https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-short-ribs-your-wayBeef Short Ribs Your Way
One of the things we love about sous vide is the wealth of creative possibilities it offers. The ability to cook ingredients for prolonged periods of time at carefully controlled temperatures can yield appealing textures that are impractical, or even impossible, to achieve using conventional cooking techniques. Throughout this course, we’ll explore these possibilities; below is a showcase of just a few of the many textures you can achieve with a tough but flavorful cut of meat like beef short ribs.
Short Rib • 185 °F / 85 °C, 12 hours
This is a sous vide version of the conventional slow braise. The meat peels cleanly away from the rib bones, and the texture is tender and flaky. You can see that ample gelatin—unwound from the tough collagen during the prolonged cooking—and oil rendered from the marbling coat the meat to give it succulence and rich flavor.
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Short Rib • 185 °F / 85 °C, 24 hours
After another 12 hours of cooking, the texture has become very tender and flaky. The individual bundles of muscle fibers—the technical term is fascicles—practically fall apart with even a slight nudge.
3
Short Rib • 158 °F / 70 °C, 16 hours
By reducing our cooking temperature by 27 °F / 15 °C, we get a very different result from the same cut. The meat still comes away cleanly from the rib bones, and it is still visibly soft and tender, but it does not have the traditional flaking texture of braised meat. This preparation requires a knife to slice into it. How it eats is best described as somewhere between steaklike and braiselike.
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Short Rib • 158 °F / 70 °C, 24 hours
After another eight hours of cooking, the texture has started to become flaky. This is because the tough collagen that bundles muscle fibers together has not contracted as much as it does at higher cooking temperatures. The result: less juice has been squeezed from the meat, and the resulting preparation is similar to—but juicier than—a conventional braised cut of beef.
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Short Rib • 144 °F / 62 °C, 24 hours
The texture of this version of beef short ribs is visibly different from that of a braise. It looks and eats quite a bit like a tender beef strip loin steak. It has a slight chewiness, but it’s very juicy and has a very meaty flavor compared to conventional tender cuts of beef.
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Short Rib • 144 °F / 62 °C, 48 hours
When we double the cooking time from one to two days, the texture of our short ribs becomes something truly unique and both difficult and impractical to achieve with conventional cooking techniques: somewhere between the tenderness of a good steak and the succulence of a conventional braise.
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Short Rib • 129 °F / 54 ˚C, 48 hours
If you’re patient, cooking tough cuts of meat like a beef short ribs for a day or two can yield some remarkable results. These short ribs are firmly in knife-and-fork territory. The cooked meat definitely has some chew to it, not unlike a rare sirloin, but with a more intense flavor.
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Short Rib • 129 °F / 54 ˚C, 72 hours
With another day of sous vide cooking at this low temperature, our short ribs have been transformed. This is really the culinary equivalent of turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse. It’s delicious.
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