Slow Cooker Sous Vide NY Strip

As you may remember from my Ribs post, I have been experimenting with using my slow cooker as a high-maintenance sous vide device.  My previous experiments have focused on long cooks that take advantage of the probe feature on my Hamilton Beach model (it will switch from low or high to warm when the probe hits a temp you enter between 140 and 190F) and the fact that when switched to "warm" with the lid on, the cooker maintains a temp right around 170F.

This time I tried to cook a strip steak to exactly medium rare (130F to 135F) over a period of just an hour, and without using the probe (since it doesn't kick in until 140).  It worked very well, and here are the steps to try at home:

1. I pre-seared the refrigerator cold steaks in a tiny bit of butter for ~30sec a side.  This gives them the malliard-reaction flavor, and On Food and Cooking suggests it can help with killing bacteria, since most bacteria are on meat's surface
1. This is a good point to mention that a lot of people worry about low-temp cooking and bacterial growth.  130F is enough to kill bacteria, but the time required is debatable.  I ignored this issue because my theory was that a medium rare steak cooked on high heat is at 130F in the middle for something like 1minute, but this may not be correct.\
2. Put the steaks in a quart zip lock bag and got out most but not all of the air (because I am not very good at that part)
3. Then I filled my slow cooker 1/2 way with tepid water and put it on "high", with a thermometer in the water, before slowly pouring in boiling water.  Basically I mixed boiling and tepid water until i got a temperature of ~120F
4. At this point I added the bagged steaks to the bath, put on the lid, and set my thermometer to alarm at 133F.
5. When the alarm went off (which took ~20min) I switched the slow cooker to warm, removed the lid, and set a timer for 30min.
6. Checking in 5 minutes, I saw the temp had fallen to 128F, so I put it on high and replaced the lid.
7. In 2 more minutes it was at 131 and climbing, so I just took the lid off, but left it on high.
8. This seemed to stabilize, though I continued to check.
9. After the 30min was up, I took out the bad and let it rest 10min before slicing

The steak was a perfect medium rare (author's note:  After re-reading OF&C, I believe my steak only reached rare, as the red juices had been expelled from the meat, but it was still somewhat translucent.) across the entire width and very juicy.  I liked this, but to my husband it tasted "raw" (most trad. cooked steaks have a gradient of doneness that effects texture)

This procedure was much more time consuming than the ribs which had a wide temperature window, but if you're in the kitchen prepping other food anyway, it isn't too bad.  I would certainly recommend it as a way to taste a sous vide steak without shelling out a lot of money.  For fun, you can also do a version where you hold it at 130-135F for 2+ hours, which dries it out more but breaks down the muscle fibers.  This is I think the more classic method (maybe someone can comment on this) but I find it a bit textureless and dry.

Sadly, I do not have a good photo, but I will update the post with one next time I do this.  :-(

Ribs

Today I used my slow cooker as a water bath to cook ribs.  As previously mentioned, it will stay at exactly 160F when on "warm".  This is near the temperature at which collagen melts, which made me think that it would work well for "sous vide"ing certain types of meats.

The recipe was simple, a rack of pork ribs were left unwrapped in the fridge with a dry rub of mustard, brown sugar, various peppers, and salt for 48 hours; placed in a ziploc bag with all the air removed and 1/2 tsp of liquid smoke added; then cooked in the slow cooker for ~6 hours.  During that time they gave off 30% of their weight in water and rendered fat.

To give some malliardy char I seared them in a hot pan right before serving.  They were great!  Not at all fatty, but very moist with a soft but not mushy texture, and way less work than any oven or bbq ribs I have made.  This is definitely a nice weekday meal in terms of 15min total effort and it can cook while I am at work.  I also believe the same principle would work for pulled pork or any meat with lots of fat and connective tissue.

I tried reducing the liquid from the bags to make a bbq sauce with some molasses and cider vinegar, but this did not work well AT ALL.  I think because of the high fat content.  Luckily I love Trader Joe's bbq sauce and can use that in the future.

Misc.

It turns out my Hamilton Beach slow cooker will maintain a  temperature of 160F exactly with the ld on and the house temp at 60F.  I used this fact to fake sous-vide a brisket in a ziploc of BBQ sauce and it was surprisingly good.

Also, two nights ago I made potatoes lyonnaise / home fries/ potatoes fried in a skillet, and for the first time ever they did not break apart while frying.  I credit On Food and Cooking, which suggested that placing vegetables in 130F-150F water for 20-30min will cause their cells walls to harden due to the activation of an enzyme which is denatured at 160F.  I brought the slow cooker to 150F, and then turned it off with the potato slices floating in a bag, and it fell to 135F after 30min.  They were noticeably firmer and fried up beautifully.