Today I tried another sous-vide recipe. Unlike last week's short ribs, which I read about on the internet, this one was fully my invention. My plan was to cook a duck breast in duck fat, using the sous-vide technique. Cooking duck in its own fat is known as confit.

I started with a Canadian muscovy duck breast. I scored the skin and fat, then seasoned it with salt and pepper.


In order to cook this breast in duck fat, I obviously need the fat. I was able to buy at tub of duck fat at the excellent Brooklyn Larder.


I vacuum sealed the breast in a plastic bag with the fat.


I cooked the meat and fat for 8 hours at 133 degrees F. This slow pouched the breast in the duck fat. The result was not terribly appetizing.


I browned the outside of the breast with my butane torch to produce a nice golden brown exterior.




The result was a nice medium rare duck breast, with a crispy exterior.


I separated the liquid that came out of the duck breast from the fat, and combined it with some garlic and red wine to make a sauce. I served this with some broccoli and rice pilaf.


The verdict: delicious, BUT I'm not sure it was anything special. I think I could have prepared the duck like this on my grill in 12 minutes. I didn't need to pouch it in fat for 8 hours. Still tasty, just not very unique.

I like to watch a lot of cooking shows. I noticed on some of the 'high-end' shows (shows that aren't trying to teach you anything, just show you really fancy food) that they often used a technique called 'sous-vide'. I looked into this a little bit and got interested. Sous-vide means vacuum in french. It involves vacuum sealing food in a plastic bag and then immersing the bag and food in a temperature controlled water bath. The idea is that the water temperature is controlled very precisely so you can then control how the food is cooked very precisely.

I got a vacuum sealer for Christmas (because I wanted to vacuum seal meat that I put in the freezer), so I decided to figure out how I could use the vacuum sealer for sous-vide at home. I did some research and found that in order to control the water bath's temperature professional chefs use an immersion circulator that retails for >$1000. I didn't want to spend that much, so I googled some more and found that some home chefs use a rice cooker to heat up water, coupled with a device that monitors the water temperature and turns the rice cooker on and off in order to keep the temperature constant.

So, I bought a commercial rice cooker (16 litres) and this device and I was set up with my own home sous-vide setup. (As an aside, literally the day after I ordered my equipment I saw an add for Sous-Vide Supreme on TV, which I didn't know existed despite considerable research.)

Here's a picture of my Auber-WS sous-vide controller. I just punch in the temperature and drop its probe in the rice cooker, which plugs into the Auber-WS:





This weekend I attempted my first real recipe with all of this equipment, to great success. I cooked some beef short ribs.

I started with some USDA prime short ribs:


I seasoned the short ribs with salt, pepper and garlic salt then vacuum sealed this in plastic bags using my Food Saver vacuum sealer:


I set the temperature to 133°F and dropped the seal ribs in the rice cooker for 24 hours.


I walked away for a day, and came back at dinner time looking forward to my ribs. I pulled them out and saved the liquid that accumulated in the bag:


At this point the ribs were essentially pouched, but also a perfect medium rare throughout. In order to give the surface some flavour, that is, in order to get the Maillard reaction to occur on the surface I used a butane torch to brown the exterior. The idea here is that that brown taste on the surface makes things taste good, but you don't want to over cook the ribs that are cooked exactly as you want them. The torch's flame is about 2700°F, so it browns the surface without the heat penetrating the surface.


I made a sauce from the liquid from the bags the ribs were cooked in, some beef stock, some red wine and some carmalized oninons.



I plated the ribs up with some roasted red potatoes and some grilled asparagus.


The verdict: delicious. Normally if you cook a touch piece of meat like short ribs you have to braise them to tenderize them. That leaves them with a shreadable, very wet consistency. With the sous-vide preparation the consistency was much more like prime rib. Moist, but not wet, pink and tender. Really very nice, and I don't think you could have done this any other way: