Last night I shared a wonderful dinner with my Friends, over dinner one of the conversation topics was about my Blog.

“When are we gonna see more blogs on food” asked Gaston “I don’t want to see a fecking blog about your new shoes” 

Now as enamoured as I am about my new shoes I took away two important points from our dinner party. 

One was about a fascinating movement In the fitness world that involves Ido Portal and his functional movement philosophy (been watching videos the whole morning and braved one of his workouts at gym today) the second was I need to blog more often about the foods I love and prepare. 

I had long read about Rou Jia mo , a braised pork dish that translates as meat sandwich. A delicious , highly seasoned street food delicacy from Shaanxi province. I though i would try my hand at this marvelous dish but with a twist, I would use beef brisket and braise it for 72 hours with the help from my Sansaire Sous Vide. 

For those of you who like to jump straight in , the recipe follows below 

1. Beef brisket (trimmed ) 1kg 
2. Root ginger 20gm
3. Cassia root 3pc
4. Fennel seeds 2 Tsp
5. Anise 2 PC
6. Cardamom 2pc
7. Cumin seeds 2 tsp
8. Sechuan peppercorn 2tsp
9. Dried chilli 3 PC
10. Rock sugar 160gm
11. Clove 6no
12. Dark soya sauce 80ml
13. Light soya sauce 80ml 
14. Water 100ml 

 
the technique is pretty straight forward, crush the rock sugar and dissolve it with the remainder of the ingredients. Throw it all in a vacuum bag with the beef. Vacuum seal it and place in the water bath at 63c for 72 hours 

 

3 days later I was greeted with a moist, delicious , highly seasoned , mouth watering delicacy . So tender that it broke apart with a gentle pull. The sous vide had worked its magic , the low temperature had prevented the collagen fibers in the beef from contracting (which will cause the meat to be tough and chewy) and what was left was a mouth watering highly flavored slice of Nirvana 

  

I served it on hamburger buns lathered with a miso mayonnaise , sliced jalapeño ,fresh corriander sprigs and rice vinegar pickled cucumber  

my apologies but it was so yummy it was scoffed up in record time before I even though to snap a pic for the blog.

If you don’t have a sous vide machine at home what are you waiting for , a whole new culinary adventure awaits you for as little as $200 (yes they really are that affordable nowadays)

My personal favorite is Sansaire but there are other Immersion circulators  from companies like Anova and Nomiku that are highly affordable and geared towards the home cook. 

Stay tuned for more culinary posts and adventures into the world of sous vide.