My focus changed to seeing what could be done with the cheapest of meats using the sous vide method. The hamburger patties pictured to the left cost $2.68. But since they were almost out of date the price was 50% off, or about $0.46 per 1/3rd pound patty. This hamburger was 80% lean and 20% fat, a ratio I prefer to use when cooking the traditional method since it doesn't dry out like lower fat meat does. To prep the burgers, I first seasoned both sides with pepper and granulated garlic. No salt at this time. I had searched for pages on cooking hamburgers using the sous vide method, freezing the patties prior to vacuum sealing was recommended for several reasons. First, frozen patties don't lose their shape when being sealed in the vacuum bags. Trying to do this with unfrozen burgers results in the edges getting squashed. Second, several posts indicated that starting from a frozen state resulted in firmer texture in the finished product. Burgers cook from an unfrozen state tended to fall apart on the grill/griddle and stick.
The patties were allowed to freeze for a couple of hours, then I salted both sides (the salt had to be pressed in to keep it from falling off), the patties were sealed in vacuum bags and placed back in the freezer until the water bath was ready. I filled up my 48 quart cooler with cold tap water, moved it to the floor of the living room and mounted the immersion circulator. I set the temperature for 56 degrees celcius (132.8 farenheit) and waited for the bath to warm to temp. The large cooler is great for doing big things, but I really need to find a smaller one for these experiments. It takes a long time to heat up that much water! Anyway, once the water was at the set temperature, I took the vacuum packed frozen patty out of the freezer and put it directly in the bath. Cooking time was about an hour, then the hamburger was removed and allowed to cool for a few minutes before being depouched. Not real attractive, huh? Paper towels were used to pat off the accumulated juices while the griddle was heated up as hot as I could get it. A little butter was put on the griddle and used to toast a bun, then the hamburger was put on the griddle to sear on both sides. It had been about 15 minutes since removal from the water bath, so the patty had a chance to cool down a bit. At the same time I griddled a slice of vidalia onion. After a minute on the first side, the burger was flipped and I put on a slice of medium cheddar cheese to melt. Another minute and it was time to assemble the burger.
The final burger consisted of a nicely toasted bun, two slices of medium cheddar cheese, a slice of nice, ripe tomato, the griddled vidalia onion, leaf lettuce, mayo and dijon mustard.
The burger itself was perfectly rare/medium-rare throughout, juicy and flavorful. Probably one of the best burgers I've had in a long time, all for a total ingredient cost of $1.35 per burger (and everything besides the beef was good quality!). Since the patties were preformed there wasn't actually much prep work either and cooking from frozen means I can have a supply of burgers frozen and ready to go at a moments notice. This experiment in sous vide is a resounding success! I'm anxious to see if it can produce similarly excellent results with low-fat hamburger!
Wow that's a horrible idea!
ReplyDeleteCheap meat that has been sealed at big time markets may not have been handled with the same care a professional butcher would use, which means an increased chance for bacteria to be introduced into the meat.
Then, you chose meat which was almost expired, which increases the chances that a few small colonies of bacteria grew larger.
That is the worst kind of meat to sous vide, because the lower temperatures often are below what it takes to kill bacteria (and in fact those temperatures can promote bacterial growth).
I have heard wonderful things about sous vide burgers, but every article about it from a knowledgeable chef strongly urges people to grind their own meat! At the very least, they say, get it from a nice market like Whole Foods etc that grinds meat in smaller batches more often (so it is fresher). Buying old burgers from a big market is the worst way to get meat for sous vide burgers!
Let's look at your comment logically, Taylor. If these same patties were fried on a 500 degree cast iron pan on both sides for a period of time which left the center medium rare to rare, the same result would occur if the patty had been loaded with bacteria, since the center would never have gotten hot enough to kill them. As to grinding your own beef, if the beef you buy is loaded on the outside with bacteria, unless you wash it in bleach water, you'll simply grind it into the meat. Bottom line: stop worrying so much and just use some common sense. How many millions of burgers were cooked rare for decades and decades and consumed by people like me (who have manged to live to 65 so far) and how many stories of food poisoning deaths did you read about. Answer: close to zero. The food poisoning deaths one occasionally read about were usually due to botulism from canned foods. Stop worrying so much and enjoy life more!
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