Make These Ribs Sous Vide No Grill and No Smoker
As someone living in a tiny studio apartment, I don’t have to grill, smoke, or cook outdoors a lot. This makes me very sad because I really love smoked meat and grilled meat. (Grilled vegetables are great too, but we’re not talking about them right now.) Fortunately, the sous vide setup – which I have! – can help you get closer to the texture and flavor you get from slow and low smoking. …
Maybe it’s because Memorial Day is approaching, or maybe it’s because I’ve watched this haunting video too many times, but recently I found myself really hungry for ribs. (Just kidding, I’m always in the mood for ribs.) Of course, I’m not the first to make sous vide ribs, and I never claim to do so because I’m not a liar. There are a lot of recipes, and they are all a little different. However, many of them recommend using liquid smoke. Food Lab adds them in small drops directly to the bag, and ChefSteps mixes them with molasses before coloring them like a frosting. Both options seemed quite viable, so I wanted to taste them. Another thing I wanted to try was the addition of Prague powder or “pink salt”. The healing salt should help reproduce that “ring of smoke” you get from a smoker’s watch, but I also suspected it would add a hardened scent. (Nothing passes me by!) Then there was the question of when to apply the rub. Before watching a video? After? Somewhere in the middle? And of course I wanted to check at least two temperatures.
There were a lot of variables in the game, so I needed a lot of ribs – four stances to be exact. I divided them into four parts and – after removing the paper membrane, pulling it off with a paper towel – I treated them with various salts, glaze and rubbing. I used a product I bought from a store, but there are many things you can do yourself. You probably already have a favorite, so just use what you like.
- Batch 1: These ribs were lightly coated with a mixture of one gram of hardening salt with 10 grams of table salt . They were then left to stand for ten minutes and smeared with ChefSteps Smoky Glaze, which is made by mixing 25 grams of liquid smoke with 50 grams of molasses . Then they were sealed in a vacuum bag and boiled in a water bath at 150 degrees for 24 hours.
- Batch 2: These ribs were lightly coated with a mixture of one gram of hardening salt and 10 grams of dry rub . Then they were left for ten minutes, and then sealed in a vacuum bag with five drops of liquid smoke and cooked in a water bath at 150 degrees for 24 hours.
- Batch 3 : There is no medicinal salt here. The ribs were simply smeared with ChefSteps molasses, glazed and cooked in a water bath at 150 degrees for 24 hours.
- Batch 4: Again, no medicated salt. Simply sprinkle well with dry rubbing, add five drops of liquid smoke to the bag and cook for 24 hours in a 150-degree water bath.
- Games 5-8: These games were an exact repetition of 1-4, only these guys cooked for 12 hours in a 170-degree bain-marie, or at least it should have been.
In what scientists call “rabies, but quite typical,” I set the temperature of the second bath to 150 ℉ as well , and didn’t realize it until eight damn hours of cooking time had passed. I was so smug about how organized I was in this particular experiment. I made a table . I bought a new bucket for the sous vide (a four dollar bucket of paint from OSH, but still). I wasdisappointed with Kevin Sorbo and my poor friend Ryan witnessed a full blown hysteria, but don’t worry; in the end everything turned out delicious.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about Parts 1-4. They were all perfectly good, with a pleasant delicate yet meaty texture and a tangible, but not overbearing, smoky aroma. However, there was a huge difference between ribs that were made from medicated salt and ribs that were not used, and I’m sure you can guess what those differences are, because you are very smart.
As you can see in the slideshow above, the hardened ribs are visibly pinkish, which makes sense since they’ve been effectively healed. Before I could taste them, however, they needed some work, so I greased them with a little barbecue sauce – again, pick your favorite – sprinkled them with another layer of grind and tucked them under the brazier to get that crust.
Then it’s time to give it a try. As I suspected, batches made with medicated salt had a slightly salty ham flavor, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I also found that the ribs that were placed in a bag of rubbed and a few drops of liquid smoke – batches 2 and 4 – were slightly more flavorful than their glazed counterparts. If I had to pick a favorite I would pick the fourth one, but I also liked the quality of the 2 ham, especially when combined with a sweet sauce.
Now for batches 5-8: as soon as I recovered from the knowledge that they were cooking at the wrong temperature for eight hours, I turned the temperature up to 170 ℉ and let these babies lie in the hot tub overnight for another 12 hours while I slept the residual self-loathing.
They. We. Great. After finishing them in the same way as I finished the first four, I pulled one rib out of game 5. The bone came off so cleanly and with such little effort on my part that it was frankly amazing. The meat had a more traditional texture that could be chopped and was tender and juicy, but not mushy.
But while the texture of the higher temperature batches was different from the 150 degree batch, the tastes were much the same. Those cooked with salting salt were of the quality of a ham, those cooked with chafing were more flavorful than those cooked with a molasses smoke frosting, and they all had a hint of the smoky aroma that you get from the smoker’s spell. My personal favorite was batch 8 (rub, Five drops of smoke in a bag, 170 ℉ for 12 hours minimum), but they were all good, especially considering that they were (very easily) made in a tiny apartment with one immersion thermostat and tiny weird European oven.