sous vide lamb

we elevated the cooking technique in the workshop this week with sous vide rack of lamb, originally the domain of high end restaurants, sous vide cooking is now affordable and easy. there is a little trial and error involved in cooking times and temps, but thankfully there’s a ton of information online to get you pointed in the right direction.

with this rack of lamb we were aiming for medium rare so decided on 58 degrees celsius for 3 hours of cook time.

we’re on a bit of a health kick at the moment so i trimmed a lot of the fat off the lamb, entirely optional and probably didn’t use as much butter either. So with the fat trimmed, i seasoned with a decent amount of salt and cracked pepper then added about 50 grams of butter and a few sprigs of fresh tarragon.

once vacuum sealed i placed the lamb in the ghetto sous vide bath ( bunning’s storage container and duct tape) and left it to do it’s thing.

The sous vide stick thing is a westinghouse brand, bought at kitchen warehouse, i think about $160 - i’m not sure if there’s much difference between a more expensive one or not. only thing i’d say is maybe bluetooth would be handy to control with an app, or to get notified if it turned off for some reason ( which did happen the week prior with some korean beef tenderloin - still came out amazing though.)

After 3 hours i transferred the lamb to the fridge to rest and cool.

You could keep the cooked lamb in the bag in the fridge unopened for about 10 days - if you rapidly cool it from hot by placing in an ice bath. or keep in the freezer for up to 12 months ( in unopened vacuum bag).

around 4 hours later, it was time for dinner.

to re heat i placed the bag with the lamb into a slow cooker filled with hot water and set to the braise option, left it for about 20 minutes to get up to 60 ish degrees then opened the bag and let rip with the seerzall.

the seerzall runs off a propane camping cylinder and is made specifically for browning / grilling food - it’s even flame distribution perfectly grills whatever you point it at.

i gave the lamb a good flaming go, and ended up with an awesome crispy covering of charred lamb, while leaving the lamb incredibly juicy and tender on the inside.

The result is a buttery texture still with some bite and a little chew, nearly perfect.

maybe an extra half hour to an hour would have resulted in a perfect rack of lamb. i guess we’ll see next time.

a couple of places to check out for resources are.

chefsteps.com

sous vide everything ( youtube )