I did use a small amount of liquid smoke in the vac bag. Just a few drops of Wright’s Liquid Mesquite. I also lightly salted them, then vac bagged them and let them sit in the fridge over nite. I finished them with a dry rub in the oven for 35 minutes at 325. Then I served them with heated BBQ sauce on the side. I have had some great ribs in the past but I can honestly say that these were top restaurant quality and every bit as good as any I have ever tried. I used Serious Eats guidelines from here: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/09/the-food-lab-complete-guide-sous-vide-pork-ribs.html
By the way something I have failed to mention in the past but big props go out to whomever pointed us to Serious Eats in this thread. It the first place I go to, to get advanced cooking advice and they have not let me down yet. Food Labs is awesome!
CraigM
5268
I resemble this remark, except my wife doesn’t like sardines but can do canned tuna, and occasionally salmon. Shrimp is also good. And I too have never had turbot, and now wish I could.
Timex
5269
Soaking fish in milk prior to cooking helps eliminate a lot of the fishy smell, and can make folks who don’t normally like fishy fish tolerate it better. Learned it on Iron Chef way back in the day.
I’m sure someone mentioned the site before but Kenji is awesome, as are the rest of the staff there. Like a free version of ATK where they test methods and recipe variants and post what they thought tasted the best for the efforts.
If you get a chance, check out his book.
Me too man, me too. What really gets me is the shellfish dislike. Who doesn’t like at least shrimp/crab/lobster? It’s just strange.
Excellent tip man, thank you. I have never heard that before at all.
Timex
5272
The big benefit is that it makes it so your HOUSE doesn’t smell like fish.
Gendal
5273
I am indifferent on the liquid smoke. It works, not as well as smoking it in a real smoker, but I am not a gigantic fan of smoke in BBQ anyways. I like the pink ring more than I care about the taste difference. I am probably on the ‘weird’ end of that spectrum.
I finish on high/sear heat on the grill until it releases easily from the grates. You still don’t get as good a bark, one of my favorite parts of ribs, as a great smoker but everything else is just so superior I don’t care.
@Misguided’s pellet grill might give it a run for the money. That seems even easier than sous vide after setup, and while I imagine the meat wouldn’t be as succulent as sous vide given some of the money shots he has posted it might not matter. Plus you should get perfect bark and smoke ring.
Hmmm… Considering we just got a joule, might be fun to do an in-house competition. Sous-vide ribs vs smoked ribs.
EVERYONE WINS!
Gendal
5275
I still can’t get over that brisket picture you posted. It haunts my dreams.
I can produce meat that juicy easily in sous vide but I can’t generate that bark and moisture level together at the same time.
Timex
5276
I’ve been really tempted to make some BBQ Chuck, which supposedly can be good stuff.
I guess it makes sense, since usually for pork I use a shoulder, which is where the chuck comes from.
I’ve used chuck steak in the sous vide cooker before, and it can turn into an amazingly good steak. You end up eating around a bit of fat and stuff, but the flavor and texture are real nice.
Uh… Sorry, not sorry, I guess?
And the thing is, it’s so damned easy. The hardest part is planning far enough ahead.
Speaking of which, at the wife’s request, I will be smoking a pork belly for next weekend.
@Misguided can you tell me which pellet grill you have?
I have the RecTec mini. 500 bucks (plus another 100 for shipping). Nothing else in the price range is remotely comparable (the controller is what matters most). They make a larger size for 1000. They also have fantastic customer service (look online and you will find stories about people that got phone calls from one of the owners on a holiday to solve a problem). That’s not BS. I have a business card with cell phone numbers for the GM and two co-owners. All their employees use them, so they know what you are talking about when you ask a question. The smokers are manufactured in China, but the controllers are made in the US, if that matters to you.
http://www.rectecgrills.com
Sounds good. I’d looked at a Trager and one other, this seems to be a very good comparison and better.
I looked at Traeger for a long time. They were the market leader a long time ago, but you are paying more for less because of the name. I also looked at high-end brands like MAK, Yoder, and Fast Eddy. I shopped these things for years and years before I finally bought one, because I kept thinking I needed to spend over 2000 bucks to get what I wanted. And while I wasn’t entirely unwilling to do that, I was afraid that if I didn’t enjoy using it, I’d wind up with a 2000 dollar doorstop.
When I found out about the mini, it seemed too good to be true. Here was everything I wanted in terms of a PID controller for 500 dollars, which was a price point I was willing to take a leap of faith on, though I wasn’t sure about the size. It’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made, and the smaller size was only an issue once. If you are going to regularly cook for a crowd, I’d consider the 680 instead.
Noted. It is part of a redo on all my outdoor cooking, so it is a wish list item for me. I’ve wanted a smoker for a while but waffled back and forth between wood/gas, size, convenience, etc. Pellet smokers have come on very strong and the addition of temperature control being automatic is like the icing on the cake. I didn’t know you had a pellet smoker, I missed that in your earlier posts.
Yup. I bought a Brinkmann barrel-type smoker years ago. I ended up never using it because it was such a hassle fussing with the temperature (hence my worry about winding up with a doorstop). I want to be lazy, set and forget. That’s why the pellet smokers were so appealing. I’ve done quite a few overnight cooks now. I do keep a Maverick remote temperature monitor with an alarm on it in case something wacky happens, but it has never been a problem.
At any rate, if you have more questions down the road, let me know.
I think I might have first learned about RecTec from this Serious Eats article:
Excellent tip, thanks. I am ok with fish but if this diminishes the smell and lowers the “fishy” taste a bit I would likely eat more fish. I only eat the more mild flavored fish anyway.
Timex
5285
Ya, the fat in the milk bonds to the sulfur compounds in the fish, or something. I don’t recall which episode of iron chef it was that I saw it… I think it was Sakkai who did it.
What I’ve found is that in cases where you have to thaw frozen fish filets, just thaw them in a bag with milk. When they are done thawing, you have non-fishy smelling fish (and fishy smelling milk). Works well with those bags of cheap frozen fish fillets, which are often somewhat fishy.
It doesn’t really affect the flavor at all, that I’ve noticed… other than making it perhaps less fish smelling, which I guess has an impact. It seems to negate more of the “bad” part of the smell though.
Yeah I figure it doesnt really alter the flavor so much as it alters the taste by diminishing the odor. The sense of smell is a big part of how things taste. A study on taste determined that “most researchers would appear to agree that olfaction plays a “dominant” role in the tasting of food.” Anyway, as someone who is lukewarm on fish, Ill give it a shot. Im guessing this works best with whole milk?
