Hi all, first post here after recently buying my Anova
I’m going to be trying 72 hour beef ribs this week, finished with a blow torch. However, I’ve tried this before and although the meat was incredibly tender it did lack a bit of taste.
Obviously I can salt it a bit at the end, but I’m also thinking of adding some honey to the bag so it marinate in it while cooking (I live beef cooked with honey!). However I’m worried that when I blow torch it at the end the honey might burn before making the meat crispy. Maybe it’ll be ok as hopefully the honey will have been absorbed rather than on the surface but I’m not sure.
The honey will be diluted down by then due to the juices coming out of the meat, but try patting the ribs dry with a paper towel before torching them, hopefully remove most remaining surface sugars.
If that still doesn’t work, try using the oven broiler.
You can also save the bag juice, strain it, and reduce it down into a dipping or glazing sauce.
I’ll try that with the juice. I read one blog where the person said don’t use the juice as it’s not good, but I don’t know why - I thought that it would be pretty good reduced as you suggested.
The bag juice isn’t that different than pan drippings when roasting except that the pan drippings, due to the higher heat in the oven, are more condensed and have more fat.
You don’t want the fat for a reduction sauce, so that’s less to strain. You might have more seasonings in there to get out, but that’s easy, just use a tea strainer.
It’s different when reduced down, but not bad. You have to work with a hot pan then dumping the juices in and scraping and stirring like crazy, because you are less concentrated. You have to get the sauce over 212F, like making jam, this might burn a little bit of the sauce, but it’ll be ok. Then, depending how it looks, deglaze with wine. If it’s clumpy, it gets blended with some clairified butter, salt, spices and a teensy pinch of xanthan gum (like the tiny mound that fit on the end of a single tine of a dinner fork), a little bit more salt and it’s a sauce.
Here’s a bit on the malliard reaction in sauces and what it takes to kick it off
