Sous Vide then Braised

Anova Precision® Cooker
1

Just got my anova last week and it was a success for my onsen eggs. Thinking of making beer braised pork belly and am thinking of sous vide at 62 degrees for 2-3 hours and then braising it thereafter with the sauce. Is this way workable? I have read that pork belly needs 8 hours for sous vide but don’t think I have the time to do that.

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If you are going to braise, skip the SV step, you won’t get much value from it.

I know some of the sous vide times seem very long at first, but when you get used to the planning needed to have the time, you will find it well worth it.

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Thanks for the advice! Guess I will plan for SV of meat another time.

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4

Sous vide saves time compared to cooking dinner. Throw the pork belly in in the morning and then it’s a minute to remove from the bath and sear in the evening.

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You can mimic a braise using an immersion circulator. A recipe I’ve made before can be found here: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tender-decadent-pork-belly-adobo
They also have a few other “braise” type recipes there.

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I agree with Richard, sometimes SV just doesn’t add enough value to make it worthwhile. That’s particularly true with a braise as it depends on evaporation to concentrate flavours and that doesn’t happen with SV.

Using the Beer-braised Pork Belly as an example you would want to reduce the beer with any aromatics that will initially be going in the bag with the pork. And then after the SV cook you will need to do a further reduction and defatting because of the juices that came out of the meat. But wait, - because you cooked at 62C some of the proteins now in the cooking solution haven’t been denatured and they will later coagulate making for a pretty ugly and scummy braising sauce. So to make it pretty you need to boil and strain the scum from the meat juices before continuing with your recipe. By then you will also likely want to add fresh aromatics to your finishing braise.
Had enough?

So if you were originally feeling time-challenged, do you really want all the extra work just to employ SV?