Sous-vide brisket for 48 hours
November 10, 2010 
8 Comments
When cooking sous vide, it’s easy to get enchanted by improbably long cooking times, despite the energy expense. Tough cuts of meat cooked for 48, or even up to 72, hours at moderate temperatures have all the textural benefits of a traditional braise, but are supposed to be moist enough to serve as steaks.
For this dish, I stuck close to the Keller approach to beef brisket: seared first, then chilled, bagged, and cooked at 147°F for 48 hours. To finish, Keller calls for it to be sliced into thick steaks, floured and browned, then sauced with a reduction of the juices from the bag. I just made the sauce, then sliced the brisket thinly and served it with squash puree and broccoli.
In the process, one thing I learned is that it’s important to check your water bath daily for evaporation; after two days, my water level nearly fell below the minimum fill line, even though it was covered. I was also pretty amazed by the amount of liquid the brisket gave off over the long cooking time. There was plenty of sauce to go around, and it was really tasty, with all the flavour benefits of the Maillard reactions from searing the meat before bagging it. A combined before-and-after sear is the way to go, I think. The only real drawback was that the meat still felt a little less juicy than I wanted, so future experiments might be done at even lower temperatures, with the time adjusted accordingly. Though it can be awfully hard to plan dinner three days in advance…
Matthew, I did a seared, salted and peppered brisket at 55º C (131º F) for the same time you did. The brisket shed very little fluid and it was extremely tender. This was from the Douglas Baldwin book. This does take fore thought which I don’t always have. I’m much more of a what-would-I like-to-have-tonight kind of guy.
As I understand the energy thing with sous vide, if you’re using a vessel that holds heat pretty well, the expense is closer to running a couple of 100 W light bulbs for the 72 hours. For really long cooking dishes like this, I put foil over the whole area above the water and around the circulator which cuts down on temperature drops and water evaporation.
See, that sounds like a better temperature, and if it comes out tender at the same time, then so much the better! When doing this 48-hour brisket, I covered the top with foil, but the pot I’m using is a thin stainless steel stock pot, so I’m not sure that it’s holding the heat that well. An insulated vessel of some sort would probably be better, though I’ve kind of got my eye on the custom-cut cambro from Testek.
Sorry, Matthew, I cooked for 72 hours, not 48.
Ah, OK. That sounds about right. My understanding is that 72 hours is about the upper limit for cooking times. I haven’t tried anything that long yet, so I’ll add brisket to the list!
What is the advantage of a circulator?
I don’t have one yet, and I have a number of ways to achieve a moderate water temperature in a vessel. Does the circulator eliminate hot spots? Water is fairly stable, though not a good conductor.
James, there are two big benefits to having a circulator. First, the heating element is driven by logic that maintains exceptional stability at a high level of granularity, minimizing temperature swings and overshoot. Second, the circulating pump ensures that the temperature is consistent throughout the bath, not just in the immediate vicinity of the probe.
There are certainly a lot of homemade solutions that achieve comparable results, and other options such as the SousVide Supreme. I went with the Polyscience unit because I’m not sufficiently mechanically inclined to hack together my own unit, and because I like the compact, professional look of it.