Sous Vide: Take Your Crock Pot to the Next Level

I've written a few times about the Harvard series of food science lectures from this year.  I consider it a really good thing to understand how food works, both from a nutritional standpoint as well as understanding how to cook an amazing meal.  The problem with having high end chefs do lectures, however, is that they tend to have all sorts of expensive toys that aren't available to the home chef.  While a home chef may have a food torch (although a heat gun can work just as well), virtually no one would have a salamander (or even really have a need for one).

After one of the lectures, a friend and I were wondering what, if anything, would be the next great kitchen appliance that trickled down from the professional kitchen.  Most appliances have remained generally unchanged over the last 50 years.  Sure, you may have a blender that makes soup, and has a heating element, but it is still basically a blender.  It just has some extra bells and whistles.  The last great kitchen innovation was the microwave.  When they first came out they cost thousands of dollars, but now virtually every college student has at least a $20 model in their dorm room.  So what's next?

Anyone who has watched Food Network over the past few years will have eventually heard of sous vide (pronounced "Sue-Vee").  They may have even heard chefs rave about how amazing the results from this are.  But what is it?  Basically, it is a super duper slow cooker.  The idea is that food is put into a vacuum sealed bag, and cooked in a water bath at the temperature that the final product will be. I can hear all the non-foodies now, in unison, going "Okayyy, but why would that matter?"  Let's focus on meat for a minute.  Cooking meat tends to be a balance between time and temperature.  If the temperature is too hot, the outside can be burnt with a raw inside, and if it is too cold, by the time the center is cooked, the rest of it is dry and chewy.  Cooking a good steak using a grill or even a good cast iron skillet takes a bit of skill, and requires good timing.  Even then there is a gradient of "doneness".

Outside seared goodness

medium cooked

pink center

medium cooked

Outside seared goodness

Sous vide takes both the time pressure and temperature concerns out of the equation.  When cooking in the sous vide, the entire piece of meat will be the same temperature as that nice pink center.  It just takes a little longer to get to the right temperature.  So with a steak, the whole thing will be equally medium rare when it comes out of the water bath.  Give it a very quick sear in a very hot pan to get some maillard goodness, and it becomes an immediate perfect steak.  A person can cook a cheaper, tougher cut of beef, which tends to be a lot more sensitive to overcooking without the risk. This makes it obvious why restaurants would want to have a sous vide.  They can serve cheaper meat that turns out just as tasty as more expensive cuts, and they can pre-cook steaks (or many other dishes) to be quickly served at perfect temperatures. But for home use? Is it feasible, and is it even worth it?

A sous vide "oven" is $300 to $600. A thermometer/heating unit/circulator which will attach to a pot is still around $200. These still seem a little gadget-y, expensive, and unlikely to really catch on.  During the course of the conversation about the next great home kitchen appliance, I posited that a sous vide would not necessarily become its own appliance, but that I could see it as a feature of something like a crock pot.  They both are designed to cook at a low temperature for a long period of time, and there are some crock pots where you can set the temperature already; just not necessarily as low as some of the sous vide temperatures.  Also, as the crock pot tends to have heat coming in from both the bottom as well as the walls, it wouldn't require quite as much circulation.

So wasn't I surprised when I received this as a Christmas present.  It's a $99 device that works with any "dumb" crock pot, like mine! To make it work:

1. Plug the temperature controller into the wall.
2. Plug the crock pot into the temperature controller.
3. Fill the crock pot with water, leaving space for the food to go in without overflow.
4. Set the temperature on the temperature controller.
5. Place the heat sensor into the water.
6. Turn the crock pot to high.

The temperature sensor controls the power to the crock pot like a thermostat controls heat to a house, turning the heat on and off to maintain a proper temperature. I like the concept.  It is small, it is cheaper than all the other options (that aren't a "Build it yourself" model) and it improves one of my favorite kitchen appliances.  Which begs the question: Does it work, and does it make a difference in food quality?

The first item I tried cooking in it was a lamb roast that had been sitting in my freezer for... let's just say probably way too long. But, as there was no indication of freezer burn, there was a reasonably low chance of food poisoning from undercooked lamb (as opposed to chicken) in case it sort of worked, and I didn't have to pay any extra for it (since I already had it) I thought it was a good choice for a first run. I stuffed the lamb with some herbs, tied it up, and sealed it up in a zip top sous vide bag.

Based on the thickness of the finished roast after it had been put into a bag, the recommended cook time was somewhere between 4-12 hours at 137 degrees. After seeing that the apparatus was, in fact, working, I left it to do its thing and went out for a few hours.  The downside to this method compared to using a crock pot is that when I came home, my apartment was not filled with the scent of lamb.  It was all sealed in a bag. Oh well, talk about first world problems. After letting it cook for about 7 hours, we took the lamb out of the water bath, and to be safe, I took the temperature of the middle.  137 on the dot. So the temperature controller really did do its job.

Sous vide lamb roast, after 10 minutes under the broiler

About ten minutes under the broiler to get a nice crispy skin, and we were about ready for the final test.  Did the long low cook make any discernible difference to the flavor, texture, or experience of the meal? I mean, it looked amazing, and smelled really good, but was it worth seven hours?

Look at the picture below, and compare it to the gradient of doneness that I mentioned above.  Notice something?  There is no medium level.  There is a beautiful seared skin, and then perfectly uniform medium rare lamb as far as the eye can see.

The prettiest sliced lamb roast I've ever seen

So finally, what did it taste like? It was absolutely amazing. It was perfectly cooked, tender, and absolutely delicious. I have a feeling that I will be using a lot more of this device in the future.

Cocktail Taste Test: Taking a Ride on the 20th Century

Being election day, and therefore illegal to sell alcohol while polling stations are open, I felt a little cheeky, and decided to share that which you may not currently procure.  Over the past few years I've developed a taste for well crafted classic cocktails, in part thanks to bartenders at Drink, Island Creek Oyster Bar, Eastern Standard, and Citizen's Public House.

I've discovered a few things in my quest for tasty cocktails.

1. Vodka, being completely flavorless when it's at it's best, adds nothing but alcohol to a drink.
2. If you ask a skilled bartender what their favorite cocktail is, there is a very good chance that they will say a sazarac (in my experience, it's probably close to 80%).
3. Always, always, always be nice to bartenders. And get to know them if you find someone who is really good. This goes beyond the normal "be nice to staff, especially those who handle your food, to avoid having foreign fluids in it".  A good bartender, (if they like you), will get to know your palate after a while, can recommend things that you've never heard of, make up drinks on the spot that you'll love, will sometimes save you a seat at the bar on a busy night (if they find you entertaining), and will sometimes provide you with an extra drink of something nice after you've paid the bill.
4. If you get a list of classic cocktails that you tend to drink, you may find yourself being "that guy" if you go to a different bar.  Recently, after ordering 2 cocktails for which I had to give the waitress the recipe for the bartender, the friend I was with "dared me to order something off the menu". In my defense, both cocktails I ordered were classics, both dating to before 1940!

The picture at the top was from a gin tasting I did at my house.  For the longest time I didn't like gin.  I found it sharp, and reeking of pine trees (yes, I know it's juniper, but I've smelled an awful lot more pine than juniper in my life).  Which is why I was surprised the first time I had a 20th Century, so named for the Twentieth Century Limited train line, that ran between New York and Chicago. It is light, floral, with a touch of lemon. Not a drink that I would expect to find gin in.  And yet, there it was.  This was when I found out how much gins can vary.  

So this is how the tasting worked.  There were five different gins, from three different brands.  We tasted each of the gins straight (about a quarter shot), and then mixed a 20th Century (don't worry, you'll get the recipe at the end), to compare how well they worked for that cocktail. By the end, each person only had the alcohol for about 2.5 drinks total, so we were all able to coherently discuss the results.  So before getting into the specifics of the gins, here is the cocktail that we used, as it is one of my favorites.

20th Century Cocktail

2 ounces Gin

1 ounce Lillet Blanc

1 ounce Light Creme de Cacao

1 ounce Lemon Juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice.  Shake, and serve in a cocktail glass with a lemon twist.

The Results of the Tasting

Citadelle Gin

This is what I consider the standard for cocktail gins.  It's pretty subtle, not overly dry, and plays well with others.  It doesn't have much in the way of strong flavors, which would make it not the best choice for a martini; but is versatile enough to work in any gin cocktail.  Hendrick's is another in the same category, although Hendrick's has a bit more juniper to it.

Barr Hill

Barr Hill comes from Caledonia spirits, in northern Vermont.  They started as beekeepers, and moved into making mead, and then distilling spirits, all with their honey. The honey doesn't make the gin sweet, but it does seem to add a lot of floral notes.  It's complex, and has a really nice flavor to it.  The only way that I would even consider drinking a martini is with this gin.

The downside is that it doesn't really play well with others. Being so well constructed on its own, if you have a cocktail that has more than three ingredients, the flavors just start competing, as opposed to working together.  So the 20th Century just tasted muddled.

St. George Dry Rye Gin

If you have never tasted rye whiskey, it will be hard to describe the flavor exactly.  This is a gin that is made with a lot of juniper, but is also cooked down with rye, to help balance it out.  Just with a rye bread, there are flavors of pepper and caraway.  On it's own we felt it was a little overpowering, so unless you really like drinking rye straight, this isn't a beverage to drink straight or as a martini.

The surprise in it, however, was that it seemed to relax back into the mixed drink, and wasn't overpowering, going against all of our guesses.

St. George Botanivore Gin

A light, floral, complex gin, it really hit the middle between Citadelle and Barr Hill.  Based on the descriptor from the company said that it "earned its name because it's loaded with botanical ingredients. We distilled 19 different botanicals to compose this spirit (no small feat!) and the resulting gin is beautifully balanced and vibrant".  That had me a little scared to begin with, because that sentance screams "overworked" to me.  But it really isn't.  If you want something that is a little more complex than Citadelle, but is easier to find than Barr Hill, this is a good option for a multi-purpose gin.

St. George Terroire Gin

If you like your gin to taste like you've just eaten your Christmas tree, this one has the proper juniper levels for you. I would never be able to drink this one straight, but it is still a big step up from something like Tangueray or Bombay Saphire (my opinion). I was expecting this to be bad across the board, but was actually pleasantly surprised when it came to the cocktail.  It created a bit of a sharp bite, but the juniper in it actually played nicely with the spices in the Lillet.

Blog Recommendation: Michael Ruhlman

I have recently developed a love for Michael Ruhlman.  I originally discovered him via the iPhone app Ratio, but have not yet picked up the book that it is supposed to accompany.  And It wasn't until very recently that I started reading his blog. There are recipes, cocktails, food rants, and all sorts of fun stuff. It's a very easy read, the photography on the blog is fantastic, and I often learn something while reading it.  The perfect combination!

I was originally just going to share it on the Puritan Therapy Facebook page, but there were too many posts to really pick just one.  So here is the list of where I think you should start.

1. America- Too Stupid to Cook: Ten thousand times yes! Over the decades marketing has convinced us that many life tasks are just too difficult.  Cooking is not hard.  Cleaning (while obnoxious) is not hard. Sewing is not hard. But marketers have spend millions of dollars and many years trying to convince us otherwise, so that we will buy whatever it is that they are trying to sell.
2. The "No Nitrates Added" Hoax: Another giant "boo!" to marketing. The moral of the story, if you don't understand how food works, you can easily be manipulated by deceptive marketing.
3. Food Fascism: This is one that I experienced myself when I was in Portugal doing my massage training.  I was the black sheep because, not only did I not aspire to be a macrobiotic vegan, but I actually ate RED MEAT! (I would also like to point out that even if you are smoking "organic" cigarettes, it's still highly likely you will end up with a smoking related illness... but I digress)
4. Bacteria! Run Away! Run Away!: This article even has delightful images drawn by Alton Brown! This article addresses the concerns about washing chicken. While I am much more prone to agree with Harold McGee with regards to the chicken stock argument, there is definitely an overreaction with regards to "germs", at least in the US. 
5. Cook Your Own Food Eat What You Want Think For Yourself: Where common sense trumps the most recent news story of what common food will kill you this week.  See, for example, the poor, maligned egg.
6. Friday Cocktail: The old-fashioned with homemade bitters : This gets me on multiple levels.  I do love me a good cocktail, but I also like knowing how to make random things.  I may now need to try making bitters...
7. In Love with French Onion Soup: Lastly, here is one of his food recipes, to give you a taste (pardon the pun) of what they are like.  I have not tried this recipe, but it holds up to what I have come to believe about very old school peasant food recipes.  It is very simple, does not have a lot of complicated ingredients, and does not involve a lot of fancy techniques.  It reminds me of challenges on shows like Top Chef where the chef has been asked to make the judges "last meal".  Inevitably the chef who wins is not the one who composes a highly technical and complicated plate.  The one who wins is the chef who makes the requested dish like their grandmother would make.  Simple, comforting, and well executed.

Not that Michael Ruhlman needs any help from me to gain readership, but I like to promote people who I think are doing good things.

Boston Festival of Indie Games- Game Reviews

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a geek.  I'm the third generation in my family to work with computers (do the math, that's actually rather impressive), I was raised on Star Trek and Doctor Who, and currently own at least 10 working game systems (including the computer and ipad).  My first video game that I remember was Logo, and the first time I stayed up until midnight on New Years was thanks to Buck Rogers, on Atari. And as I spent way too much time with video games over the weekend, I thought that I'd share.

Boston Festival of Indie Games

The second indie games festival was this weekend at MIT. Last year it was scattered in a couple of different classrooms, and people were packed into those rooms like sardines.  The odor was... impressive.  There were some games for the computer, but there were also a lot for phones and tablets.  I found two that were really unique, and later picked them up for my ipod touch.  Girls Like Robots, and Agent Higgs.

This year they had much more space, so it was a lot easier to get a look at the games on display. To a certain extent it was much less a con, and more a live action kickstarter event. Many games were in various levels of completion, but usually at a point where they could be tried out. I am not a stickler for top of the line graphics, especially for a game on a phone; however, if you want me to pay attention to your demo, at least have something that would be appealing to look at while I'm playing it. And if graphics is what your kickstarter is going to fund, at least have a static image of what you want the game to look like in the end. While I played a lot of games in the 80's, and still have a great love for some of them, it is a really hard sell to convince me to play something that looks like Space Invaders now. After the festival, there were three games that I was intrigued enough to actually download.

Wobbles

 If you ever played lemmings, this is a similar idea. You have 5 little cartoon guys to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, they are not too bright. They will just walk off of cliffs, into water, probably straight into the jaws of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex if you let them (note: I have not yet seen any dinosaurs in the game). So your job is to use tools to guide them from A to B, using tools like fire (to make them jump), fountains (to survive a fall), etc. On top of that, there are stars to collect to get a perfect level.

The game manages to balance cute without making you feel too badly if one of your little guys dies. I adored Pikmin as a game, but could never finish it. The Pikmin were just too cute, and I felt horrible when they got eaten, or worse, left behind. Wobbles are plenty cute, and their sound effects are well done, but I wouldn't worry about creating emotional attachments to them. The $1-$2 price range on this seems about right. It isn't a game that will change your life, but it can definitely fill up a few entertaining bus rides. It is available on Android and iOS.

Color Zen

The concept behind Color Zen isn't groundbreaking either. It is a color based puzzle game in a similar vein as Globs, one of my favorites. By matching colors, you change the color of the background. The goal of the game is to finish up with a solid block of color. It starts out really easy, and some of the levels do get rather challenging later on. It is a good thing that the basic game is free, because I have some issues with it. The game seems to have come out of the 90's. There are a lot of glaring neon colors, and the soundtrack seems to have been created on an old synthesizer.  Conveniently, one of those things can be corrected, by playing the game on mute. Unfortunately, I don't think that buying the extra levels would get rid of ads. As much as this was a neat concept, I would have to recommend giving it a pass. It is available on iOS and android.

Pombie Zong

Pongie Zong is a single player pong game with a rotating saw blade as the ball, and you use those saw blades to kill zombies. It's a pretty standard brick breaking type game, where you can unlock bonuses such as having more than one saw blade at a time, and there are toughier zombies that require multiple hits to kill. If you have a few minutes to kill and are looking for a quick twitch game, this is a solid contender.

I do have two issues with it though. First, the name was virtually impossible for me to remember. I remembered that it was a play on zombie pong, but I couldn't remember what. Yes, this may just be me, but I never consider myself that special. If you're a small name company, and people can't remember the name of your game, you will run into problems.

Secondly, zombies? Really? Zombies are currently a bit overdone. This game could have easily been gophers (even mutant evil gophers if you wanted to appease animal rights groups), and still would have the same appeal. If you have a game where you are protecting your lawn from zombies, sorry, it's kind of a thing. Honestly, I could see this as a mini game in Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, as this game is only available on android, it could always fill your need for zombie death while waiting for popcap to release plants vs. zombies 2 on anything other than iOS.

Baking by the Numbers

I learned how to bake when I was little. In my "Tweens" (before that was even a demographic), I spent a couple of years baking bread for Christmas presents. I even came up with a vile concoction as part of a fifth grade marketing project. It was a soft pretzel stuffed with toothpaste, with the idea of having your breakfast and brushing your teeth at the same time. There may be a very good reason why it didn't catch on.

After college I spent many years doing very little cooking. In Japan, even when you could find ingredients, having access to recipes (especially in English) was even more of a challenge. When I moved to Hawaii, I ran into a completely different problem. The humidity made most recipes impossible. I once tried making naan, and finally ended up with about twice the flour, just to make it kneadable.  And by that point, the flavor was awful.

I got back into baking in earnest when I moved back to Boston. So it has only been over the past few years that I've come to appreciate a well written cookbook. Over that time, I have come to one conclusion. All baking books should be written by scientists. Baking is the tastiest kind of chemistry, and relies on precise ratios to be successful.

My first experience with this came from Joanne Chang's book Flour. I learned about Joanne from an episode of Booby Flay's Throwdown, where she beat Bobby with her sticky bun recipe. So we made a pilgrimage to her bakery to try these. They are very good. But on that trip I was introduced to her cupcakes, or more importantly her frosting. This stuff was buttercrack, not buttercream. It was addictive. When I found out that she was publishing her first cookbook, I bought it for the "Magic Frosting" recipe alone. What does this have to do with science? Joanne Chang started out at Harvard in the applied mathematics department, and made extra money selling chocolate chip cookies to the dining hall. All of her recipes are in weight and volumetric measurements. She also has an entire section where she talks about the importance of the temperature of the butter when used in certain applications. Because of the attention to detail and her clear instructions, I have now made several things from this book, and every one of them has come out perfectly.

The cookbook that blew my mind, however, was Shirley Corriher's Bakewise. Shirley was a chemist at Vanderbilt before she got into food science. And while you may not recognize her name, if you watch the Food Network at all, you probably know one of her students, Alton Brown. If you are a Good Eats fan, then you may have even seen her on an episode or two. She has written two cookbooks, Cookwise and Bakewise. I must admit, I have been so enamored with Bakwise that I haven't even had a chance to work through Cookwise yet. 

For the scientifically inclined, the book starts out talking about your oven, and how it heats, or more importantly why it has a fairly broad spectrum of temperatures throughout the heating cycle. Complete with graphs and charts. There are sections talking about the chemistry of baking, protein structure, the ratios of protein to fats, how leavening works, the effect of acidic ingredients on your baked goods, how you can read the label on your baking powder to know when in the baking cycle it will activate, and how you can use math to look at a recipe and figure out right off the bat if it will be a dismal failure, and what shape of pan to use. If you are not a science person, and that looks a bit daunting, there are also plenty of recipes throughout the book that just have a "what this recipe shows" section at the front. So even if you really don't care about the math, the recipes themselves will still turn out great, and possibly give you something to think about. It is the first cookbook that I will sit down and read like a novel or textbook.

Both of these books really appeal to me because they address the why of baking in addition to the how. It has also made me look at all recipes a little bit differently. Now, I think I might even be able to try baking in Hawaii again.