Sous-vide Pork Belly "Char Siu" Recipe.

[Saviolo]

We recently got a new toy! We picked up an immersion circulator so we could play around with some sous-vide cooking, and we've found a few things that work extremely well with it! This is one of our first experiments with the thing, and we took some lovely pork belly and gave it a Chinese char siu BBQ flavour profile. We cooked it at 135F for 48 hours, and the result was amazing. Also, we used a cooler for our sous vide vessel, because it's more efficient. It holds the temperature much more consistently if it's in a well insulated container. The "lid" was just a piece of styrofoam from something we had shipped at some point.

We learned a couple of very interesting things doing this recipe. When the pork came out of the sous vide bath, it was cooked all the way through, and it was edible right away. It was tasty, but it didn't taste quite right until we got a little bit of sear on it in the pan. Of course with such a low temperature cook and such an indirect method of heat, you're not going to get any browning or anything, so that last sear in the pan is really important. The flavour penetration was excellent, and the pork that came out was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

[packman]

1. Great cooking days ahead with the Vide

Steaks to perfection, pork chops moist and tasty, veggies done to just this side of crispy, duck - unbelievable. Haven't had a meal yet from my Vide that disappointed. Did a turkey breast the other day and will never bake another- juicy and tender, not dried out and stringy.

Yes, the crispy thing can be an issue. However, it's a learning curve. Some items should be pre-crisped before the water bath, but things like steaks and chops can be done afterwards.

[Saviolo]

2. We definitely have a few things we're excited to try.

Steak is on the list for sure (beef is so expensive, though). And we are anxious to do the sous vide fried chicken method too. We'll probably do a video on that one sometime soon. Cook the chicken in the sous video until it's just about the right temperature, then bread and deep fry very briefly at a very high temperature until crispy.

So far having really good luck with making tougher cuts (like rib finger meat) very tender. We've got some pork shoulder in there right now, and we've got a bunch of stuff on the docket.

[Phentex]

3. looks so good!

not eating much meat these days but I could lick the screen watching this video. Mmmmmmmm....

[Saviolo]

4. Thanks so much!

Yeah, this was definitely a delicious experiment. After searing in a pan, the pork was so good.

[Major Nikon]

5. One trick I learned is to sear the meat before you sous vide

This allows for the flavors developed by the maillard reaction to penetrate throughout. I’m not sure if it would work as well with this, but works great with thicker cuts.

[Saviolo]

6. Interesting!

Something we will have to experiment with.