It doesn’t matter how old you are – there’s still a little kid inside you who just loves roasting marshmallows over a campfire.  However, if a campfire is a impractical for your next dinner party, try this simple trick: use your fondue set for tableside s’mores.  [Caution: locate your nearest fire extinguisher before attempting, and don’t serve alongside that bottle of 90 proof Brandy.]

To make your s’mores a bit classier, try using premium chocolate (sorry Hershey’s, it’s not me, it’s you).  I prefer Seattle-based Theo Chocolate’s Coconut Curry and Fig, Fennel & Almond, though there are hundreds of exotic flavors out there that will easily earn you your Open Flame Artisan Pastry Making merit badge.

Summer has arrived, and that means it’s time to grill.  But before you start charring steaks, you’ll need a little equipment.  Here are my favorite nerdy accessories for the grillmaster within you.

1.  Extra-Long BBQ Tongs.  They don’t sound geeky, but this single piece of equipment can mean the difference between retaining your forearm hair or not.  Look for locking tongs at least 16” long, with metal ends since plastic and even silicone can melt at grilling temperature.

2.  TurboQue Turbo-Charged Smoker.  This battery-operated fan attaches to the inside of your grill and turns it into a convection smoker.  This means reduced cooking time and extra exposure to smoke from wood chips. 

3.  Infrared Thermometer.  Sure, you could hold your hand above the grill grate and count “one Mississippi… two Mississippi,” but it’s far more geeky to be accurate to .1 degrees Fahrenheit.  This non-contact thermometer instantly measures surface temperatures with the pull of a trigger, enticing you to be quick on the draw. 

4.  Instant Digital Probe Thermometer.  While the infrared thermometer will tell you how hot the grill is, it won’t give you a read on the internal temperature of your porterhouse.  Use a probe thermometer to quickly check the doneness of thick cuts without having to slice them open.  Choose a digital instant read over an analog model, unless you enjoy waiting while your fingernails melt over the fire.

5.  Onion Goggles.  You may look a little… special… flipping burgers with these on, but if you’re cooking with smoke, or better yet, over a campfire, they are indispensable.  The foam-lined glasses are highly effective at keeping the smoke out of your eyes, and keeping girls from ever talking to you.  But hey, form follows function, right?

If you caught my post last week on smoking your own salt, you learned how easy it is to turn ordinary salt into an extraordinary seasoning.  But did you know that you can pull off the same trick with flour?  In this recipe, I’ve smoked Semolina flour – the most common kind used for pasta making.  The finished pasta takes on a subtly spicy smoke flavor and is a great match for Morel mushrooms. 

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If you haven’t noticed, flavored salts are becoming wildly popular.  On a recent trip to Whole Foods, I spotted an aisle-end display with no fewer than a dozen varieties: some infused with spices, some mined or harvested from exotic locales, and some smoked.  Smoked salts – salts that have taken on the flavor of a particular burnt wood – are an excellent way to add a deep, campfire flavor to dishes.  I use them all the time in dry rubs, and as a substitute for the flavor you get from actually cooking over wood.  In this video I’m using hickory chips, but another popular option is to flavor your salt with by smoking the wood from old wine barrels.  Needless to say, you’ll save a ton of cash on specialty salts, which, of course, you’ll need to import all those ancient wine barrels from Bordeaux!

Sous vide strikes again! This time, we’re exploiting science for perfectly medium-rare, ultra-tender flank steak.  And, since we’re throwing ethnic authenticity to the wind, why be predictable with our condiments?  Salsa and Monterey Jack are out, red onion compote and chèvre (goat’s cheese) are in.  If you’re not a sous vider (yet), you can cook your flank steak however you like: broiled, grilled, smoked, or fried.

Makes: 4 Tacos Scientificos
Total kitchen time: 30 minutes (+12 hours cooking time)
Special equipment: Vacuum sealer, sous vide water oven

Shopping list:

• 1 lb. flank steak
• 1 tsp. Mexican seasoning blend
• 2 tbsp. lime juice
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. sherry vinegar
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 four tortillas
• 1 cup crumbled goat’s cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 bunch cilantro

1. Pat the steak dry and coat all sides with Mexican seasoning blend and lime juice.  Vacuum seal the steak in a bag large enough that the meat lays flat (but still fits in your water oven).  Cut the meat into two pieces and seal separately, if needed.  (If you’re not cooking your steak sous vide, place it in a zip-top bag or a covered shallow dish and let it marinate overnight). Note: although it might be tempting to add aromatics like garlic to the marinade, don’t! Your kitchen will smell like ass by the time the meat is done.
2. Set your sous vide water oven to 56°C.  Add the vacuum sealed steak, making sure the meat stays submerged.  Cook for a minimum of 1 hour, up to 48 hours.  The picture above shows the meat after cooking for 12 hours, which was perfectly tender.
3. Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp. olive oil in a medium saucepan over moderate heat.  Add the red onion and reduce the heat to low.  Let the onion sweat 5 minutes, until it is slightly translucent, but not browned.  Add the dark brown sugar, sherry vinegar and salt and stir to combine. Simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, and making sure the mixture doesn’t boil or burn. 
4. Remove the bag from the water bath and let the meat rest, still in the bag, for 10 minutes before searing.  Remove the meat from the bag and pat dry on all sides.  Sear with a blow torch, under the broiler, or in a smoking-hot pan.
5. Slice the meat perpendicular to the direction of the muscle fibers, and on a sharp bias. 
6. Assemble the tacos: tortilla, sour cream, steak, cheese, onion compote, cilantro.  Enjoy!

Cooking the steak sous vide rather than just grilling it may sound like a pain in the ass since you have to plan 12 hours ahead.  However, the hardest part of cooking flank steak is getting your timing right. Leave it on the grill 1 minute too long and it’s overcooked and tough; take it off too early and it’s raw.  And, if you’re entertaining company, you may be more focused on your margarita than your steak.  Cooking your meat sous vide lets you be laissez-faire with your timing – sometimes I even sear my steak before company arrives and return it to the water bath to keep it warm until we’re ready to eat.

Before I begin this story, I should let you know that it doesn’t contain any references to sous vide or molecular gastronomy or any other geeky cooking technique.  It is simply a story about a great meal that I will never forget.

Rachel and I just returned from a week in New Orleans.  In my humble opinion, New Orleans has the best regional cuisine of any city in America – the heavily French- and African-influenced flavors of Creole food are simply unmatched by any other American ethnic cooking style.  So, needless to say, I was quite pleased to eat my way through the city.  We made sure to hit most of the predictably great spots – Galatoires, Brennan’s, Felix’s Oyster Bar – but it was our meal at Irene’s, a quaint Italian restaurant off the beaten path, that we will remember most fondly.

It was our last night in town and Rachel had chosen Irene’s based on the suggestion of a local couple we had met (and with whom we subsequently shared take-out gumbo on the roof of their 1790’s apartment building).  After the long walk from our hotel to the restaurant, we were greeted with the same hospitality shown to us by every place we had eaten, and to which we were becoming pleasantly accustomed.  We were seated in the corner of one of three intimate dining rooms, surrounded by wall-mounted photos of past patrons, who we assumed were of some significance.  Rachel and I ordered Gin Mojitos and split a crabmeat gratin appetizer, which, as with much of the cuisine in New Orleans, was an unabashedly indulgent combination of seafood and dairy. 

We continued on with a steak and a Pompano Meunière Amandine, the latter of which is a local classic: a pompano fillet broiled and topped with browned butter, crabmeat and toasted slivered almonds.  The food was all excellent, and armed with the knowledge of our immanent return to Seattle and the requisite post-vacation diet that would follow, we savored every bite until our clothes no longer fit correctly. 

And it was right then, at the end of the meal, that our dinner really became spectacular.  During the step of the waiter-patron protocol at which your server normally delivers the check to the table, our waiter instead informed us that our meal would be free.  We were puzzled.  He explained that another couple had been in the restaurant just slightly earlier that evening to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  Apparently, this couple had adopted the custom of anonymously paying for the dinner a random pair of diners who appeared to be out of town.  As luck would have it, we ended up being that pair for the evening.  I asked if we could meet our benefactors or at least send them a bottle of champagne in return, but alas, it was against the rules of their charity. 

Rachel and I were stunned by their generosity and we were at once giddy and deeply touched.  Unable to identify and thank the couple personally, we decided that the best thing we could do is to pay forward this incredible gesture.  It is an all-to-rare occurrence these days to witness a truly altruistic act, particularly one as substantial as buying an upscale dinner for strangers.  However, I knew that the only thing that matched our joy was the contentment of the generous couple who had made our night so special.  Personally, I look forward to being on the other end of the transaction now and then.  If we can provide to another couple the happiness and lasting memory of a meal paid for by anonymous strangers, it will be well worth the cost of dinner. 

And for that reason, I probably shouldn’t tell you where we’re planning to eat on our anniversary

It’s been a little while since I checked in, but I thought I’d give a quick update.  I’m hard at work getting production versions of my sous vide heating immersion circulators ready for sale.  The picture above is of my current prototype, based largely off of the DIY design I published a few months ago.  As you can see, I’ve got a custom-made heating coil and a slightly prettier enclosure.  The controller I’ve selected is also far more user-friendly, and I’ve upgraded other components after months of intense testing (and a handful of literal meltdowns). 

Anyhow, I’m still working as hard as I can to bring you all a sub-$200 sous vide heating immersion circulator accurate to .1C!  If you’d like to be on the email list when the first units are ready for sale, please leave a comment below.

If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been slightly obsessed with molecular gastronomy (“modernist cuisine” if you’ve read the Nathan Myhrvold interview).  Unfortunately, I’m a long way off from having centrifuges, rotary evaporators and tanks of liquid nitrogen lying around my lab kitchen.  Luckily, some of the geekiest cooking techniques work very well with home kitchen substitutes, and dry ice sorbet is the perfect example.  Eric Rivera first introduced me to this technique during one of our periodic food experimentation meetings.  Depending on the sugar content of the sorbet base and the type of mixer attachment, you can produce anything from fluffy, soft, taffy-like sorbets like this one to desserts with the consistency of Dippin-Dots.  Last night I added lime zest, lime juice and a shot of tequila to the sorbet base, then topped the result with lime salt for the coldest, sweetest smoothest margarita sorbet you’ve ever tasted!

Note: Whenever you’re working with dry ice, WEAR THICK GLOVES. Having sensation in your appendages is a good thing.

Note Two: In the video, I say to bring the sorbet base to a boil.  Further testing has shown that’s really not necessary.  A simmer is usually sufficient for the sugar and water to be completely combined.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Nathan Myhrvold about his upcoming book, MODERNIST CUSINE: The Art & Science of Cooking (by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold & Chris Young).  But this is no ordinary cook book – it is a 4-volume tome totaling over 2200 pages on recipes and techniques you might think of as “molecular gastronomy”.  Although Nathan humbly denies the analogy, this book is poised to do for modern cooking what Escoffier did for classical cuisine a hundred years ago.

If you haven’t heard of Nathan Myhrvold, you’ll likely enjoy his Wikipedia bio, which should be cataloged somewhere between the biography of Leonardo da Vinci and The Adventures of Baron von Münchhausen, except that all of his accomplishments are verifiably true.  Nathan, a native Seattleite, is the founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a company that specializes in “the business of invention”.  His resume includes a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics and awards in wildlife photography.  His archeological paleontological expeditions have discovered more T-Rex fossils than any other group, and he has published breakthrough research on the trajectory patterns of penguin feces.  He designs nuclear reactors and laser guns that zap mosquitoes in mid-air.  And he is a major food geek.

I’ve followed the sous vide thread on eGullet and I noticed that your first post was in March of 2004.  What began your interest in sous vide cooking?

I’ve been interested in cooking forever. I have this very elaborate kitchen at home. It’s the second-most technological kitchen in Seattle – the first is the one that we built over at the lab for the cookbook. But it’s only first because we moved a bunch of my stuff from home over there!

I had bought all of the equipment for sous vide a year or so before that.  I was working with it and getting some results, but I sort of assumed there’s this huge body of knowledge out there and I just didn’t happen to connect with it.  I put that [post on the eGullet forum] out there naively thinking people would say, ‘Fine here’s a bunch of techniques and recipes.’

I was naïve! What I discovered was, nobody actually had a clue. I don’t mean that rudely, but at that point in time (2004) Roca’s book hadn’t come out. The only books I found were books about either commercial food service or a couple of books that were in French, and which seemed to have very high temperatures and were not the real deal.

…A year or so in after I had published my major tables, and I was one of the big posters in the sous vide forum, I realized how little people knew, I saw how much interest there was, I saw how much misinformation there was and so that’s when I decided I really oughtta write a cook book.

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Having access to a laser cutter has made me think differently about food.  Although I’ve lasered more edibles than I care to mention, one of the most successful substances for laser cutting is nori – the seaweed paper used in sushi making.  Although nori cuts well, it is extremely delicate and brittle.  Inspired by that delicateness, I decided to use the nori as a garnish for duck consommé, a crystal-clear soup made from duck stock.  The potato creates a dramatic color contrast and allows the Japanese maze design cut out of nori to sit just above the level of the liquid.

Makes: 8 zen bowls
Total kitchen time: about 6 hours, depending…

Shopping list:

• 8 cups duck consommé, prepared
• 4 russet potatoes, fat and round
• 1 tbsp. rendered duck fat
• 8 laser-cut nori designs of a Japanese maze

Special equipment: laser cutter, 2” biscuit cutter, vacuum sealing machine, sous vide heating immersion circulator

1. Slice the potatoes into 1” thick discs.  Using the discs that are at least 2” in diameter, cut out 8 rounds with the 2” biscuit cutter. 
2. Place the potato circles in a vacuum bag and add rendered duck fat.  Vacuum seal.
3. Cook potatoes in an 85C water bath for 1 hour. 
4. To serve, place a potato slice in the bottom of a large bowl.  Blot the top of the potato with a paper towel to dry the surface.  Add 1bout 1 cup of consommé to the bowl.  Top with a piece of nori.

If you don’t have access to a laser cutter (a travesty!) you can try cutting shapes using a very sharp hobby knife. 

I love sous vide cooking.  Those of you who have discovered it know what I’m talking about – nothing short of a new frontier of culinary technique, and one of the first pure intersections of science and cuisine.  However, if you aren’t willing to drop $1000+ (or you don’t have a soldering iron and some patience) it used to be the case that you were excluded from the inner circle of sous vide wizardry.  Professional thermal immersion circulators are extremely expensive and, due to their scientific design aesthetic, aren’t very likely to show up on the shelves of Sur La Table anytime soon.  But, for the first time, a home cook willing to spend $450 (the price of a top-of-the-line stand mixer + accessories, for example) can experience for themselves the eye-opening, mouth-watering, religious revelation of their first sous vide steak.

I’ve blathered on for the last handful of posts about how great sous vide is, and to a certain extent, I’ve become obsessed with the method.  So, you can imagine my delight when the nice people at SousVide Supreme offered to let me test drive a unit for two weeks (there’s my disclosure).  When the unit arrived, I anxiously brought the box inside and began unpacking.  The first thing that struck me?  “Damn, this thing is big!”  So big, in fact, that there was no hope of ever storing a unit like this anywhere in my kitchen.  For the entire two week trial run, it sat on top of my stove, next to my stockpot that’s also too big to find a home.  If you can’t tell from the picture above, the unit is about the size of a large bread machine.  And although it’s handsome enough for what it does, I’m not sure I would acquiesce to the idea of making this behemoth stainless brick an objec d’art atop my precious counter space.  That said, I’ve found myself cooking nearly everything sous vide recently, so perhaps it wouldn’t be such an inconvenience to have the machine on display all the time.

Once I got over the size issue (like a blind date with a girl who has “a great personality”), it was time to put this unit through its paces.  By now, I had already been cooking with my DIY sous vide machine for a few weeks, so I had some reasonable expectations of heating time, temperature evenness (temperature measured at different spots in the basin) and temperature fluctuation (how well the target temperature holds over time).  I filled the unit’s basin with hot water from my kitchen faucet to speed up the pre-heating time.  If you haven’t been to the gym in a while, you might notice that the water-filled unit is quite heavy.  The unit features well-placed inset handles to help with carrying, but even so, it’s a precarious beast when full – especially when full of hot water!  It would be great to see a drain valve in version 2, since it’s very difficult to negotiate 30 lbs of 120° water up and into the kitchen sink without spilling everywhere.

The SousVide Supreme comes with a wire food rack (shown in the picture above) which actually does a great job of keeping your food in place and allowing ample circulation.  Unfortunately, since the unit doesn’t have circulator of any kind, you’ve gotta rely on convection currents to distribute heat evenly through the basin.  I was initially quite concerned that this would result in hot and cold spots (which it does) but the temperature differences were reasonably small – within .5°F as measured with a laser thermometer.

Heating from faucet temperature (about 110°F) to cooking temperature (about 144°F) took about half an hour – a time scale consistent with my DIY machine, and certainly reasonable for anyone who’s ever waited for an oven to preheat.  However, I was quite surprised to see the temperature fluctuations of the machine over time.  The video below shows 1 hour of cooking time condensed into 2.5 minutes.  The target temperature remained fixed at 144°F, and there were no external factors influencing the temperature (eg. I never removed the lid, opened a window, turned on the stove – in fact, I wasn’t even home!).  The temperature varies between 142.1°F and 144.5°F, and if you watch closely, you’ll notice that this variation happens in a very cyclical manner.  In other words, the machine is programmed to allow a zone of acceptable temperature that is at least 2.4°F wide.

These temperature fluctuations weren’t noticeable on beef short ribs or potatoes, where there is a wider zone of doneness.  However, if you’re finicky about your steak, and especially if you’re aiming for the Goldilocks zone on eggs, those temperature swings may make a difference.  As you can see in this invaluable guide to sous vide cooking there’s a substantive difference between eggs cooked at 146°F and 148°F. 

All in all, however, the SousVide Supreme did a fine job cooking.  Plus, I felt completely comfortable leaving the unit unattended to run overnight or while I was away at work.  The all-in-one design certainly is convenient, but the machine’s bulk means you’ll have to annex the dining room to find storage.  I’m delighted to see the SousVide Supreme bring sous vide cooking into home kitchens for the first time, and very excited at what the future may bring!

Sous vide cooking works its magic on a lot of foods, but short ribs yield some of the most dramatic results I’ve seen.  In traditional recipes, the ribs (usually cut into short 2-3” chunks by the butcher) are braised for several hours.  Although the braising method adds great flavor and makes the meat extremely tender, the meat is also necessarily well-done.  But, thanks to our sous vide wizardry, we’re able to maintain a perfectly-pink medium rare and have our meat come out fork-tender.  Feel free to experiment with marinades in the bag, but know that some herbs, like thyme, will start to reek after 3 days in the bath.

Makes: 6-8 best-of-both-worlds short ribs
Total kitchen time: 72.5 hours (give or take)

Shopping list:

• 6 lbs. short ribs (I used a 6 lb. uncut slab from my butcher, but you can use 6-8 pre-cut pieces)
• 8 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 tbsp. coarse smoked salt (I prefer Alder wood smoked salt)

Special equipment: sous vide heating immersion circulator, vacuum sealer and (optional) blowtorch.

1. Preheat a large water bath to 56C (133F).
2. If using an uncut slab of short ribs, trim off any large areas of fat on both sides. 
3. Coat all sides of the meat with salt and garlic cloves.  Place slab (or pre-cut short ribs) into a large vacuum seal bag.  If using pre-cut pieces, you may need to divide them between 2 bags, ensuring there is plenty of space between the ribs.  Seal the bag.
4. Fully submerge your bags in the water bath and cook, turning the bags every 12-18 hours.  After 60 hours, increase the heat to 62.5C (144.5F) and cook an additional 12 hours.
5. If using a blow torch: Pace a cooling rack on top of a sheet pan or jelly roll.  When ready to serve, remove the ribs from the bag and drain.
6. If using a slab of ribs, turn the ribs bone-side-up and slice through the meat between the bones lengthwise to separate out each bone.  Cut the membrane running the length of the bone and slide the bone loose (it should give easily, with a little encouragement from your knife).  Trim any access fat surrounding where the bone used to be.  Cut the trimmed meat into portions.
7. If using the blowtorch, place a cooling rack above a sheet pan or jelly roll pan.  Place each portion of ribs on the cooling rack, allowing plenty of space in between.  Pat the ribs dry with paper towels.  Using your torch, sear all sides for a few seconds, or until golden brown. 
8. If you’re not using a blowtorch, give the ribs a quick fire under the broiler or in a little oil on a smoking-hot skillet to brown all sides as quickly as possible.
9. Serve immediately.

After tasting these short ribs, I may never cook any type of ribs the same way again.  This summer, I plan to lightly smoke a rack of spare ribs, then cook them sous vide for a few days before finishing them back on the grill.  I expect pretty incredible results.

It took a lot of work, but I’ve finally made the most trendy food possible.  These molecular gastronomy “cupcakes” infuse the idea of local stinging nettles into an airy foam, which is balanced out by bacon cured in a barrel of black truffles, then finished with salt smoked with chipotle peppers in a cave in Nepal.  The whole thing is vacuum bagged with a tablespoon of rendered duck fat, then cooked sous vide for 5 days.  Optionally, you can garnish with a fresh nettle leaf – the gentle sting of which is a reminder of the frailty of life. 

[Happy April Fool’s Day]

How many adjectives have you used to describe a glass of wine? Smoky, sharp, fruity, complex, perky, aggressive, balanced, lingering, refined… Now, how about coffee?  Bold, rich, dark, strong, nutty…  Now try beef.

Having a little more trouble with this one, huh?  While you may have gone to wine tasting events, or perhaps sampled two or three different coffee blends side by side, or even done blind tastings of chocolate or olive oil, chances are that you’ve never tested your taste buds with steak.  In fact, aside from a favorite cut (like T-bone, New York strip, filet and the like) most Americans have no idea what qualities they like in a steak.  I know that in wine, for example, I prefer fruity reds with mild tannins and a sweet finish.  But up until a few weeks ago, I was totally unaware of my own preferences for that great-American staple: steak.  Learning about your own preferences is not only delicious, but also quite a bit of fun.

“But what is there to choose about a steak besides the cut?” you may be asking.  Well, in the same way that two bottles of Pinot Noir don’t taste identical just because they come from the same varietal, two New York strips can vary vastly in flavor based on the breed of cattle, the terroir in which the cattle lived and grazed, what the cattle ate, and how the steaks were finished.  It is a disgracefully unfortunate fact that we are have little-to-no insight into any of these particulars when we buy steaks at the grocery store.  In fact, if you want to piss off the meat man at your local Safeway, pick up a steak and ask him if the cow was treated with steroids, hormones or antibiotics, and if it was fed grass, corn or some type of mystery feed before slaughter.  (Note: this is part of the reason that I don’t buy formerly-living things from Safeway, at least not the one near me.)  While your average $7 bottle of wine will tell you the year the grapes were harvested, the blend percentage of the varietals, the grape source, where the wine was made, and the alcohol percentage, we’re lucky if our beef packaging even makes mention of the cow’s diet.  And even then, you’re rarely getting the whole story.

Luckily, I happened to meet Carrie Oliver at the International Food Bloggers Conference last summer, and get to hear her talk steak.  Her company, Oliver Ranch, connects people like you and me with high-quality, traceable, hormone and antibiotic-free beef produced by independent farmers.  Their website allows you to order your favorite cuts from one of four independent farms that supply to Oliver Ranch, and your steaks are shipped directly to you, vacuum sealed and flash-frozen.  But, in my opinion, the best part of what they offer is the tasters pack.  You can choose between filet mignon, New York strip, top sirloin or rib-eye tasting packs that include one or more steaks from each of the farms.  The tasting pack comes with a tasting guide, complete background on the ranches and cattle, and even nifty little wood picks that read “medium rare” (incidentally, the only proper way to cook a steak, in my opinion). 

I held a steak tasting for 8 people using the four different steaks from the tasting pack, plus one from my local (and well-renowned) butcher.  Since the purpose of the tasting, other than to fill up on amazing meat, was to discover everyone’s personal preferences, we made the tasting blind – that is, nobody but me knew which type of steak they were eating until the very end of the meal.  In order to ensure consistency, I cooked all of the steaks sous vide to a precise medium rare (53.5C) for two hours.  Afterwards, I seasoned the meat with sea salt and seared the outside with a blow torch.  So, every steak was the exact same doneness, with the exact same seasoning, with the exact same amount of char.  I can say with confidence that this preparation method, as geeky as it was, would stand up to scientific scrutiny.

I cut each of the steaks into small portions and served them clockwise around the tasters’ plates.  To round out the meal, a healthy dollop of garlic mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus filled in empty plate space.  As we started eating, a chorus of moans, full-mouthed expressions of surprise and delight, worked its way around the table.  Not only were the steaks transcendent, but the flavor differences between them were profound.  Some steaks carried a strong flavor of grass, others of nutmeg and molasses, still others of wheat and a milieu of subtle tones – just like a glass of fine wine.  What’s more impressive, though, is that these differences were not at all lost on the other tasters: my family.  Although they certainly appreciate good food, this was not a group of foodies looking to out-taste one another, or people with a vested interest in seeing the emperor’s clothes.  These were people who, until that night, didn’t know Holstein from Angus, but now had a reason to find out. 

Not surprisingly, everyone had their own opinions on which steak they liked the best.  However, in general, the table preferred the two wet-aged steaks: the Holstein-Friesian from the 3 Brand Cattle Company and the Wagyu-Angus Cross from Select Kobe Beef America Ranches.  We considered these to be the “steakiest” steaks with a richer, sweeter flavor than the others.  There was another clear decision from the table – the expensive steaks from my local butcher came in dead-last.

Not only was this a fun and memorable way to spend a meal, but now when I’m at the butcher or ordering steak off of a restaurant menu, I’m armed with knowledge of my own personal preferences, as well as some of the right questions to ask to ensure that the beef comes from sources I want to support.  If you’ve watched Food Inc. or read a Michael Pollan book, you know that the American beef industry is a clusterfuck of cost-cutting, misinformation and industrial-strength indifference to sustainable meat production.  But it is important to remember that there are artisan farmers out there, raising beef responsibly and artfully.  Once you connect with that delicious combination of breed, diet, finishing and cut that lights up every taste bud on your tongue and makes your mouth water in anticipation of the next bite, you’ll know you’ve found the steak for you.  And after that day, you’ll never settle for less.

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
-Abraham Maslow

OK, OK, I’ve gone a little sous vide crazy lately… but can you blame me?  Perhaps the most revolutionary cooking method of our lifetimes has just poked its head into my kitchen.  It’ll take more than a few weeks and a handful of medium-rare proteins before I’m over it.

We all know that the sous vide method produces flawless (and dare I say, unparalleled) steak.  But, did you know that the same magic works on lamb?  It’s an amazing and, frankly, jolting experience to watch an incredibly tender lamb loin chop fall off the bone, only to reveal that the interior is a perfect medium-rare.  How can this be?  In order to get lamb tender enough to fall apart, you have to braise the hell out of it, right?  Wrong. That’s where sous vide comes in.  I cooked the lamb shanks at 54.5C – a precise medium rare – for 24 hours, until they were just barely clinging to the bone.  And since lamb is so flavorful and succulent on its own, a simple slice of pita bread, some feta cheese and toasted tomatoes were all that was needed to create a really memorable dinner.

Makes: 4 little lamb wraps
Total kitchen time: 15 minutes active, 24 hours cooking
Special equipment required: sous vide immersion circulator, blowtorch (optional), vacuum sealer

Shopping list:

• 4 American lamb loin chops
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 4 pieces pita bread
• 1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese
• 1 cup roasted tomatoes (available in finer grocery stores, substitute sun dried tomatoes)

1. Heat your sous vide immersion circulator to 54.5C.
2. Pat the lamb chops dry and coat liberally with kosher salt.  Sear all sides with a blowtorch until just browned.  If you don’t have a blowtorch (you should get one if you’re gonna be sous videing) preheat a skillet over very high heat.  Sear the lamb chops on all sides, just a few seconds per side.
3. Place lamb chops in a vacuum sealer bag and seal.  Place in the water bath and cook 24 hours, up to 32 hours.
4. When ready to serve, heat the pita slices for 30 seconds in the microwave.  Divide the Feta and tomatoes between the pita.  Remove lamb from the water bath and pull the meat apart with your fingers or a fork.  Add to the pita.  Roll and serve!

It’s a little jarring at first to see shredded lamb that’s so bright pink and moist.  But one bight of this dish will make you forget every lamb sandwich you’ve ever eaten.  Rather than tough, dry meat that begs for the rehydrating action of mint jelly, this is lamb as it should be.

Full Disclosure: I got free stuff, but that doesn’t pay for my opinion.