The topic of chilling after cooking sous-vide, also referred to as “shocking” or “ice bath”, is frequently debated in sous-vide support groups on Facebook. Some people insist chilling after sous vide should always be done, others don’t understand its use … Continue reading The Use of Chilling After Cooking Steak Sous-Vide
In conventional cooking using a pan on the stove, the oven, or a barbecue grill, the cooking time is the main variable you have to decide upon. We all know easy rules like bake a turkey for 20 minutes per pound. … Continue reading How to choose Time and Temperature to cook Meat Sous-Vide
Before talking about herbs or no herbs, I would like to compliment SousVide Supreme for their excellent customer service. After six years of faithful service, my SousVide Supreme water oven had burnt out. I e-mailed customer support about this, and … Continue reading Sous-Vide With or Without Herbs in the Bag?
After the trilogy of posts about understanding what happens to meat when you cook it in terms of juiciness, tenderness, succulence, flavor, and appearance, another important subject to cover is food safety. This post does not just apply to meat, … Continue reading Understanding Food Safety
We cook meat to make it nicer to eat because it is more tender and flavorful than raw meat, and to make it safe to eat by killing harmful bacteria that may be on the meat. In order to be … Continue reading Understanding What Happens To Meat When You Cook It, Part 2: Tenderness
We cook meat to make it nicer to eat because it is more tender and flavorful than raw meat, and to make it safe to eat by killing harmful bacteria that may be on the meat. In order to be … Continue reading Understanding What Happens To Meat When You Cook It, Part 1: Juiciness
I’ve been hosting wine pairing dinners for years now. At home, for family and friends. This tradition started before I started blogging, and I have written about it before, but as I have a lot on my plate on an … Continue reading History of Wine Pairing Dinners
A friend who came over for dinner requested I prepare game, so I picked up some nice venison haunch steaks and prepared porcini-crusted venison steak with cabbage and mushrooms. The idea for the porcini crust came from Conor, but of … Continue reading Porcini-crusted Venison Steak
Stuffed pasta such as ravioli can probably be classified as my signature dish. I love to prepare them and I love to eat them. Twice a year I organize a wine & food extravaganza for my friends — two evenings with a multi-course dinner with two different paired wines with each course to compare them and find out which one is the best match. After the Burgundy theme earlier this year, it is now time for the Italian region of Piemonte. Piemonte is the home of great wines such as Barolo and the home of great Italian food. After the Barolo Chinato (which I will serve with the dessert) I wrote about yesterday, today’s post is about the one of the primi piatti (pasta dishes) I will serve during my serata piemontese: Agnolotti.
MRIJ stands for Maas-Rijn-IJssel, a breed of cattle named after the region in which it was bred: where the three rivers Maas (Meuse), Rijn (Rhine) and IJssel (Issel) meet. This piece of T-bone steak is very tasty for two reasons: (1) because the MRIJ breed has a lot of intramuscular fat (aka ‘marbling’) and because it has been dry-aged. The intramuscular fat makes the beef more juicy and carries a lot of taste. Dry-aging means that the beef has been hung to dry for several weeks, thus concentrating the flavor and taste and allowing the beef’s natural enzymes to break … Continue reading Dry-aged MRIJ T-bone steak sous-vide
As a secondo after the primo of gnocchi al gorgonzola, we had another favorite: rack of lamb! The Dutch lamb from my local butcher is still very tender even though it’s almost December. Ingredients for 2 servings 1 rack of lamb with 6-8 ribs 3 sprigs rosemay salt, freshly ground black pepper olive oil 75 ml (1/3 cup) red wine 75 ml (1/3 cup) lamb stock Preparation Preheat water bath to 54.5C/130F. Rub the rack of lamb with salt, freshly ground black pepper and some olive oil and seal in a bag with the rosemary sprigs (one on each side). … Continue reading Sous-vide rack of lamb
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 