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Meat cooked at a low temperature, as they say. Benefits of Low Temperature Cooking

Remove the meat from the refrigerator at least one hour before cooking.

Preheat oven to 200 C. Cut the peeled onions and carrots in half. Cut the garlic in half lengthwise and cut the celery into 5-7 cm pieces. Place all vegetables, parsley stalks and thyme on the bottom of a large roasting pan or deep baking sheet. Place in oven for 15-20 minutes, until brown markings and characteristic aroma appear. Lower the oven temperature to 110 C.

Slice the meat off the ribs. Pat dry with paper towels. In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat and brown the meat on all sides until golden brown... During this time, a lot of fat will be melted from the meat. Drain it and either use it to make Yorkshire pudding or throw it away.

Season the meat with salt and pepper, rubbing the spices into the surface of the meat. Tie the meat to the rib bones using culinary thread. Place the construction in the broiler on a cushion of baked vegetables, add water and place the broiler in the oven. Bake the meat for 30 minutes for every 450 g of weight, until the temperature inside the piece reaches 62 C. You can turn off the oven after 2 hours and leave the meat in the cooling oven.

via Visual hunt / CC BY-SA


The technology first hit restaurants in 1974. Pierre Troisgros, chef at Troisgros, was looking for a way to make foie gras with minimal weight loss and turned to fellow chef Georges Prahl for help. He came up with the idea of ​​wrapping foie gras in plastic wrap before cooking. The result was unexpected - instead of a third of its weight, the finished product lost only five percent!

In the same years, another French chef Bruno Gusso explored the possibilities of obtaining juicy soft meat from cheap raw materials and also developed a method for its preparation in vacuum packaging at low temperatures. As a result, a revolutionary culinary technology was born - the product is heated exactly to the temperature required for it. perfect cooking, all juices are preserved in it and a rich taste is manifested. The predictability of the process allows you to get a stable result.

Reliability, convenience, accuracy and affordability make low temperature cooking today used in many professional kitchens.

The simplicity and elegance of the method is easy to appreciate. It only needs two types of equipment: vacuum apparatus and water bath with thermostat... Vacuum packaging protects the product from external influences during cooking, and water bath allows it to boil well, precisely bringing it to the desired temperature.

Cooking at low temperatures is sometimes confused with cooking food in plastic bags, but the difference in technology is fundamental. In the second case, the bags simply create convenience, in particular, you can cook food in portions, but the methods of heat treatment are completely different here. The main advantage of suvid is its precise, stable low temperature - it is not used in conventional cooking. As a result, neither the texture nor the taste of the food is improved to the same extent as when low-temperature cooking.

It is temperature control that allows you to achieve results that cannot be achieved with traditional means. For example, venison tenderloin cooked at 52 ° C will be juicy and incredibly tender throughout. The same applies to beef ribs (58 ° C), and a creamy poached egg melting in your mouth (65 ° C).

Another advantage of the technology is the exact end of the cooking time of the product. With standard cooking methods, it continues to “cook” even after it has been removed from the heat source. For example, fried fish removed from the fire cools down on the surface, including due to the fact that it continues to transfer heat inside, therefore, it is possible to determine the exact time of its ideal cooking only by experience. With low-temperature cooking, everything is much easier - since the product is evenly heated throughout the entire volume, it stops cooking immediately after it is taken out of the water. Thanks to this, the cooking result is the same from time to time, which is impossible to achieve even with a huge cooking experience.

Low-temperature cooking technology is great for planning and optimizing kitchen processes. Everything can be prepared in advance, cooled, put directly in the packaging in the refrigerator and, when necessary, regenerated in the same place, in a water bath.

The mention of low temperatures in food processing always raises the question of food safety. This issue is solved thanks to vacuum packaging - it prevents the growth of aerobic bacteria, so pasteurized products can be stored in refrigerated cabinets for a long time. Fish - up to 5 days, pork - up to 12, poultry - up to 18, beef and veal - up to 30, vegetables - up to 1.5 months. And in general, the risk of contamination of the packaged product with pathogens is much lower than when using traditional ways cooking.

To ensure food safety after the end of preparation, it is necessary to control the storage temperature of the chilled product: up to 3.3 ° С - 30 days, up to 5 ° С - 10 days, up to 7 ° С - 5 days. Airtight vacuum packaging significantly reduces oxidation of the finished product. This protects fish from unpleasant odors, meat from discoloration, vegetables and fruits from browning. And due to the fact that the liquid released during heat treatment from the product remains in the bag, ready-made meals are juicier.

The features of the technologist include several points.

Long cooking time. However, if the processes in the kitchen are properly planned, the use sous vide will not create any difficulties for the chefs. Even if the product is slightly overexposed, its quality will not be affected.

Lack of golden brown crust. It appears on the product at higher temperatures due to the Maillard reaction, so in some cases the product will need to be fried.

There is a risk of bacterial growth if the product takes more than 4 hours to cook at temperatures below 52 ° C. The issue is solved by setting the correct temperature above 55 ° C.

It is necessary to control the amount of seasonings and dry plants so that they do not kill the taste of the product.

The temperature range and cooking time for different products are very different, so you need to cook them separately.

When was the last time you bought from a store really delicious boiled pork- fragrant, juicy, with a reasonable amount of fat and moderately salty? I never. I probably just have no luck.

But even if luck smiled at me sometimes in the store, meat baked at home will still give a hundred points ahead of any factory delicacy. Compliance with just a few simple rules for its preparation guarantees an unsurpassed result, and the desire to buy "something for a sandwich" in the store disappears without a trace.

What should be the ideal baked meat? Not dry, but not too greasy either. Soft and juicy and at the same time quite dense - there is nothing good when it crumbles under the knife. Not bland and salty. Absorbed the aroma and flavor of the spices and marinade you used. And, finally, beautiful.

What does it take to make the meat perfect? Of course, the quality of the original product plays an important role, but the main thing is correct use salt and cooking temperature. You will be surprised, but it is salt that is responsible for the juiciness, consistency and richness of the taste of the finished product. It is salt that makes it possible to absolutely lean meat stay juicy and allows the marinade to saturate even the most big piece.

Rule one: before cooking, the meat must be kept in brine. Aqueous salt solution changes the structure meat protein and allows the cells to retain water even during cooking, so the meat stays juicier than just sprinkled with salt just before baking.

In addition, the meat will be evenly salted, which is undoubtedly tastier than salted meat on the outside and bland on the inside, as is usually the case.

The optimum salt concentration is 3 to 6 percent. That is, for 1 liter of water, you need to take from 30 to 60 g of salt. Salting time depends on the size of the piece of meat. If these are small pieces, an hour is enough, and if you bake a two-kilogram leg of lamb, it is better to salt it overnight, or even for a day.

Rule two: if you are using a marinade that usually differs from the brine only in the presence of acid (for example, vinegar or lemon juice) and fat (for example, vegetable oil), it must be salty. Unsalted marinade works only on the surface of the meat, that is, it is only suitable for thin pieces. If it is baked, for example, pork neck as a whole, only a salt solution is capable of delivering the components of the marinade inside the piece.

Rule three: you need to know at what temperature the meat is ready, but not yet dry and take it out of the oven when the temperature in the middle of the piece is 5-7 degrees lower than desired. For example, fully cooked and juicy pork has a temperature of 65 degrees, and at 70 it already becomes dry. In order not to overdry it, you need to stop heating when the thermometer shows a maximum of 60 degrees. Even at room temperature, the meat inside continues to heat up for some time - in 10-15 minutes the internal temperature will reach 65 degrees.

An alternative method is to cook the meat at 65 degrees, so the critical temperature is never exceeded. It will take a lot of cooking time, but control over the process is not required at all.

Rule four: after the oven, the meat needs to "rest" for at least 15 minutes. Cutting right away will create a large pool of meat juice on a cutting board and dry meat. The fact is that meat fibers tend to shrink from heating, and "rest" gives them the opportunity to straighten out again and successfully retain the meat juice inside.

Rule five: the meat will turn out to be tastier and more beautiful if, before or after baking, fry it on all sides over high heat in a pan or under the grill.

These rules apply to both hot and cold baked meat dishes. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate.

Lamb leg with garlic and rosemary for 7 hours

Leg of lamb can be baked in two ways: in foil with garlic and herbs, or in a cast-iron saucepan with white wine. In both cases, the finished dish simply melts, that is, it literally melts without a trace, and at a catastrophic speed.

You will need:

  • boneless leg of a lamb weighing approximately 1.5 kg
  • 1 liter of water and 50 g of salt
  • a sprig of rosemary and a few sprigs of thyme
  • 5 cloves of garlic
  • 500 ml dry white wine (optional)

for garnish:

  • 500 g carrots
  • 250 g champignons
  • 30 g butter
  • salt, sugar, white pepper

What to do:


Pork neck for sandwiches

The technology is practically no different from roasting a leg of lamb in foil, the only difference is in the composition of the brine.

You will need:

  • pork neck weighing about 2 kg
  • 1 liter of water and 50 g of salt (the amount of brine can be easily doubled if it does not cover the whole meat)
  • 3 tablespoons mustard with grains
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 tablespoons of vinegar
  • black pepper and other spices of your choice

What to do:

  1. Stir salt, mustard, honey, vinegar and spices in water. Pour the brine over the meat and leave in the refrigerator overnight.
  2. Remove the meat from the brine and pat dry with a napkin. Lubricate with a mixture of mustard and honey, tie with a thread in a tight roll. Carefully wrap in several layers of foil and put in an oven heated to 65 degrees for 7 hours.
  3. Remove the meat from the oven, let it "rest" for about 15 minutes, unfold, dry with a napkin and fry on all sides in a hot frying pan. Allow to cool completely before cutting.

Recipes and photos of Anna Safronova

Are you a perfectionist? Then your chicken, baked whole in the oven, will probably "still" be dry and wiry. And no matter how hard you try, the meat “all the same” crumbles, comes out tough and dried. Oh, I'm a perfectionist myself! Therefore, I recommend trying to bake chicken according to the Blumenthal - a signature recipe from the famous "molecular" chef will allow you to cook the perfect chicken!

We'll bake whole chicken soaked in saline at low temperature - Blumenthal promotes long-term cooking at low temperatures. I warn you right away that the dish will take about 15-16 hours to cook (most of the time you don't need to do anything, just wait), so don't count on dinner for an hour. But at the exit you will get the most tender meat, very juicy and melting in your mouth, with a clean, unforgotten taste.

Low Temperature Chicken Secrets

1. Uniform roasting

No need to tie chicken legs each other, as we used to do, so that the bird retains its shape when baked. The heat should envelop the entire carcass, then the cooking will be even.

2. We increase the moisture content of the meat

To keep the chicken in the oven more moisture, it must be soaked in brine (overnight, in the refrigerator). Salt is taken strictly 60 grams - per 1 liter. If you put more, it will dry the meat. The chicken will "take" exactly as much of the solution as is needed for even salting.

3. Temperature conditions

In too hot oven the meat literally shrinks and squeezes out all the juices from the fibers. Baking slowly at a lower temperature will keep the poultry juicy. Therefore, the chicken should be cooked at 90 degrees until the temperature inside the carcass (in the thickest part of the breast) reaches 75 degrees. You will need a meat thermometer or core temperature probe to determine if it is ready.

Total cooking time: 15 hours
Cooking time: 3 hours
Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • chicken - whole carcass ( optimal weight 1.5-2 kg)
  • salt - 60 g for each liter of water
  • butter - 20 g
  • ground black pepper - 0.5 tsp.

Preparation

Big photos Small photos

    We wash the chicken thoroughly, untie its legs, cut out the gland in the tail area. Prepare a saline solution for pickling at the rate of 60 g of salt for every 1 liter of water. In total, you will need 2-3 liters, depending on the size of the carcass. The most important rule is that the bird should be completely submerged in the solution. If it floats, then you can press down on top with a load. We leave in this form to marinate in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours (overnight).

    We take the salted chicken out of the solution. Rinse thoroughly in running water to rinse off excess salt. Wipe off with paper towels - the skin must be dry, otherwise it will not be crispy.

    We put inside a whole lemon, scalded with boiling water (you can add a few sprigs of thyme). Rub the chicken on top butter and black pepper. We pin the holes with a toothpick. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 90 degrees.

    We put the chicken on the wire rack, set a deep baking sheet under the bottom (so that the fat drips into it). And we send it to the oven, preheated to 90 degrees. Roasting time will vary depending on the weight of the carcass. The temperature inside the meat should reach 75 degrees. Measure at the thickest part of the chicken breast.

    You don't even need to look into the oven for the first 1.5 hours, it has been checked repeatedly. During this time, an average-sized carcass will have time to heat up to about 60 degrees. But after an hour and a half, you need to check the temperature every 30 minutes. I cooked a large chicken weighing 2 kg in 3 hours. As you can see, the temperature has reached 75 degrees. The finished chicken will not be rosy, its skin will be slightly tightened, but it will be pale. We take the chicken out of the oven and leave it at room temperature for 35-40 minutes.

    To get a delicious crispy crust, in parallel, preheat the oven to a maximum (220-250 degrees, if there is a grill, turn it on). During the time the chicken is lying, it will cool slightly, the temperature inside will drop to 50-60 degrees, therefore, achieving a golden brown crust under the grill, we will not raise the temperature of the meat above the set, thereby preserving the desired juiciness. So, pour the "rested" chicken with fat from the pan and return to the oven for 10 minutes to brown the skin. (If you have a cooking hot water bottle, you can use it on the chicken.)

It remains to cut into portions and serve. Does it make sense to cook chicken for so long? The recipe is definitely worth your attention - the meat turns out to be dense and juicy, completely unlike the one that the usual baking gives. In structure, it is somewhat similar to grilled chicken. Tasty! Yes, and labor costs, in principle, a minimum, just the whole process is stretched out in time. Try it, it is possible that you will no longer want to cook chicken any differently!


I have made this pork before, but, as often happens, I did not write down the recipe. It seemed that everything was so simple that there was no need to write down, but no, a couple of years passed, and the subtleties were forgotten. I only remembered that the result was a divinely tender and fragrant roast from the cheapest part of a pig.

Adding: Served this pork for breakfast today as cold cuts on a sandwich. It is difficult to say how tasty it is, but even when cold, the meat retained the same tenderness and richness of taste with a bright note of fried pork:

I had to re-study the Internet and my cookbooks... The sources of my recipe were numerous variations Slow Roasts and Carnitas , but none of them suited me as it is, so I had to re-derive my arithmetic mean recipe.

But this time, being already a scientist, I will document this recipe right here.

I used one of the cheapest cuts of pork for him - like this:

http : // www. cleanfoodconnection. com / catalog / images / pork% 20 shoulder% 20 roast% 20 boneless. jpg

We call it Boneless shoulder roast ... My piece weighed a little more than 2.5 kg. First, I salted it well with kosher salt and pepper. Then I thought and under the influence of recipes Carnitas added a glass of fresh orange juice. I thought again and decided that I would like some kind of piquancy, and maybe even a slightly smoked taste and added a little Sweet Mesquite Seasoning:

http://www.vitasprings.com/kirkland-sweet-mesquite-seasoning.html

Indeed, these additives fit into the taste of the finished meat, but the taste of pork itself with this method of preparation is already so good that one could stop at salt and pepper, as I did last time. Although, however, Orange juice was still out of place.

And so, put the spiced pork in a large plastic bag or bowl and refrigerate for 1-3 days. It just so happened that I kept it for exactly half - one and a half days. I wanted to pamper my husband, who had returned from Estonia today, so this is what dictated the time of marinating meat.

Remove the marinated meat from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature... This takes 1 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the piece. While the meat is heating up, it makes sense to tie it with twine to make it look neat.

Heat the oven to 300g. Fahrenheit (~ 150g. C). Place the prepared meat on a baking sheet lined with foil (it is easier to wash and collect the meat juice) with the fatty side up and place in the preheated oven on the wire shelf set in the middle position.

And that's actually all. Then you can forget about meat for 5 hours. If the piece is smaller than I had, then 4-4.5 hours may be enough. After checking the meat after 5 hours, I decided to add another half hour. The task was to get absolutely soft meat, almost decaying into fibers. That is, the meat is done when a large fork of meat goes into it very easily.

There are many options further. You can just serve it hot right away, pouring it with juice, with a side dish (I served with fried cabbage, but this is far from the only option). You can cool, cut into small cubes, fry in a skillet until golden brown and serve with tortillas, salsa and guacamole ( Carnitas ). Can be cut into pieces, chopped into fibers with a fork ( Shredded pork ) and is on a sandwich with barbecue sauce. And can be used as cold cuts on sandwiches.

By the way, since the cooking process, although simple, is quite lengthy, it makes sense to cook a large piece at once. If this is too much for your family, then half can be frozen without any loss of taste.

Yes, and also - the juice and fat leaked out during frying must certainly be used for stewing potatoes, it turns out amazingly tasty.
Further, as always, photos:
Pork, salted and peppered:

This is what pork looks like, marinated in the refrigerator for almost two days and prepared for baking:

And here it is ready, ruddy and lying in its juice and fat:

Served with fried cabbage and freshly baked rye bread:

And here is the bread itself, but I will somehow make a separate post about it when I bother to film the whole process: