The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 773

sous-vide or sear them with various pieces of industrial machinery? Leave the fancy-pants methods to the fancy-pants In my experience, cooking large roasts—whether prime rib or turkey—in a sous-vide water bath certainly guarantees perfectly, evenly cooked results, but the deep roasted flavor notes you get from meat roasted in the open air are completely absent It’s also a pain in the butt to vacuum-seal an entire prime rib I much prefer mine done in a lowtemperature oven As for torching, it looks really cool, but the results are not worth the trouble Torching before roasting gives you a surface that’s nearly burnt in spots and barely browned in others, while torching after roasting doesn’t nearly as good a job as a hot oven or roasting pan set over a couple burners HOW TO ROAST BEEF (AKA PERFECT PRIME RIB) A four-pound roast of well-marbled prime beef rib is not cheap And while my friends provide me with as many mental and philosophical riches as a man could ask for, and my wife supplies an adequate amount of emotional wealth, dollars and cents are not something I, being a humble food writer, part with lightly As such, when I buy a good quality piece of beef—and honestly, does beef get any better than prime rib?—I have a strong impetus not to mess it up, as do, I imagine, most of you In writing this section, I decided to get through a lifetime’s worth of messings-up so that I (and, I hope, you too!) will never again serve anything but a perfectly cooked roast First, a definition of perfection: • Commandment I: The Perfect Prime Rib must have a deep brown, crisp, crackly, salty exterior crust • Commandment II: The gradient at the interface between the brown crust and the perfectly medium-rare interior of the Perfect Prime Rib must be absolutely minimized (as in, I don’t want a layer of overcooked meat around the edges) • Commandment III: The Perfect Prime Rib must retain as many juices as possible • Sub-Commandment i: The Perfect Prime Rib must be cooked without the use of heavy or specialized equipment, including propane or oxyacetylene torches, sous-vide machines, and C-vap ovens Highs and Lows Before I tried to start figuring out how to achieve all these goals simultaneously, it was helpful to note that when cooking beef to medium-rare, there are really only two temperatures that matter: • 125°F is the temperature at which beef is medium-rare— that is, hot but still pink, cooked but still moist, and able to retain its juices Any higher than that, and the muscle fibers start to rapidly shrink, forcing flavorful juices out of the meat and into the bottom of the roasting pan • 310°F is the temperature at which the Maillard reaction— ... than that, and the muscle fibers start to rapidly shrink, forcing flavorful juices out of the meat and into the bottom of the roasting pan • 310°F is the temperature at which the Maillard reaction—... • Commandment I: The Perfect Prime Rib must have a deep brown, crisp, crackly, salty exterior crust • Commandment II: The gradient at the interface between the brown crust and the perfectly medium-rare... how to achieve all these goals simultaneously, it was helpful to note that when cooking beef to medium-rare, there are really only two temperatures that matter: • 125°F is the temperature at which beef is medium-rare—