50 Hour Sous Vide Short Ribs
French for “under vacuum,” sous vide is a method of cooking in which food is sealed and then cooked in a temperature controlled water bath in order to cook the food evenly and properly. First invented in the late 1700s, this method has only become widely available to the average home chef in the last ten or so years. Cooking short ribs using this method will result in tender, flakey meat.
Recipe
Sous Vide Short Ribs
Total Time: 50 Hours 40 Minutes | Active Time: 40 Minutes | Serves Eight
Ingredients:
- 1 C Olive Oil
- 1/4 C soy sauce
- 3 T Lemon Juice
- 3 T Orange Juice
- 3 T Lime Juice
- 1 T Asian sesame oil
- 1/4 C Brown Sugar
- 2.5” piece of finely chopped ginger
- 3 Garlic cloves finely chopped
- 12 grinds black pepper
- 3 scallions (whites only)
- 1 T Siracha
- 3 T of Cilantro
- 3 T of Parsley
- 8 pieces bone-in short trimmed of any silverskin and cut into individual ribs
- Grapeseed or other neutral oil for frying
Directions:
- Make marinade: combine olive oil, soy sauce, lemon, lime and orange juices, sesame oil, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, pepper, scallions and Siracha in bowl and mix.
- Add short ribs to marinade and place in sous vide bag. Seal vacuum sealed bag. Double bag!! (See note below)* You are cooking this thing for 48 hours. You don’t want to risk the bag breaking and ruining everything.
- Cook in sous vide supreme at 140F for 50 hours.
- Remove from Sous Vide
- Cut ribs out of the bags, making sure you save the braising liquid. Step 8: Strain liquid through a fine mesh sieve into a small sauce pan. Boil over high heat and reduce until you have about 2 cups (10 min max). Set aside until plating.
- Slide bones out of the ribs. Trim off obvious pieces of fat and trim ribs into neat cube/rectangles
- Heat oil and sear off the short ribs for 2 minutes a side.
- Put reserved braising liquid in the center of the plate, meat on top and favorite veg on the side.
A Note on Vacuum Packing Liquids: Traditional home vacuum sealers typically are not able to vacuum pack liquid. In commercial kitchens, they use chamber vacuum sealers. There are a couple ways around this. You can freeze the liquid and then vacuum seal the solid liquid chunks along with the meat. Or, you can try to seal the liquid-filled bag by hanging the bag down as far as this allows most of the air to be removed before the machine starts trying to suck up the liquid, at which point you manually turn the machine off.
