Text 32905, 123 rader
Skriven 2009-12-30 19:59:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av GLEN JAMIESON
Ärende: Scientific cooking 1
============================
-=> Quoting Glen Jamieson to Jim Weller <=-

 JW> We were in the mood for white and I had noticed in previous years a
 JW> lot of our guests barely partook of the wine offered. A fruity white
 JW> is more approachable than a full on red for a wine novice.

 GJ> But what about a bottle of red for the Master of the house?

I enjoyed the whites as a change of pace from my usual. And the
spicy, floral gewurtz held up against all the garlic and spice rather
well. "Gewurtz is white wine for red wine drinkers".

Being the logical engineering sort you will appreciate the next
three posts:

MMMMM-----Meal-Master - formatted by MMCONV  2.10

     Title: Perfect Prime Rib Method Pt 1
Categories: Beef, Info
  Servings: 4

      1    standing rib roast (prime
           rib), 3-12 pounds 
           Kosher salt
           Freshly ground black pepper

Intro: This recipe works for prime rib roasts any size from 2 ribs
to 6 ribs. Plan on 1 pound of bone-in roast per guest (each rib adds
1.5 to 2 pounds to the roast). For best results, use a dry-aged,
prime grade or grass-fed roast.

To further improve the crust, allow it to air-dry, uncovered in the
refrigerator on a rack overnight before roasting. Seasoning with
salt up to a day in advance will help the seasoning penetrate the
meat more deeply. If timing goes off and your roast is ready long
before your guests are, the roast can be re-heated by placing in a
200 F oven for 45 minutes before continuing with step 2.

Background:

From the Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

So what exactly is a Perfect Prime Rib anyway? Whether you buy prime
or select, fresh or dry-aged, corn-stuffed or grass-fed, if you
don't cook it right, it ain't going to be good. Here is my
definition or perfection, in three commandments:

Commandment I: The Perfect Prime Rib must have a deep brown, crisp,
crackly, salty crust on its exterior.

Commandment II: In the Perfect Prime Rib, the gradient at the
interface between the brown crust and the perfectly medium-rare
interior must be absolutely minimized (as in, I don't want a layer
of overcooked meat around the edges).

Commandment III: The Perfect Prime Rib must retain as many juices as
possible.

Sub-Commandment i: The Perfect Prime Rib must be cookable without
the use of heavy or specialized equipment, including propane or
oxy-acetylene torches, sous-vide machines, or C-vap ovens.

Highs and Lows

Before I tried to start figuring out how to achieve all these goals
simultaneously it was helpful to note that when cooking beef to
medium-rare, there are really only two temperatures that matter.

125 F (or 51.7 C) is the temperature at which beef is medium
rare—that is, hot but still pink, cooked but still moist and able to
retain its juices. Any higher than that, and muscle fibers start to
rapidly shrink, forcing flavorful juices out of the meat, and into
the bottom of the roasting pan.

310 F (or 154.4 C) is the temperature at which the Maillard
reaction—that wonderfully complicated process by which amino acids
and reducing sugars recombine to form enticing roasty aromas—really
begins to take off. At this range, meat qill quickly brown and
crisp. Ah—a dilemma revealed itself: In order to maximize browning I
had to cook the meat in a sufficiently hot oven—I tried 400 F. At
the same time, I didn't want the interior to come up above 125F. 

Since a big beef roast cooks from the outside in, by the time the
center had reached 125F (that is, 120F in the oven, followed by a 5F
rise in temperature after resting), sure there was a perfectly
browned exterior, but the outermost layers had risen closer to
around 165F or 180F, rendering them overcooked, gray, and dry, their
juices having been squeezed out.

I was left with something not pretty. Perfect Crust? Check. No Gray
Zone? Negative. Full-on Juiciness? Negative.

OK, so what if I went to the opposite extreme, cooking the steak at
a much lower temperature?

I cooked another roast in a 200F oven until the center reached 125F.
Well, just like with boiled eggs, the temperature at which you cook
is directly related to the difference in temperatures between the
center, and the exterior layers. In other words, by cooking it at a
lower temperature, you make sure to minimize the volume of beef that
comes above the ideal final temperature. I was able to almost
completely eliminate the gray band of overcooked meat. Of course,
any browning that I was getting was also right out the window,
leaving me with a roast with pale, flaccid exterior that looked
again, not very pretty. Perfect Crust? Negative Commandment II: No
Gray Zone? Check. Commandment III: Full-on Juiciness? Unknown.


  From: Serious Eats                    
 
MMMMM-------------------------------------------------


Cheers

YK Jim


... Scientifically designed to please your brain's pleasure centers.

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