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posted by mrpg on Sunday September 09 2018, @05:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-god-isn't-real-how-come-meat-can-be-cooked? dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

[...] You've just encountered the bane of aspiring pit masters everywhere: the Stall (also known as the Zone or the Plateau), a common phenomenon in low-temperature cooking. What, precisely, causes the stall is a perennial topic of debate among BBQ enthusiasts. Is it a protein called collagen in the meat, which combines with water to convert to gelatin at the 160°F point? Or is it due to the fat rendering, turning lipids to liquid?

Several years ago, Greg Blonder, a Boston College professor, did the experiments and came up with a definitive answer: evaporative cooling. The meat sweats as it cooks, releasing the moisture within, and that moisture evaporates and cools the meat, effectively canceling out the heat from the BBQ. These days, Blonder is the resident science advisor and myth buster at the popular BBQ and grilling site called Amazing Ribs. "I spend a lot of my time settling bar fights, basically," he joked.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/let-science-be-your-guide-for-the-perfect-labor-day-bbq/


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  • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:26AM (11 children)

    by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:26AM (#732408)

    Best pulled pork in the world:

    Coat with rub of choice. Pressure cook for 70 minutes
    Shred, stir in bbq sauce if desired

    Seriously, about 3 minutes of prep time.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:35AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:35AM (#732409) Journal

    Yep, pressure cookers are awesome. No evaporation at all! :^)

    • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:46AM (2 children)

      by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:46AM (#732412)

      I've been using them all my life...one of my earliest memories is driving 2 hours to a Sears parts warehouse with my grandmother to buy a new seal replacement on a probably 1940's model.

      It's nice to see they are catching on again. I still have the big stove top cooker, but have been using a programmable electric version for about 15 years. No worries about watching it and cleanup is under a minute. Best tasting food, low energy use, fast. What's not to love?

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:18PM (1 child)

        by Rich (945) on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:18PM (#732463) Journal

        THE pressure cooker for any self respecting space nerd of course is:

        https://www.energia.ru/eng/conversion/tnp/catalog/skorovarka_minutka.html [energia.ru]

        Honest-to-god advertisement: "Pressure cooker design ensures its long-term safe operation, provided that its Operation Manual requirements are met.". But if any company in the world knows about pressure vessels, it's them. :)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:36PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:36PM (#732536)

          Nice. Where can I get one?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:23AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:23AM (#732438) Journal

    I made it a few days ago. 90 minutes of pressure cook instead of 70. Which is still far under the 3-4 hours it would take normally.

    The only thing is that you don't get the nice browning action you get with a dutch oven. I guess you could start in pressure cooker, then do 30-60 minutes with lid off in the oven.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @11:09AM (#732450)

      *90 minutes is with the Instant Pot booklet recipe, which is at a somewhat lower pressure/temperature than 15 PSI/250 degrees F, so it would take longer than a normal stovetop PC.

      - t

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:28AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:28AM (#732439) Journal

    Also, I never have a prep time of 3 minutes, because I am usually using a large pork shoulder that I have separated into 2 halves, with each cut into small strips, and then frozen. So need to thaw and shave all of it back off if I forgot to let it thaw completely. Then it needs to be browned for a few minutes. I like having the extra surface area and being able to stir the pieces easily.

    I guess if I planned it a bit better, didn't freeze, and didn't cut it up into smaller bits, I could get a prep time closer to 3 minutes.

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    • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:36AM

      by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Sunday September 09 2018, @10:36AM (#732443)

      And practice. I'm very lazy. Most of my meals are around 3 minutes prep time.

      And I have hungry dogs (redundant) so my cleanup time is about the same :)

  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:27PM (2 children)

    by richtopia (3160) on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:27PM (#732495) Homepage Journal

    I'm currently experimenting with reversing course from my beloved pressure cooker and using Souis-vide [wikipedia.org]. I made fall apart Hawaiian style short ribs that were better than anything I've made traditionally before. They did take 72 hours for cooking, and while sous-vide takes much longer for all dishes than traditional methods I appreciate the very loose targets (eg. 8-12 hours of cooking gives you a four hour window to finish according to your schedule).

    Reading the article it discusses people adding liquids back to the pork mid-way. With sous-vide sealing the meat in a plastic bag that would not be an issue. However, if the goal is to remove some of the water during the cooking process then sous-vide may come up short.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:41PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:41PM (#732543)

      I've tried souis-vide with my own arduino controlled hotplate. Maybe I'll try it more in the future, but didn't notice anything earth shattering for the much larger time investment.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @04:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @04:13AM (#732656)

        The benefits are mainly:

        • low-temperature pasteurization allows combinations of gentle cooking and food safety that are otherwise not available, e.g. rare blade-tenderized steaks (or hamburger, if that's your thing) and pink pork
        • insensitivity to cooking time allows flexibility in meal times without over- or under-cooked food
        • uniform cooking throughout thick and/or varying cross-sections -- a steak sous-vided to medium, then seared in a skillet, is a juicy pink medium clear through (save only a thin crust), whereas other methods leave a gradient from well-done at the edges to medium in the center, with as little as half the volume actually cooked to the desired state.
        • temperature precision allows fine control of which proteins are denatured -- you can do weird things with eggs by tweaking the temperature a couple degrees

        Some of these benefits are more or less shared by other slow and/or low-temperature cooking methods, and they each apply in varying degree (or not at all) to various dishes.
        It's just another tool, not magic -- it can be used to good effect for many tasks, but "earth shattering" is unlikely, with the possible exception of a handful of dishes that specifically showcase sous-vide in one way or another.