Sous Vide Porterhouse: an embarrassment of riches.Sous vide porterhouse. Those words together give me the chills. OK, that's a bit much, but then again, that's my life. I have come relatively late to the sous vide banquet. Already much has been written about the technique, and the cookbooks are starting to come. And yes, I know, this is strictly a bbq website. But you have to indulge me. Wherever 32 marbled ounces of porterhouse steak are involved, exceptions can, and must be made. So, onward. I will not get in too much depth here about sous vide. Suffice to say, it is a technique whereby, the foodstuff is placed inside a container- most often a plastic bag, seasonings are added, air is vacuumed out, and the food is cooked very gently in a sometimes very low temperature water bath until it is done. The technique offers many superlatives: tender texture, great flavor, targeted cooking temperature and therefore no overcooking, and less shrinkage and waste. Indeed, this is one reason for the techniques' invention - controlling shrinkage and loss of product, as well as giving the ability to reheat a perfectly cooked product at a later date. Enough of that. The thought of a steak prepared sous vide intrigued me. I mean, you cook to the exact temperature that you like your beef. And, with proper temperature control, you can hold it for some time, and not overcook it! Also, it would be meltingly tender. And, don't forget, it would be taking a nice warm bath surrounded by seasonings. About the only negative that I have red about with meat prepared sous vide is that the exterior of said meat will come out grey. Not the maillard effect of browning and carmelizing. Nothing that a very hot cast iron skillet or grill wouldn't fix. So, let's begin. 
Behold the star of the show, the lovely 32oz, 2" thick, 21 day dry-aged porterhouse. (the thickness is very important: under sous vide the thickness determines the cooking time. For a very interesting read on this subject, check out egullet On one of the discussions, Nathan Myrhvold, the former CTO of Microsoft, posted a table of cooking times, which I followed. 
To the steak, I added approximately 2 Tb. butter, 1 tsp Kosher salt and black pepper. This was sealed in a food saver bag
and submerged in 130 degree water as this was the end temperature that I wanted - a perfect medium rare. The sous vide porterhouse cooked for about 2 hours and 10 minutes. In most cases a water circulator is used and highly recommended to maintain such low and constant temps. I double stacked pans and finally set the water bath in those pans to allow the heat to diffuse. I used a thermometer to monitor the water temp. For a temp this high it worked well. After two hours the meat looked like this: 
As you can see, it is grey on the outside- but cooked through. Next to a waiting very hot grill, for a 45 second sear on each side.The end result: 
Sadly I did not cut into it and post the photos. The inside of the sous vide porterhouse was a solid medium-rare red. All the way through. In fact, my wife commented that it was weird to have a steak without a varying degree of doneness when you cut it. The texture: butter tender. About the only downside is the lack of grill or pan-seared flavor. But, that;s something I can live with... return from the sous vide porterhouse page to the bbq reciped for foodies home page |
