72 Hour Short Ribs

Short ribs are one of the most transformative dishes you can make using low temperature cooking.  The technique allows you to transform the meat inn to something with the tenderness of tenderloin, but with the full beefy flavor of a tough cut of meat.  The results can vary depending on the time and temperature used, in the past I've gone for 72 hours at 55°C which resulted in pink, medium rare meat which still held its shape when cut.  This time I decided to go with the recipe found in Nomiku's Tender app, which used a slightly higher temperature (60°C) for the same amount of time.



The recipe calls for red wine to be bagged with the ribs, since I use a Food Saver I find the best way to do this is to freeze the wine first so it doesn't get sucked out of the bag while the vacuum is being pulled.  I added a little Worcestershire sauce to the wine and let it sit in the freezer for a few hours until solid.  The ribs were liberally seasoned with salt and pepper, I like the flavor a pre-sear brings to the game so I heated up a skillet with some beef tallow and browned one side of each shot rib.  Once they had cooled a bit I bagged the ribs with the wine cube, a roughly chopped stalk of celery, some carrot, a quartered small onion, two cloves of garlic and some fresh herbs.  The bag was vacuum sealed and placed in a bath with the Nomiku set to 60°C.  I had never used the timer function before so I set it for 72 hours, adjusted the water level and put the lid on the Cambro.  After 72 hours I kind of expected the Nomiku to reduce the bath temperature to 50°C for holding, but instead it just stayed at the 60°C and started counting up.  I set the timer manually, I believe it's possible to have the circulator lower to a holding temperature once the timer counts down to zero but you may have to set it using the Tender app for that functionality.  For a sauce I quartered some crimini mushrooms and browned them along with some onions.  I removed the ribs from the bag, poured the purge through a fine mesh strainer and poured it in to the mushrooms to deglaze the pan.  A sprig of rosemary was added along with a clove of garlic and the liquid was reduced until it became syrupy.  For sides I boiled some new potatoes and steamed some asparagus over them while they were cooking.

The ribs ended up with a consistency like they had been braised, but still nice and pink.  The fat was quite soft and melted away when bitten in to.  I would probably not use the same wine next time, we don;t drink a lot of wine so I used a bit of Merlot from a small single serve bottle I found in the cupboard.  It resulted in an off odor when the bag was opened, next time I'll probably omit the wine and just use some beef stock instead.  Reducing the purge with the mushrooms resulted in a really nice sauce so if I want some wine flavor I'll probably just add it there next time.  With those few tweaks I think this will be a go-to dish.