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November 22, 2012

Recipe Shed: 48-Hour Sous Vide Bavette Steak with Hoi Sin Noodles and Pak Choy

I’ve called this cut of meat by its French name, Bavette, because it sounds sexier than ‘flank’ or skirt’ – its English titles. Its an incredibly tough piece of meat, from the underside of the animal, and so needs long-slow cooking to break down the collagen fibres that hold the muscle together. You can flash-fry it, but you’ll still be chewing it this time next week.

I used my trusty Sous Vide water bath to cook this, which gave me the best of both worlds: very tender meat, but still pink inside, which I then finished off in the frying pan to give it a caramelised crust.

Serves 2-4

1 piece of Bavette/flank/skirt, weighing approx. 750g
1 tbsp sesame oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve: medium egg noodles, stir-fried with finely chopped ginger and garlic, hoi sin sauce, reserved meat juices and roughly chopped pak choy.

1. Rub the sesame oil, salt and pepper into the steak, then seal in a Sous Vide vacuum pouch. Set the Sous Vide water bath to 55C and lower the pouch into the water. Leave for two days. Yes, two whole days.

2. Two days later, remove the pouch from the water bath, drain the juices and reserve to use in the noodle sauce.

3. Heat a large frying pan until smoking hot, then sear the steak for approx. 1 min each side. Remove and transfer to a chopping board. Carve into thick slices. Serve with the hoi sin noodles.

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Filed under Recipe Shed, Sous Vide Cooking

Tagged as Bavette, beef, flank, Garlic, Ginger, Noodles, sesame oil, skirt, Sous Vide, Steak, Water Bath

August 10, 2011

Recipe Shed: Guide to Sous Vide Cooking

Water boils – and thus turns to steam – at 100 degrees Celsius. Fact.

Muscle tissue is approx. 75% water. Fact.

If you cook meat at more than 100C a significant amount of the water in the muscle will evaporate. Fact.

Enter stage left, the Chef’s Sous Vide water bath.

Of all my prized kitchen gadgets, this is the star. My wife bought it me for Christmas because of my passion for cooking and my desire to produce restaurant-standard meals at home.

And one of the secrets of restaurant-standard cooking is the method by which you cook your freshest ingredients.

The key, in very simple terms, is to retain the moisture in food, be it meat, fish, vegetables, whatever.

Here’s how it works:

• First you vacuum pack your chosen ingredient (in this case, steak).

• Then you fill the water bath with cold water.

• Next you set the temperature at which you would like to cook, but also the temperature at which any dangerous bacteria is killed. This all depends on the tenderness and size of the cut of meat, or your chosen veg. For example, rib of beef for up to 10 hours at 55C; sirloin steak for 2 to 3 hours at 55C; chicken thighs for 2 to 5 hours at 64.4C; brocolli for 20 to 30 mins at 83.9C.

• Then once the water bath has come up to temperature, immerse your vac-packed ingredients into the water and set the time. The bath will be kept at this temperature for the duration.

• Finally, snip open the pack, and either serve straight away or finish it off – for example, with meat – by flash frying it in a hot pan. Voila.

All the water – thus the tasty juices that makes food taste the way it does – is retained. And because, in the case of meat, you are cooking at temperatures that break down both the fat and the collagen fibres that hold the muscle together, you end up with an end product that is not only incredibly juicy, but also amazingly tender.