Six years ago I blogged for the first time about a technique that I called “warm aging”. Aging is a technique that is used to improve the texture of meat and sometimes also to give it more flavor by the … Continue reading Sous Vide Warm Aging Revisited
Dry aging is a technique to improve the texture and flavor of meat, especially steak. It is costly because the outside needs to be trimmed and discarded, and moisture is removed from the meat so it loses weight. To improve … Continue reading Fish Sauce-Aged Steak
Beef short ribs are a very popular cut to prepare sous-vide, because they are so flavorful. How do you like beef short ribs? Braised and unctuous like in the photo above? Then cook them sous-vide for 24 hours at 74C/165F. … Continue reading Beef Short Ribs Sous-Vide: Like Steak Or Braised
Coda alla Vaccinara is a classic dish from Rome: oxtail stewed in tomato sauce. It is usually served as a secondo, but you can also eat the sauce over pasta as a primo before that. Another less common variation is … Continue reading Conchiglie alla Vaccinara (Pasta with Oxtail Ragù Sous-Vide)
Chili is a American dish of beef and chiles. There are many versions and debates about what is and is not authentic chili. I trust the judgement of Adam J. Holland aka The Unorthodox Epicure on what is real chili, and … Continue reading Texas Chili Sous-Vide
When you cook meat (beef, lamb, pork, venison, etc.) sous-vide for a long time (8 hours or more) at a temperature below 60C/140F, sometimes the meat comes out with an unpleasant smell. Sometimes just faintly, sometimes very strongly. The bag … Continue reading How To Prevent A Bad Smell With Long And Low Sous-Vide Cooks
When I saw black been beaf on One Man’s Meat, I knew at once I wanted to make a sous-vide version. Conor’s Asian recipes are always quick, simple, and full of flavor. Sous-vide takes the quickness out of it, but … Continue reading Black Bean Beef Sous-Vide
Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but in this case the picture above doesn’t completely convey the difference between the two pieces of roast beef. Both are cooked to a core temperature of 55C/131F. The one on … Continue reading Roast Beef: Oven Versus Sous-Vide
The popularity of picanha as a cut of beef to be prepared on the grill (BBQ) hails from Brazil, and that is why the cut is known under its Brazilian (Portuguese) name. It is called rump cover or rump cap … Continue reading Warm-Aged and Hay-Smoked Beef Picanha
A frikandel is one of the most popular Dutch fast food items. They are usually produced from “mechanically separated meat”, which means any meat that can be obtained through mechanical means from a carcass after ‘regular’ butchering has finished. To … Continue reading Frikandellen (Dutch Deep Fried Hot Dog)
Stefano of Italian Home Cooking has done it again: he posted a delicious traditional Italian recipe that I had not heard of before. I love Ragù alla Napoletano, which is a large piece of beef braised in tomato sauce. The … Continue reading La Genovese alla Napoletana Sous-Vide (Ziti and Beef with Onion Sauce)
Boeuf Bourguignon is a famous beef stew from the French region of Burgundy. The beef is stewed with red wine and served with mushrooms and pearl onions in a rich beefy sauce. I’ve posted before how to make it on the stovetop … Continue reading Boeuf Bourguignon Sous-Vide
When cooking sous-vide, you have perfect control over how done the meat is going to be. But it does require you to know what temperature corresponds with how you like your steak done. And so I prepared the above chart … Continue reading Steak Temperature Chart for Sous-Vide
After having cooked sous-vide for six years, I still discover some improvements now and then. Until recently, when cooking beef sous-vide I would usually choose as low a temperature as possible, and then cook long enough for the meat to become … Continue reading Flank Steak Sous-Vide Temperature Experiment
For Christmas I wanted to make a traditional Italian dish that I had not prepared before, preferably something that involved stuffed pasta. As I’ve already made so many stuffed pasta dishes over the years, I wasn’t sure if I would … Continue reading Sugo di Carne alla Genovese: Il Tocco (Genoese Braised Veal and Meat Sauce)
Some Dutch words are difficult to translate. Two important ones are gezellig and borrel. “Gezellig” means having a good time together with other people. It can be used as an adjective, as in “gezellige avond” (avond = evening), or as an adverb: … Continue reading Crispy Chili Balls (Chili Bitterballen)
This recipe is pretty crazy. It’s something I thought of and wanted to try: deep fried ravioli made with cornflour (masa) that I wanted to taste like hard taco shells, filled with chili con carne and smoked mozzarella. Although I … Continue reading Deep Fried Corn ‘Ravioli’ Filled With Chili Con Carne
My old-fashioned butcher (which is not a bad quality at all in a butcher) is slowly catching up to new trends, and is now dry aging beef. I picked up a dry aged strip steak (called entrecote in the Netherlands) … Continue reading Strip Steak with Parsnip, Zucchini and Potatoes
Blade steak or flat iron steak is a relatively inexpensive cut of beef that when you cook it sous-vide becomes more flavorful than many more expensive cuts of steak, and just as tender. Look for steaks with a lot of … Continue reading Blade Steak Sous-Vide with Shii Take Mushrooms and Oyster Sauce
Picanha is a cut of beef that is very popular in Brazil and Argentina, that is known as “rump cap” in the United States or as staartstuk in the Netherlands. It is a tender and flavorful piece of beef from … Continue reading Picanha Sous-Vide with Chimichurri
Enchiladas is Spanish for something like ‘covered in chilli’, and refers to tortillas dipped in chilli sauce. In this version corn tortillas are dipped in chilli con carne, stuffed with cheese, and baked with more chilli con carne and cheese. I saw … Continue reading Cheese Enchiladas with Chilli con Carne
As promised in my review of sous-vide equipment, I’m going to write more about sous-vide techniques. This is the first post in a series, that will be in the new categorie “Sous-Vide tips & tricks“. In cooking we often strive to … Continue reading Post Sous-Vide Searing by Deep Frying
Happy St. Patrick’s day! It’s an Irish-American tradition to eat corned beef with cabbage on St. Patrick’s day. I usually don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day (most people in the Netherlands haven’t even heard of it), but when I came across … Continue reading Corned Beef for St. Patrick’s Day
To celebrate a friend’s 20th birthday, I got him a vintage port from his birth year and an accompanying dinner. Since I know he loves blue cheese, it wasn’t difficult to decide what to prepare to go with the vintage … Continue reading Steak with Blue Cheese, Belgian Endive (Witlof) and Mushrooms
Each region of Italy has its own pasta shapes and pasta recipes. Valeggio sul Mincio, a town near Lago di Garda and the city of Verona, is famous for its Tortellini di Valeggio, tortellini made of pasta as thin as … Continue reading Tortellini di Valeggio
Tenderloin, prized for its tenderness, is an expensive cut of beef. A tenderloin tapers towards one end, and the ‘tip’ of the tenderloin is not suitable for tournedos or châteaubriand. Tenderloin tips are therefore available at about half the regular … Continue reading How to Save 50% on Beef Tenderloin
After four years of cooking sous-vide, the longest cook I had done was still 72 hours. So far I had not encountered a cut of meat that required more. Then I read about oxtail sous-vide, cooked 100 hours at 60ºC/140ºF, and … Continue reading Oxtail Cooked Sous-vide For 100 Hours
Beef shoulder, also known as the top blade roast, has great marbling (intramuscular fat) and therefore great flavor. It has a drawback, which is a thick central muscle sheath that is very tough. If that sheath is removed then the … Continue reading Blade Steak Sous-Vide
Have you been wondering what I made with the Chinese chicken stock? Well, here it is: Chinese hot pot (also known as Mongolian hot pot), a festive dish that is delicious, healthy, and surprisingly easy to prepare for such a … Continue reading Chinese Hot Pot
When I prepared a Bistecca alla Fiorentina in January to celebrate Conor’s board, there were two things I put on my to do list: (1) to try this with real Chianina beef from Tuscany, and (2) to try to ‘warm age’ … Continue reading Sous-vide Warm Aged T-Bone Steak
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