrote:
| Great, thanks. I just placed an order for shio koji on
| Amazon, can't wait to try it out.
| chomp wrote:
| I can't wait for you to try it!
|
| Also, you can shio koji any meat, not just beef for what
| it's worth, but I personally feel like the flavors start
| to go sideways. Pork and chicken I feel need a bolder
| flavor to prop up the dry age taste; shio koji alone on
| those overwhelms the flavor and wasn't that great. So if
| you experiment with those, you may want to try smoking
| them too. Good luck!
| gremloni wrote:
| For medium rare, what do _you_ use for sous vide temps and
| for how long? Also is there an alternative to using plastic
| bags?
| chomp wrote:
| Medium rare has a quite large range when you consider
| sous vide (129 - 134) because you can select any of them
| and get a medium rare steak in all cases.
|
| When testing my sous vide device, I noted that the device
| is off by one degree. Not sure if that's intentional, but
| makes sense considering 130F is pasteurization temp, and
| you'd rather be over than vs under.
|
| Since I have kids, I try to stay over 130 - I think I end
| up dialing it in around 131 F for 1.5 hours (which should
| be 132-ish, around the middle of the range), and I
| increase the time depending on the thickness. Fist size
| filet mignons get 2 hours, and I did a prime rib once for
| 24 hours.
|
| And for your plastic bag question, there exist reusable
| silicone bags for sous vide. I can't promise you'll be
| able to do the prime rib in one of those, but for a
| single steak, most definitely.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Douglas Baldwin's Practical Guide to Sous Vide cooking is
| the only place you need to look to determine pasteuration
| times vs. temperature. It is an outstanding reference
| that just so happens to be free.
|
| https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html
|
| BTW, try pasteurizing raw eggs, beat one into a bowl of
| rice, and top with a bit of kimchi and sesame seeds.
| Delicious.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Sous vide and slow cooking are great, but Maillard browning is
| also great. So if you're interested in this article you're
| probably also going to be highly interested in this Kenji Lopez-
| Alt article: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-reverse-sear-
| best-way-to-...
| Jarwain wrote:
| Usually when I sous vide something, I do a quick hot sear at
| the end to build a nice crust. I used to reverse sear before I
| got my sous vide and made some amazing steaks, but doing it
| with the sous vide takes the cake imo
| hondo77 wrote:
| I've been "reverse searing" my carnitas for several years:
| start in a crock pot, end in a cast iron skillet. Didn't know
| there was a term for it. Tender but with that Maillard crunch.
| hericium wrote:
| I find non-modern methods of food preparation more rewarding,
| since I quit smoking. After about a year I noticed that I gained
| a lot of appreciation for acidic food and started fiddling with
| lacto-fermentation. Now I'm not even attempting a mango-hananero
| sauce unless peppers aren't fermented for 3 months or more. I
| pressure cook, I slow cook, I smoke the shit out of everything
| that can be smoked. Tastes are awesome.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Fermented peppers are amazing, easily one of my favorite
| toppings for burgers, ramen, pizza, etc.
|
| If you haven't tried it, fermented tomatoes are super
| interesting. They create a weird yellow liquid that doesn't
| taste like anything I've ever tasted before.
| [deleted]
| SamBam wrote:
| My daughter sealed a cherry tomato in a tiny jar at the start
| of the pandemic, just so we could watch it change. It's been
| just a parchment of skin floating in a pool of yellow liquid
| for months.
|
| I'm not going to taste it, though.
| hericium wrote:
| I ferment more pungent Chinense peppers in 3-5% brine for 6+
| months in low temperature and then smoke them on apple+pecan
| wood with typical bell peppers soaked in 15% brine for 6
| hours. Then there's drying, crushing and this makes a "smoked
| paprika" condiment very different to store bought. Less
| pungent Chinenses usually go dry or are smoked and dried for
| later use. Less pungent Annuum peppers like jalapeno go for
| 3-6 months of fermentation in 2% brine and are then turned
| into "cowboy candy" by soft-boiling in syrup, wrapped in
| sugar and dried. This is my favorite candy with no fat. Left-
| over bacteria water is my daily probiotic and pre-workout
| drink addition kept in the fridge.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| Related: pickled onions on pork sandwiches (and about
| anything else you would normally use onions for) are a
| fantastic way to add some acidity to a dish.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8566965 from 7 years
| ago.
|
| Also the connection to Science Of Slow Cooking at
| sciencecooking.com has timed out. I love irony.
|
| EDIT: it seems to be working properly now
| [deleted]
| verytrivial wrote:
| We have a rather dumb slow-cooker left by a previous tennant.
| 170W on High, with some lower value on Low and Warm. 95% of the
| heat added once it reaches temperature is lost the environment.
| Lame!
|
| Low Tech Magazine has a nice article on the topic [1] of
| 'Fireless Cookers' which while a bit bulky look like they could
| cut a lot of energy waste, esp. if there is a mini heating
| element to top-up heating losses.
|
| Thermos also make a 4.5L vacuum cooker ("Shuttle Chef") which
| looks ideal but it for some reason is eye-wateringly expensive
| and apparently only made in or for Japan.
|
| [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot-
| insulati...
| com2kid wrote:
| From your article:
|
| > the thermal efficiency varies from 13% for electric hobs to
| 23% for gas hobs
|
| They also have a graph showing induction as being less
| efficient than gas.
|
| Everything I have read recently says the exact opposite, that
| gas spews most of its energy into your house and very little
| into the pot, while a good flat top electric gets a large %
| into the pot and induction gets 100% of generated heat into the
| cooking vessel. (Though I don't know what efficiency induction
| operates on, obviously electric stoves are nearly 1W of energy
| in, 1W of heat out!)
|
| Unfortunately most articles comparing gas and electric compare
| energy _costs_ to the consumer, not thermal efficiency, but I
| do come across papers such as
| https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/9-7...
| that are basically the exact opposite of what the site you
| linked says.
|
| Digging further, it looks like lowtechmagazine based their
| findings on
| https://mb.cision.com/Public/MigratedWpy/91653/9014629/ae07e...
| which is measuring losses due to grid transmission which seems
| to put electric at a distinct disadvantage.
|
| That paper does show the massive amount of heat gas stoves dump
| into the surrounding air, which depending on climate may then
| have to be removed, likely by an electric air conditioner,
| taking that into account gas shoots way up in energy costs.
|
| And of course that paper is from 2010, as the grid becomes
| renewable electric starts winning out in every possible
| direction.
| wahern wrote:
| > Everything I have read recently says the exact opposite,
| that gas spews most of its energy into your house and very
| little into the pot
|
| That graph is showing thermal efficiency end-to-end, at least
| when assuming fossil fuel-based power plants. That's made
| clear in the article, where they also point out that gas
| burners are horribly poor at heat transfer--but not poor
| enough in their model to make them worse than electric
| stoves, induction or resistive.
| verytrivial wrote:
| Yeah, I was mainly talking about the heat once coupled to the
| pot. If "23%" means 77% of the heat goes straight past the
| pot, I'm still wondering if this is a heat 'delta' or
| quiescent heat flow required to keep a pot _at_ a
| temperature.
|
| Taking a spherical-cow approach, exactly how much energy
| would be required to (pressure?) cook 1kg of meat in an
| utterly lossless container? I'm picture stove-top pots more
| akin to helicopters that hot air balloons -- you're paying a
| lot of energy to keep the pot at a given temperature only
| _because_ most of the heat is convecting and radiating out
| even after it manages to couple into the pot at some low
| factor. A tiny, tiny bit actually goes into changing the
| chemical state of the food.
|
| So, an electically heated pressure + vacuum pot would surely
| be the most efficient (at making probably entirely untasty
| food.)
| com2kid wrote:
| My instapot is not burning hot while I am cooking with it,
| so there is some insulation there for sure.
|
| Heck my rice cooker seems reasonably well insulated.
| ipspam wrote:
| Very neat article. I consider myself a novice at slow cooking
| meat. I've done Sous-Vide, crock pot, and Kamado cooking. By far,
| Kamado is king.
|
| Next time you think of buying a BBQ, find a used Kamado. Don't
| overthink it. Just do it. A little more prep, but not really more
| work.
|
| It's as simple as: 1. Stir the charcoal to get rid of the ash 2.
| Add more charcoal 3. Light charcoal, leave grill open. 4. Come
| back 15 mins later, set Kamado up (deflector plate, grills, etc)
| and close Kamado. 5a. Set up digital temperature control 5b. Wait
| 20 minutes and make temperature adjustment. 6. Wait 60-90
| minutes, add meat. 7. Drink beer, relax. 8. Eat.
|
| It's really not complicated, especially if you are on Hacker News
| reading this. Add as much charcoal as you want. Leave the too
| vent half or 1/3 open. Control temperature with oxygen flow via
| the bottom door.
|
| It really is that simple.
|
| As for how this ties in to the article, a cubic centimeter of
| water will turn into 5500 cubic centimeters of steam. All the
| water in your meat will turn to vapor and exit the Kamado. But
| slowly. Which, as the article states is optimal because the high
| moisture in the air keeps meat moist over long cooks which allows
| the breakdown of collagen.
|
| The other cool thing is that the bigger a cut of meat, the longer
| it takes to cook, the MORE TIME it spends traversing from 160
| degrees until the finish temperature. More time = better collagen
| breakdown.
|
| Anyway, completely concur, slow cooking meat is king. Where I
| dissent is that meat shouldn't be cooked IN water or fluid, and
| shouldn't be steamed. Crust is everything. Built that crust!
| pkulak wrote:
| Can't I just turn on my oven? That's even easier. ;)
| ipspam wrote:
| If you want to go to meat hell ;)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Where I dissent is that meat ... shouldn 't be steamed._
|
| For every rule, there's an exception. Pastrami is the exception
| to this one.
| ipspam wrote:
| Hmm.... You may be correct
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a place here in town that brines brisket for a week,
| and then slow smokes it for 14 hours or so like a bbq
| brisket. It makes it hard to have pastrami any other way now
| downut wrote:
| I do pastrami the way Franklin BBQ book describes cooking
| brisket using their recommended side barrel smoker mods. I
| use scrub oak logs off the back lot, leave the door open,
| and smoke it for say 4-5 hrs. Then I take the still tough
| pastrami and stuff it in the oven with foil covering, no
| water underneath, and give it another 4-5 hrs at ~200F.
|
| Yeah. Store pastrami is sorta disgusting now (unintended
| bad side effect). Good gawd my pastrami is delicious.
|
| I use Ruhl and Polcyn's "Charcuterie" for the seasonings
| and prep. I roast the whole coriander and pepper and then
| grind it right before. And that book if fantastic for a
| whole variety of slow cooked preparations.
| hnick wrote:
| Poached chicken is also quite nice in the right place, like
| Hainanese chicken rice.
| donw wrote:
| If you're going to have to use a digital temperature control,
| I'm not sure a Kamado is really necessary.
|
| I really like my PitmasterIQ[1]. It's a couple hundred bucks,
| and _doesn 't_ require a smartphone app, which means it won't
| stop working in a few years. Hooks up to pretty much any grill
| -- which, presumably, you already have -- and near-guarantees
| perfect results every time.
|
| Sure, you'll need to foil wrap (3-2-1 is a good place to
| start), but otherwise, it's minimal work. Did a six-hour smoke
| of some babyback pork ribs a couple of months ago, and if I
| closed my eyes, could easily imagine I was in Texas, not Tokyo.
| Flavor, texture, and color were all amazing.
|
| For those that don't know: These work by controlling airflow to
| the coals, with a thermocouple-driven feedback loop. I went
| with the cheaper Pitmaster, but I'll likely invest in one that
| also has a thermocouple for the meat as well.
|
| [1] https://pitmasteriq.com/
| ipspam wrote:
| A pitmaster is a digital temperature control, so you are on
| the correct path.
|
| I use a Thermoworks Signals and Billows as my digital
| control. It allows me to have 4 probes, 1 of which is
| positioned to control the temperature, 3 of which can monitor
| other parts of the Kamado or be inside meat.
|
| It also allows me to see a graph of all 4 probes over time.
| It connects to my wifi (and Bluetooth as a redundancy) so I
| can check temperatures when im out shopping or working (via
| Thermoworks, which collects and serves the data back to me).
| It also allows me to change the temperature from anywhere. I
| can start a cook at 300, go to work, and drop it to 225
| anytime I want.
|
| It's the ultimate piece of kit.
|
| As for not needing a Kamado, I disagree. The 345lbs of mass
| that I have give ultimate temperature buffer control. It
| can't be overstated the difference holding a cook between
| 223-227 and holding a cook between 210 and 240 makes. The
| steadier the better.
| davidw wrote:
| A bit about smoking meats, which is an ancient, but wonderful way
| of cooking them, would make an interesting addition.
|
| For instance, something that surprises some people the first time
| they cut into smoked meat is the red "smoke ring" at the _edge_
| of the meat, rather than the center:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_ring_(cooking)
| chomp wrote:
| Yeah, lot of myths about the smoke ring - you can put on some
| prague powder #1 about 20 minutes before cooking in the oven
| and you can replicate the ring. It's not a sign of a well done
| cook in all aspects, though it does add to the visual appeal.
|
| Another misconception is the people who aim for exact degrees
| when smoking (e.g. brisket) - 195 F, 202 F, etc. It's the total
| time spent above 160 (roughly where the stall is) that matters
| (if I remember correctly there's a peak around 170 F or 180 F
| that is maximum breakdown rate). A small brisket is going to
| get up to 202 quicker than a 15 lb brisket, and will wind up
| "drier" because the collagen did not break down as far. If the
| cook dialed their recipe in for total time for collagen to
| break down, the results might not be identical, but there would
| be a lot less variation.
| rotten wrote:
| This should be the "Science of Slow Cooking Meat". Rather than
| slow cooking in general.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| This is pretty specific to slow cooking meat.
|
| There's lots of good ways to slow cook meat. I think slow
| cookers(aka Crockpots) have a lot of downsides. If I've got 8
| hours to cook a piece of meat, I've probably got the time to sous
| vide, which I think gives better texture. If I had a smoker, I'd
| go that way for the flavor and texture. I'd rather braise in the
| oven as well.
|
| Crockpots are easy, and leave the oven free, but I think too
| often give a universal mushiness to many cuts. They can be used
| well for long meat cooks, but it's more difficult than it seems.
|
| For a bigger upfront purchase I think a pressure cooker is the
| better option for most. It's great to be able to pull off beans
| from dry in an hour, or high quality stock on an hour. A lot of
| the pressure cookers have slow cooker functionality built in, as
| well. Pressure cooked meats can have a different texture than
| traditionally cooked ones, but it's not as objectionable in my
| mind.
|
| If you liked the post thoughtfully linked here, Harold McGee's On
| Food and Cooking is a must.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Depends on the meat. I prefer braised (cooked in liquid)
| brisket/shank/tendon way more than cooked sous vide.
|
| I've tried the 8-48 hour sous vide with beef/pork and didn't
| find it worthwhile.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| I was a big champion of sous-vide but I've realized that,
| while it can produce very precise texture results, it just
| doesn't develop as much _flavor_ as something braised in the
| oven.
|
| The evaporation\reduction that occurs during a long braise in
| the oven significantly concentrates flavors in the meat and
| there are a lot of delicious Maillard reactions on the sides
| of the braising pot as well as on exposed bits of meat that
| just don't occur in a sous-vide bag.
|
| In fact, the bag prevents evaporation from occurring at all,
| and a quick sear post-bath doesn't quite achieve the same
| result.
|
| Water baths have their place, but I've gone back to
| traditional slow cooking if I want that deep flavor. Also,
| the house smells so much better!
| regulation_d wrote:
| 100% agree on the braising in the oven vs. crockpot. A crockpot
| gives you 2 or 3 temp settings, where an oven can give you
| dozens or hundreds.
| monroewalker wrote:
| Where do you get your recipes!? I've had an instant pot for a
| while but never ended up using it much.
| boringg wrote:
| Pork shoulder in the slow cooker is great - lots of sub-par
| cuts are great in there.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I've never had a slow cooker pork shoulder that was nearly as
| good as one smoked, sous vide, slow-roasted, braised, or
| pressure cooked.
|
| Also pork shoulder is great! It's one of my favorite meats.
| It takes a long time to cook (because you have to render the
| collagen), but it's delightful.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I've never had a slow cooker pork shoulder that was nearly
| as good as one smoked,
|
| Um, like duh! ;-) Slow cookers aren't for the foodie types
| looking for best recipes, it's for the "i got other things
| to do" types. I use the bejeebus out of my smoker. The
| problem that I have is that if I'm going through the work
| of using the smoker, I'm going to smoke everything in the
| fridge. I did a few racks of ribs and a tenderloin, but the
| fire was soo good that day I threw on a roast. Best roast
| I've had.
| boringg wrote:
| To be fair - I'm not saying it is necessarily as good I
| should have caveated it as it is still quite good and way
| less involved. Return to effort ratio is high (and cost is
| low).
| Havoc wrote:
| >It's great to be able to pull off beans from dry in an hour
|
| Also dry beans in a slow cooker is a bad plan anyway - there
| have been incidents of people getting sick cause slow cookers
| don't hit the required temp to get rid of the
| Phytohaemagglutinin.
|
| Pressure cookers are a much better plan for this as you say
| locuscoeruleus wrote:
| Depends on the bean you cook. Most beans are fine, kidney
| beans, for example, are not.
| ryanchants wrote:
| But how much of the universal mushiness of slow cooking vs
| braising is that they usually have different definitions of
| done?
|
| In a lot of cases, braised dish ingredients are the same as
| slow cooker recipe ingredients. A braise has a lot of
| intentional steps to develop flavor, whereas a crock pot recipe
| normally just says "dump it all in a crock pot".
|
| But for the mushiness, I would say it's where a crock pot
| recipe often says "cook on medium setting for 8/10/12 hours",
| and a braised recipe says(should say) "cook until done". If you
| braised for the same amount of time crock pot convenience
| recipes use, you'd get the same amount of mushiness.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I think crockpot recipes tend to be wetter and covered, to
| allow for longer unattended cooks. That's the other typical
| difference
| bostik wrote:
| > _Harold McGee 's On Food and Cooking is a must_
|
| Yeah, my read from the article was that someone had found
| McGee's tome and grabbed the section on meat cooking.
|
| For a simpler and less heavy reading, Cooking for Geeks is a
| surprisingly good starting point. (I love On Food and Cooking
| but it's as much a scientific reference as it's a food
| preparation guide.)
| chongli wrote:
| Most slow cooker recipes are adapted from (and/or can be
| adapted to) Dutch oven recipes. Cooking the same recipe using
| the latter, in the oven on low heat with the Dutch oven lid
| slightly ajar, will produce a much more flavourful dish thanks
| to the Maillard reaction and all of the delicious browning that
| takes place on the top. It's something I recommend to anyone
| who enjoys braised dishes.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > but I think too often give a universal mushiness to many cuts
|
| Lots of people like that, especially with sub-par cuts (blade
| roast anyone?).
| phonypc wrote:
| I don't think "sub-par cuts" makes sense as a category.
| Different cuts are just suited to different kinds of cooking.
|
| Calling a blade roast sub-par because it doesn't make good
| steaks makes about as much sense as calling tenderloin sub-
| par because it doesn't make a good braise.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Blade isn't the best braising cut either. For braises short
| rib, chuck, oxtail, etc... are better. That's why I called
| it sub-par.
| phonypc wrote:
| Blade _is_ chuck.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| My bad, dunno what I was thinking.
| yissp wrote:
| I think it's just that the cuts suited to slow-cooking
| techniques tend to also be the cheaper cuts. Maybe that's
| because they are generally from larger muscles and
| therefore in comparatively greater supply.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I sometimes wonder how many cooking techniques exist
| specifically to "upgrade" lower quality ingredients. Slow
| cooking, spices ... it's likely not a huge list, but I
| suspect it forms a notable part of the world's cooking
| cultures.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I live in Thailand now, but lived most of my life in The
| Netherlands. I live on the Thai countryside. Most of the
| pork and beef/buffalo meat my girlfriend buys in the
| village market, I don't really enjoy. It's often "chewy".
| Apparently Thai people do like these kinds of meat, but I
| think The Netherlands would export most of this meat the
| 2nd or 3rd world countries.
|
| Those "chewy" kinds of meat would be ok when slow cooked
| I'd wager, perhaps in a Hungarian goulash [0].
|
| I suspect the local pig farmers send the best cuts of meat
| to the big city, to sell for higher prices.
|
| At least the chicken meat is good.
|
| ---
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Absolutely. I grew up spending lots of time on a farm, I've
| lived in a 3rd world country, plus have cooked for a
| living. The fact is, the majority of an animal is shitty
| cuts of meat.
|
| Even something like short rib is 'premium' compared to much
| of the carcass. So slow-cooking is great to turn a blade or
| round roast into something that doesn't suck. And
| definitely, a huge part of every food culture is cooking
| these subpar cuts.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Slow cooked 'shitty' meat like chuck is _tastier_ than
| the best cuts. Or so I 've found.
|
| But you do have to cook it for a long time - or pressure
| cook.
| bserge wrote:
| I'm just here trying to understand what a "shitty cut"
| even means. For me, it's all meat. Some tastes better
| than other. But the baseline is "good".
|
| The old animal meat (from milk cows and goats, and egg
| hens) that I ate as a kid would probably horrify someone
| like you lol
| graycat wrote:
| > old animal meat?
|
| In one of his books, Escoffier explained that in making
| beef stock, get better flavor starting with the meat of
| old animals.
|
| Soooo, I considered that, and in NY thought of _retired_
| dairy cows so called around. I got to a packing house in
| PA where I got an explanation "think fast food". So,
| maybe McDonald's, Burger King, etc. are serving the beef
| the Escoffier liked for making beef stock!
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Indeed - I hunt red deer, and the most useful meat is the
| back legs and back straps (muscles running along the
| spine) - the front legs and neck etc. are typically only
| used for mincing.
|
| Even then the cuts in the back legs vary in usefulness.
|
| And venison is notoriously lean, hence a lot of methods
| of cooking it involve larding to prevent it ending up a
| dry lump of chewiness.
| have_faith wrote:
| > it's likely not a huge list
|
| It's definitely a large list! every culture imaginable has
| a whole range of dishes specifically for elevating "basic"
| and "cheap" cuts of meat.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I think the current cuisine of a culture is related to
| its economic status. Westerners often turn their noses up
| at things consumed in, say, East Asia, yet many of those
| same things were consumed in the west before industrial
| farming allowed us to be more choosy about our food.
|
| Go read about California during the gold rush, where an
| influx of people without appropriate food infrastructure
| pushed people to eat bears, cougars, songbirds, etc.
| vram22 wrote:
| Pemmican.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican
| mmcdermott wrote:
| It isn't limited to meat, either. Work has to go into
| making rhubarb something vaguely edible. Artichokes
| aren't all that appealing prior to good preparation.
|
| Calories used to be a lot more scarce than they are now.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| I will not stand for this rhubarb heresy!
| phonypc wrote:
| I'm curious what you're thinking of regarding rhubarb. As
| another reply pointed out, it's fine raw. Otherwise it's
| usually just cooked gently with some sugar.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "good preparation" for artichokes in my life has always
| just meant "a good and thorough steaming". Nothing more.
| Helps to eat with a good garlic mayonnaise, but not
| critical.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Rhubarb is delicious raw.
| gambiting wrote:
| >Work has to go into making rhubarb something vaguely
| edible.
|
| Eh? You cut it into pieces, throw on some really basic
| sponge cake, bake for 30 minutes = delicious rhubarb
| cake. Or put it in a pan with some water and like a glass
| of sugar, boil for 10 minutes = rhubarb compote. Am I
| missing something?
| boringg wrote:
| I mean thats the majority of smoking meats (and providing
| longevity).
| d4mi3n wrote:
| What you describe is the primary motivation to the genesis
| of French cuisine: how do we take this crappy cut of meat
| or unpalatable vegetable we can get on the cheap and make
| it edible?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I suspect a lot of Indian cuisine also. No point debating
| which of the two has the best outcomes, is there? :)
| bostik wrote:
| My favourite is ox tail. Takes hours to cook through, but
| once you can grab a piece with tongs and get all the meat
| fall off with a slight shake, gives an absolutely
| _gorgeous_ flavour to a slow simmer meat dish.
|
| Bonus: you can drain the liquid and put in in the freezer.
| Keeps good for a week or so. Wonderful gelatine and works
| with almost anything else as a base.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's exactly where brisket comes from*. It was not
| considered a good cut of meat, so it was provided to the
| ranch hands. They figured it out.
|
| *at least to the bbq legends/mythos of bbq in texas
| lunatuna wrote:
| With regards to beans, I'm always blowing up my beans in the
| pressure cooker or having them hard. I've not found the right
| touch to get what I can from a can or on the stove top. I need
| your secrets!
| gnicholas wrote:
| For garbanzos, I do 45 mins cooking followed by 15 mins (or
| more) of natural release. Works great every time!
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| At what pressure? I think I do like 15 minutes at 12 psi
| gnicholas wrote:
| Whatever the default is on my Instant Pot. I think it
| defaults to "high". I don't use the bean-specific
| setting, which didn't work well for me.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| It's not perfect, but I've had good results soaking the beans
| first. Soaking overnight works best, but in a pinch, two
| minutes at high pressure is sufficient. You can release the
| pressure quickly (by the steam valve) after the soak, because
| the beans are still hard. Discard the soaking water.
|
| Adding some salt to the cooking water (not the soaking water)
| will help keep the beans from turning to mush.
|
| You will probably have to experiment to find out what works
| for your cooking equipment, beans, and water chemistry.
|
| I assume a slow-cooker or stove-top method would remove some
| of the variables and make it easier to achieve a consistent
| result. I haven't manage to plan beans that far ahead in
| recent memory, so I can't confirm.
| losvedir wrote:
| I just received my preordered America's Test Kitchen recipe
| book for Instant Pots in the mail yesterday. I loved their
| approach, generally, and was very excited to see that they
| had a pressure cooker book. I'm actually making my first pot
| of beans following it, as we speak!
|
| Anyway, they say that to "minimize busted beans" it's
| essential to brine them first, 1 lb of beans to 2 qts water
| with 1.5 tablespoons of salt. You can either soak overnight
| or bring to a boil and then let sit for 1 hour. They also say
| you always need to add a bit of oil while cooking, and to use
| the "natural" pressure release rather than quick release. And
| 8 cups water to 1 lb of beans. Beyond that, you'll have to
| determine the particular cook time for your kind of bean, but
| they seem to range from "turn off as soon as pressure is
| obtained" for black beans to "3 minutes at pressure" for
| pinto beans.
|
| Hope that helps! I'm looking forward to seeing how my beans
| turn out following this. I haven't had great luck with
| pressure cookers in the past.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love America's Test Kitchen. They are so worth the
| expense.
|
| Have you tried adding cream of tartar to your brine for the
| beans? It's supposed to help with reducing how gassy you
| can get from beans.
| dkarl wrote:
| With beans, cooking them fast is a double-edged sword. Now
| that I'm working from home, I prefer to cook mine in the
| oven, precisely because it takes hours, and I don't have to
| be precise and disciplined about checking on them. If I get
| caught up in work and check twenty minutes later than I
| planned, there's no risk of ruining them.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| There's variability even using the same bean and the same
| settings on your cooker because venting can vary, I think
| based on humidity. I've had my cooker vent in 15 minutes, or
| 60 - it's still cooking while it vents. So you have to be
| aware of that when you start the cook. If you've got a broth
| going on the stove at the same time, the beans will vent more
| slowly
| downut wrote:
| Haha, I had cooked beans and rice no problem at all at sea
| level for twenty years. Then I moved to 5500'. Even a year
| after moving in, I once ruined three consecutive (same
| afternoon) pots of brown rice. I ruined a couple of 15 (or
| whatever) bean soups, too.
|
| Got to soak ahead of time. Now I never fail. I use a pressure
| cooker on the bigger beans. You just have to pay attention to
| the time/result and calibrate your cooker.
| amluto wrote:
| Try waiting for the pressure cooker to cool the point that
| it's no longer pressurized without releasing any steam. In
| general, if you have a container of wet things in a pressure
| cooker (e.g. a bean with its seed coat, but a jar with a lid
| works the same way), when the pressure outside the container
| drops below the pressure inside the container, the net force
| tries to expand the container. If the pressure inside the
| container drops below the vapor pressure of whatever is in
| the container (which is likely _above_ ambient pressure in a
| hot pressure cooker), the contents will boil, which can cause
| various unpleasant effects.
|
| This can be minimized by trying to keep everything inside
| roughly in equilibrium while the pressure drops below
| ambient. Or a pressurized cooling system could be used in
| which the pressure cooker is pressurized above the vapor
| pressure using something other than water vapor (e.g. air,
| but an inert gas could be used, too), and then the contents
| can be cooled as fast as desired without risk of boiling or
| rupturing anything.
|
| I've never heard of anything resembling the latter for home
| use. If I understand correctly, commercial canning operations
| will cool their jars under pressure while spraying the
| outside with disinfectant to minimize the risk of anything
| living getting in before the jars fully seal.
| mrob wrote:
| I recommend using an electric pressure cooker with a pre-soak
| mode. I use the "Multigrain" mode on an Instant Pot LUX60
| with the "More" option active, which according to the manual
| gives 45 minutes of warm soaking followed by 60 minutes of
| pressure cooking in the same water. I use plenty of water and
| discard it after cooking to remove some of the indigestible
| oligosaccharides, and I do not find soaking in separate water
| to be necessary.
| swarnie wrote:
| Typically you open the Heinz can
|
| Microwave under clingfilm for 3-4 minutes
|
| Serve over toast.
|
| Its not that complicated right?
| ikawe wrote:
| Rather than a "sure-fire-technique", "secrets" maybe just be
| a one-by-one elimination of errors.
|
| Sorry if this is obvious, but "blown up beans" pretty much
| universally means "overcooked". They probably would have been
| good if you'd cooked them less.
|
| However, "hard" beans are trickier. It might just mean
| "undercooked", and you can give them another few mins in the
| pressure cooker, or it might mean that the beans are old/were
| not stored in a dry air-tight container.
|
| So how to pressure cook good beans:
|
| Start here for rough times: https://fastcooking.ca/pressure_c
| ookers/cooking_times_pressu...
|
| Cover beans with about 2-3x water. The goal is that once the
| beans have expanded there is no excess water. The excess is
| just diluting your seasoning.
|
| prepare seasoning (in this example for something good in a
| burrito, w/ corn bread, or served with a braised pork
| shoulder): brown a lot of onions in a lot of oil. For 2 cups
| of dry black/pinto beans, something like 1 large onion and
| 1/4c of neutral oil. Add 1/2 head of chopped garlic to the
| mess after the onions are browned. Add another drizzle of oil
| and into it add ground chili (preferably a smoky one like
| morita), cumin, and black pepper just as you are turning off
| the heat. The effect of cooking spices a moment in oil is
| positive (see indian "tadka").
|
| Add salt and seasoning* in with the uncooked beans. My rule
| of thumb is that the cooking water should taste decidedly
| salty - a _bit_ saltier than you ultimately want the beans to
| taste, since the salt will disperse somewhat into the volume
| of the beans.
|
| *Some people say don't salt or season until the beans are
| cooked, else your beans will stay tough.
|
| This is definitively not true in the case of salt - in fact
| the opposite, salt is shown to help denature the protein in
| beans and decrease cooking time: https://scholar.google.com/s
| cholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,48&q=salt+...
|
| It seems to be somewhat true in the case of the calcium
| leached from seasoning like onions and garlic, but, IMO with
| the pressure cooker it's not an issue in practice.
|
| Also cooking in an alkaline solution can help denature tough,
| improperly stored, beans. So if you're having a rough go of
| it, you could try adding a tsp of baking soda to the pot.
|
| Happy beaning!
| mcclosdl wrote:
| I mean it's pretty standard braising technique for something like
| chuck roast or short rib to go for 3.5-4 hours up to 205F
| internal temp and it to be amazing and not dry at all. Not sure
| why this page is ignoring this.
| Factorium wrote:
| If you're cooking bachelor chow, an electric pressure cooker is
| the superior method of cooking to anything else.
|
| I used to eat out about 80% of the time, at huge expense, but
| since buying a pressure cooker its 5%...
|
| There are plenty of recipes where you just throw in the
| ingredients, add a specific amount of water, set a specific time,
| and come back in 20minutes to a perfectly cooked meal. Its far
| less hassle than cooking with a pan etc, and uses less energy and
| water.
|
| Smaller items like hard-boiled eggs take about 5 minutes in
| total.
|
| You're also not venting cooking fumes and steam (and combusted
| natural gas) into your kitchen, so air quality, mold etc. is much
| improved.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I am contractually obligated to hype up electric pressure
| cookers whenever mentioned. Some other dishes that can be
| cooked with ease:
|
| * Steel-cut oats
|
| * Potatoes
|
| * Dry beans
|
| * Yogurt
|
| * Tempeh
|
| * Cheesecake
|
| You can also sanitize containers for canning, saute, steam, and
| boil.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if power usage is also significantly better (rather
| than open air cooking)
| Factorium wrote:
| An induction cooktop and electric pressure cooker certainly
| makes a gas connection for the kitchen unnecessary.
|
| There's an interesting video from Adam Rageusa on how bad gas
| cooktops are:
|
| https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8
|
| I think that gas cooktops and open-air cooking vessels are
| just used frequently because they're easy to show off on
| cooking shows... Its hard to make a Youtube video on things
| cooking in a sealed pressure cooker.
| donw wrote:
| Chef's rule of thumb: everything you do in a slow cooker (crock
| pot) can be done better and faster in a pressure cooker.
|
| Dried beans, for example. 4:1 water ratio; e.g., four cups of
| water per cup of dried beans. 1 tsp of sea salt per cup of dried
| beans. Bring to high pressure and cook for 25 minutes. Allow to
| naturally release.
|
| 2:1 yield (two cups of cooked beans out for every dry cup in)
| Perfectly soft, yet still intact, as long as you kept the
| temperature low during the cook. Steam should be _just_ escaping
| from the pressure valve once you hit pressure, no more.
| mongol wrote:
| Counter argument: Making yoghurt.
| wpasc wrote:
| Irrelevant anecdote: I was cooking nachos and decided to try slow
| cooked carnitas for the first time (I like cooking but I'm not
| very good at it). It was truly mesmerizing seeing the way the
| pork meat stiffened at first and then slowly softened over time.
| I was roughly following J Kenji Lopez Alt's recipe (look him up
| if you want a great resource for all things cooking). I had
| incorrectly covered the pork at first so steam was escaping. Once
| rectified with some more time (3 hours total cook time) the meat
| took on a whole new quality of softness after having been quite
| tough at 2 hours.
|
| As a science enthusiast, learning more about the interplay of
| heat, time interacting with things like collagen, protein
| matrices, fats, cell walls for veggies makes cooking so much
| cooler and fun for me.
| aigo wrote:
| > As a science enthusiast, learning more about the interplay of
| heat, time interacting with things like collagen, protein
| matrices, fats, cell walls for veggies makes cooking so much
| cooler and fun for me.
|
| You would love Harold McGee's book _On Food and Cooking_
|
| Some of the science was a little over my head but reading it
| has improved me a lot as a cook.
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