Sous Vide Duck Legs

When I first learned about sous vide I thought that the premise was that as long as you cook something at the exact temperature that you want for the internal temperature of the meat you can't overcook anything. However, all of my recent sous vide dishes have been cooked for no more than 1 hour so I didn't know if this really mattered or not. I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class with Wylie Dufresne who did in fact give a pseudo-sous vide demonstration. During the class I asked Wylie his thoughts on this. He said that even at a low temperature there is still a chemical process going on with the protein and that the timing is essential to the dish. Of course, I am neither a scientist nor a professional, so I will defer to the experts on this.

Sous vide duck legs marked our first experiment with an extended cooking time. We cooked two legs for 8 hours at 178 degrees. Before placing them in the vacuum bag, we removed the skins and excess fat. Any fat that we were easily able to remove from the skin was placed in the bag with the legs, for both flavor and moisture. In addition to some salt and pepper we seasoned the meat with a few sprigs of fresh parsley, thyme and rosemary (whatever is fresh an available will work great). After dropping the legs into the water, we made ourselves comfortable and watched a few movies. Not a very involved process at all.

We decided to save the skin, c'mon it's flavor country, and attempted to make a crispy wafer from each one. We left them in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator until there was about 40 minutes left on the duck. After removing the skin from the refrigerator we salted each side generously and cooked them, one at a time, in a very hot pan. We used a bacon press to keep it flat and press out the excess fat. Between the two pieces of skin we rendered out at least 1 1/2 cups of fat, we saved it for another time. Both skins came out great, although I think the second skin, which was cooked on a medium high heat, was a bit better.

To go with the duck we did a simple dish of roasted root vegetables, perfect for a cold winter night. We used a mixture of potatoes, fennel, celery, red onion and garlic tossed with olive oil, gray salt and fresh ground pepper. Not wanting to waste the fresh herbs, we topped it off with some thyme as well. This was cooked at 450 degrees for about an hour, tossing them periodically.

After removing the duck legs from the water, we gave them a quick sear in the now well oiled pan that we crisped the skin in.


I am starting to think that sous vide is an idiot proof method, assuming you have adequate heat control. Everything came out great, the duck fell right off of the bone and the meat was very tender. The crispy skin made an excellent compliment to the texture of the meat and the root vegetables go great with any kind of meat on a cold night. Next time, and there will be a next time, we have decided to try a lower temperature over the same time period, and maybe in the future we will also try this with a shorter cooking time as well.

Sous Vide Steak

Well, its official. We've finally gone off the deep end. We have not simply dipped our toes into sous vide cooking, we have dived in head first. Anyone who watches Top Chef has probably heard one of the chefs taking mention it, anyone who has ever eaten at a fancy restaurant or even on an airplane has probably had it, but not enough people are doing it. I don't say that because I think it is fancy or trendy, but because it is an amazing way to cook food with an high degree of control over the final product.

I have been cooking for years, and maybe its my lack of formal training, but I almost always cook my proteins to a different level of doneness. I usually get it pretty close to where I want it, but if I turn away for a minute to stir the rice or mash the potatoes, I miss it and end up with dry chicken or well done steak. I've tried using thermometers and take it out at the perfect time, but it always manages to cook more than I ant even after taking it out of the oven. I don't mean to suggest that I am not happy with what I cook, but simply that I have not been happy with my method.

Enter sous vide. Quite simply, it means to cook under vacuum. It is a method that was developed in France in the seventies and has been utilized extensively in commercial cooking. Though it has only slowly been adopted in restaurants and home kitchens. Well now its time has come. Some things were meant to be sauteed to broiled, and some things were meant to be sous vided!

Sous vide allows you to cook anything to a precise internal temperature. Many people who sous vide use very fancy, and expensive, equipment but I don't feel like spending upwards of several thousand dollars for a steak. Call me crazy. If you look on eBay, you can find all sorts of immersion circulating heaters and constant temperature water baths. But between the cost and the fact that those are all second hand items from a hospital or lab, I and a little weary of going down that path. I will admit that not every kitchen has the right equipment, but if you do, this is well worth the effort. I live in a cramped NYC apartment and am just lucky, I guess, that I have a medium sized electric stove. This turns out to be ideal for this type of cooking. The only major requirement for this method is being able to get a pot of water to the temperature that you want and then keep it there for a long time.

I was a little hesitant going into my first sous vide dish, but I like a challenge and am drawn to the scientific. I ran across a posting on another blog that convinced me that I can do it without any special equipment. This first dish I attempted was a very simple steak.

I took the steak and put it into a ziploc bag. Ok, so I did use a little bit of equipment, Reynolds makes a device called the Handi-Vac (pictured below), which sells for about $10, and a box of bags is less than $5. It is basically a standard ziploc bag, except it has a little hole in one corner. So I put the steak into the bag with a pinch pf salt and pepper, sealed it up, and then used the Handi-Vac to suck the air out. This cheap little device works great and give you a very satisfying vacuum seal. The one downside to this is that it was clearly not made with the at-home sous-vider in mind (I know what your thinking, how dare they!), so unfortunately the area that you suck the air out of is not fully water tight. So to get around this I just placed this vacuum bag inside of a regular gallon ziploc bag and pushed the air out. While this may seem counterintuitive that I would use another non-vacuumed bag, trust me when I say that it does make a difference. By having the meat in the vacuum sealed bag any seasoning that you use is spread very evenly and pulled into the meat with a combination of the vacuum environment and the pressure of the water. So you only need a small amount of seasoning or sauce to impart a great deal of flavor to the meat.

So back to the steak. I took the steak with a pinch of salt and pepper and placed it into my water bath. For this I used a large stock pot filled with hot water. As you can see in the accompanying picture, I have a cabinet door above my stove, so I hung a thermometer from that door and used a rubber band to secure it to a wooden spoon placed across the top of the pot. I know it sounds crazy, but it works and is actually pretty easy to set up. In order to get the water to the proper temperature, for this steak I was aiming for 135 degrees (medium rare), I put my stove top on one if its lowest settings and watched my thermometer until it hit the sweet spot. Making my life a little easier, I have a thermometer with a remote sensor so I can watch the temperature from another room. You certainly don't need this, you just need to watch the water closely. It took a little experimentation for me but once I was found the right setting on my stove top I was on my way.

When the water got the to right temperature I dropped my bag of steak in. If the steak floats to the surface, you may need to push some more air out of your bag or you can use something like a ramekin to weight it down. I cooked my steak about 135 degrees for about 45 minutes. I won't lie, my set up is not perfect and so the temperature fluctuated between 133-137 degrees over the course of cooking. I did not notice that this caused and problem and I think that a few degrees here or there is probably not going to be a big deal. After taking out the steak, I did notice that it had the appearance of a boiled steak. Which if you've ever seen one is simply not appetizing. So to finish it off I quickly seared it on both sides on a grill pan to give it some color and texture. And that is it.


I hope I haven't made it seem too involved, it really isn't. In fact I think it is actually easier than many other types of cooking, because once it is going you can just walk away. As you can see from the pictures, the steak ended up perfectly cooked and was delicious. I didn't make any kind of sauce or anything fancy, but it truly ended up being one of the most tender steaks I have ever had - and this was no filet mignon. I have since tried this method with both chicken and a rack of lamb. Both of which also turned out perfectly. I can't think of a better way to cook a steak or a chicken breast, and wonder how I went all these years with dry over cooked meat.

Socca

Socca, one of my favorite snack foods, is a quick and easy crepe-like dish from the south of France. We actually use a crepe pan to make this dish, but with a little practice I'm sure that any oven safe pan will work. This is dish great if you follow the basic recipe (below), but it also can be flavored with any of a number of different things. We have tried both thinly sliced onions and fresh rosemary - the rosemary is my favorite.

What makes this dish unique is that it uses chickpea flour, which has a great flavor. For a while I had a hard time finding chickpea flour, but recently I have been seeing it in just about every gourmet store that I am in, including some everyday grocery stores as well. So, I hope you don't get discouraged if you can't find it right away it is out there, but unfortunately I don't think that this would work with regular flour at all. Although, I have also recently seen things like 50/50 chickpea flour and fava bean flour. I don't know what that is like but if you are feeling bold something like that might be worth a try as well.

Socca
1 cup chickpea flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon, at least, ground black pepper
4-6 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup lukewarm water

Heat your oven to 450 degrees and your stove-top to medium-high. Get your crepe pan, well seasoned cast iron, or non-stick pan hot enough on the stove top that a drop of water will lightly bounce off of the surface. Sift chickpea flour into a bowl and add salt and pepper. Slowly add water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tablespoons of oil. Let the mixture sit covered while the oven and pan heat up, or up to 12 hours. The batter should be about the consistency of a thin sour cream.

Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into the pan, coating the entire surface evenly - I like to use a silicone brush to make sure everything is well coated on all sides. The next part can be a little tricky because there is no solid way to measure, but you want to pour just enough batter to cover the bottom with a even, thin coating. You accomplish this by pouring some into the middle of the pan and then quickly rolling around your wrist to dip and twist the pan so that the batter rolls all around. You will learn after a few tries how much is enough to just coat the bottom for a paper thin layer - it is pretty common for us to ruin the first one in a "practice round" as well. Place the pan to the oven and bake until the socca is firm and the edges have set, about 12-15 minutes. Finish the socca under the broiler, brushing the surface with a little oil, until the surface begins to brown.

Place the finished socca on a plate (or curled inside of a paper cone as they do in France), garnish with some fresh black pepper to taste, set it to the side and begin the next round. Unless you have several pans, it is difficult to do more than one at a time, and you definitely want to eat it hot. If you are serving them for guests, it is best served during an informal gathering in the kitchen in which each person can take their turn or share as they come out of the oven. Pepper is one of the secrets to this simple dish. If you like things spicy, then add a little more, or if you want a cleaner chickpea flavor you can add less.

If you choose to flavor with batter with onions or rosemary or anything else, you should add it to the batter at the very end. Remember when preparing the onion or rosemary that the finished pancakes will thin, so you don't want big hunks of onion or rosemary. Thin slices or a fine chop is the way to go.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we have, and look forward to hearing more about what other flavors people try.