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Here's my obligatory holiday turkey post. I actually made this in early November, and it had nothing to do with the holidays, except that fresh cranberries became available again.
As a rule, I generally try to get whole birds whenever I want to make any poultry. Although Jeanette gets annoyed about the lack of freezer space, I like to make stock. So if I want to make chicken breasts, I buy a whole chicken and use the breasts. I'll use the thighs for another meal. The rest of the chicken, I'll throw in a big zip-loc of chicken parts that I keep in the freezer. When I get a couple zip-locs full (or when the need arises, and I have to buy chicken solely for stock), I make chicken stock. I'll also sometimes render the fat and get schmaltz and cracklins. Likewise, when I'm making some part of a turkey, I like to get a whole turkey. Roast the breast, roulade the thighs, maybe confit the legs, carcass and wings for stock.
This time I violated that rule, and just bought turkey thighs. See, I was at the DMV getting my car's registration transferred to California (an all day process). When I finally was released, and was walking to my car, I realized that Falletti's market was across the street. They've got a decent meat department, and some nice gourmet items, so I decided to stop in. Anyway, long story short, they had some nice turkey thighs for very cheap, and I bought them.
I made one of them into a roulade, with just some thyme as an extra flavoring. Lately, I've been mad about roulades. For one thing, they make for an interesting presentation and always seem more impressive and sophisticated, since they are more transformative and require more craft than many other preparations. But more importantly, they are good to eat (no bones, meat stays very moist, can be seasoned throughout rather than only on the outside, and can get the skin or bacon on the outside very crispy), and they are great to make ahead of time and then keep in the fridge, pre-cooked, for a week or so to use whenever you get around to it.
My process for this particular roulade was this: I took the turkey thigh and deboned it, being careful not to tear the skin. I trimmed some of the excess fat around the edges and reserved it. Then I test-rolled it to see how much meat I'd need to remove in order for 1) the skin to be able to wrap completely around the meat, and 2) the roulade not to be ridiculously thick and hence require annoyingly long cook times. I removed the requisite amount of meat from the edge (leaving the skin beneath that meat attached). Then I sprinkled salt and some fresh thyme liberally on the inside of the unrolled thigh. I got a large piece of plastic wrap and laid it out on a clean counter. Then I salted the skin side and placed the thigh skin-side down on the plastic wrap, leaving plenty of excess wrap on all sides. Finally, I started rolling the thigh, starting with the side without the excess skin. Rolling very tightly and using the plastic wrap to ensure a tight roll (at first, similar to how you'd use a bamboo mat when rolling sushi, but then roll up the plastic with the roll), I completed the roll and wrapped the plastic wrap tightly around it. Then I twisted the ends to tighten up the roulade.
At this point, you could refrigerate it for an hour or two to firm up, and then cook it, but I've always found that when you unwrap it and cook it, the meat expands too much and causes the roulade to unroll. And I hate tying it with twine or silicone rubber bands, because they inhibit browning wherever they touch, the skin sticks to them and tears when you try to take them off, they leave unsightly indentations, and the meat still expands and gets all ugly anyway. So I don't do that. What I do is wrap the roulade (which is already wrapped in plastic wrap) again with aluminum foil, and twist the ends the same way. Then I poach the whole thing in barely simmering water. Once the internal temperature reaches safe levels for long enough, then I transfer the roulade to ice water and let it cool down, then put it in the fridge. It'll keep in there for at least a week or so.
When I'm ready to cook it, I take it out and unwrap it (usually by just cutting the rolled-up ends off). It'll often have some jellied juices on the outside. You can scrape these off and reserve them for enriching a sauce. Then I saute the roulades over medium heat, turning them to crisp up the skin all around. Once the skin is all crispy, if the roulades aren't completely warmed through yet, I either baste the roulades in butter to finish warming them through or else put them in a low oven. Once they're all warmed again, I let the roulade rest for a few minutes before cutting and plating.
I made a cranberry sauce by cooking fresh cranberries in chicken stock, then reducing, and then using that stuff to deglaze the pan after crisping up the roulades. Finally, reduce to nappe, finish by mounting with a little butter, and you've got a delicious sauce.
I also served this with some improvised stuffing (i.e., throw a bunch of stale bread, some apples, some chicken stock, and some other shit in a baking dish, and let's see what happens) topped with crispy, crumbled schmaltz chicken cracklins, some peas, and a large and prominent cube of some canned cranberry sauce (YES, CANNED, IT IS DELICIOUS, and I have not managed to replicate that grainy, solid texture). The whole thing was delicious. Jeanette loved it. She's easy (and frustrating) to please: no matter what kinds of wizardry I attempt in the kitchen, she isn't impressed, but if I throw some fresh herbs on there, she's in love).
Posted by Barzelay on 2008/12/08 @ 2:17 | Comments (11) | Poultry, Sauces, Condiments
Comments
I know this is related to SV cooking but can you explain the basic rules for heat and serve vs heat and hold and reheat and serve? That is, how did you figure out what internal temperature the turkey needed to be brought to before you could store it in the fridge, and for how long? I know higher temps allow for more time but exactly how much? And can you stop once you hit that internal temp or do you have to keep it there for x mins? Like 160F for 15 mins allows you to store the turkey in the fridge for 5 days.
Posted by: sygyzy at December 8, 2008 12:07 PM
Sygyzy, in a word, no.
I don't have the knowledge or expertise to describe that. How long it can be held depends on loads of factors. Also, now that I've got a vacuum sealer, I would vacuum the roulades once they were wrapped in plastic wrap. Then if I were to fully boil it for long enough, it would be, in theory, shelf-stable, other than the problem of light getting to it.
Obviously, I haven't brought this turkey up to 100C, or else it would be horrible to eat. What I did here was that I fully cooked the turkey, i.e. I cooked it to the point where I would feel safe eating it right then, then rapidly chilled it. It was probably at 160F or so for about fifteen minutes, yeah. But I haven't been super precise about it. It's more just that I feel comfortable cooking it that way and holding it in my fridge for a week before reheating it. I should note that in the case of chicken, I generally reheat it up to 160 again.
I'm in the process of doing some more serious research on this question. I've got some papers and stuff to read, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Before I start getting too edgy with my sous vide, I need to learn more.
Posted by: Barzelay at December 8, 2008 12:18 PM
What is the purpose of rapidly chilling it before putting it in the fridge? I know this is proper since I just did it the other day when I made some potato leek soup from Bouchon, but I never knew the scientific reason why. Please explain :)
Posted by: sygyzy at December 8, 2008 1:53 PM
Roulades! Love them, and for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm confused by the 'crispy schmaltz'. I thought schmaltz was chicken fat (as in the link on your page, or my Jewish grandmother's cupboard), or are you referring to something else?
Perhaps I can be of help to sygyzy regarding the culinary questions. I guess the basic technique used here is 'poaching', which I guess is the technological predecessor to sous-vide cooking. Meat textures respond strangely to heat, but if you take braising as an example, you will find that the meat cooks well at first at low temp, then becomes horrible, followed a complete breaking down of the protein structures, which yields a fork tender meat. Here, poaching achieves the effect of roasting the meat, but without exposing it to air and thereby losing its moisture, which is why it's particularly good for poultry. When I do poultry roulades, I usually bring the water to a simmer, then lower until it's just barely simmering (like only a few bubbles coming up...), and poach for about 10-12 mins. You should be able to feel its firmness change to the same firmness you'd want should you be cooking it in the pan.
The point of cooling anything is to stop the cooking process. If you just pulled out the roulade and let it sit, or threw it straight into the pan to roast, the meat inside would already be at a high temp and would dry out quickly. It also helps the meats juices to redistribute, as in 'resting' meat. For your soup, it's the same thing. Done to preserve the flavor of the soup without overcooking the veggies.
Posted by: Jon F. at December 8, 2008 7:07 PM
RE: schmaltz, you're right. I got mixed up there for a minute and was referring to the cracklins left in the pan when you render the schmaltz. Edited to reflect that.
Regarding the cooling, I don't disagree with the reasons Jon gives, but I have others.
You know how after you braise something, you're supposed to let it cool in the braising liquid in order for it to reabsorb some of the liquid it loses during the cooking process? Cooling your meat that has been cooked sous vide while still in the bag does the same thing (though this does not explain why the cooling must be done rapidly.
And it isn't accurate to say that if you didn't cool the meat it would overcook. When you cook it sous vide, assuming you wait long enough for the temperature to stabilize throughout the piece of meat, then there won't be any carryover cooking. It's true that something "keeps cooking," but only in the sense of increases in time, not in increases in temperature. And as the time increases once you take the product out of the bath, the temperature is constantly lowering. So it isn't really an overcooking thing at all. Unless you're talking about hours longer at the same cooking temperature (which won't happen, ever), it won't hurt most proteins if you don't cool them after you take them out.
However, the reason you must cool them rapidly is purely for safety. You're probably familiar with the "danger zone" concept: the idea that bacteria multiply between 40F and 140F (and do so especially rapidly around the range of 100F to 120F). In this case, we're especially worried about listeria, since it can grow in anaerobic environments and can multiply at quite low (40F) temperatures.
If I were to take the roulades out, set them on the counter until they reached room temperature, then put them into the fridge to chill, it might take a total time of, say, six hours for every part of the product to reach below 40F. That is well beyond the four hour "safe" window for food in the danger zone. But if we cool the product rapidly in an ice-water bath, we can get it down to those temperatures in, say, thirty minutes. Much less bacterial multiplication, and hence, much safer.
Posted by: Barzelay at December 10, 2008 12:44 AM
What happens if you are SV a steak to medium which is about 140F by most definitions? Then you are keeping it in the dangerzone the whole time!
Posted by: sygyzy at December 11, 2008 4:36 PM
If it's 140, you're okay. You can even cook chicken to exactly 140, as long as you keep it there for long enough to achieve a sufficient bacterial reduction. With steak, if it's, say, 120, you can still do that, you just can't keep it there for more than a few hours.
Take, for instance, the 72 hour sous vide short ribs that are medium-rare. You can cook them at 140 for 72 hours. But if you try to do 72-hour rare short ribs, at say 125, you're taking a big risk.
Now I must admit that the dichotomy between "under 140" and "over 140" is not as clean as I'm making it out to be (or as clean as Thomas Keller makes it out to be in Under Pressure). It isn't as if bacteria is thriving at 139 and dead at 140. Besides, there are many different bacteria that present risks, each of which has different conditions under which it can live and multiply. But that's what Per Se and The French Laundry had to put in their food safety plans in order to be allowed to cook sous vide at low temperatures.
Posted by: Barzelay at December 11, 2008 4:44 PM
how the hell do you have time to be a professional chef when there's ip work to be done!?!?
haha, the cooking sounds more intense/fun than anything i've done yet. keep it up! im looking forward to your debut in a restaurant.
Posted by: ghazaly at December 13, 2008 8:36 PM
I'm no biology expert, but it seems that cooking a roulade in the traditional sense (for poultry, cooking for around 10-15 mins at just below a simmer) wouldn't expose it to the time and temperatures to have those bacteria develop.
I wouldn't say that poaching the roulade is akin to sous-vide cooking. Sous-vide cooking in a controlled water-bath doesn't really 'cook' the meat in the same way. You can cook a steak on the stove top to 135c pretty much throughout with good technique, and yet the meat tastes and looks very different than meat brought to 140 in a sous-vide process. From what I understand, it's because the proteins are denatured very differently under the sous-vide process (someone once told me is what akin to comparing fish cooked on heat and fish 'cooked' in a citrus marinade). Since the roulade is poached at a much higher temp (190 degrees for a 'just below simmer'), the cooking process is more like a roasting than a water bath. I wouldn't consider it sous-vide at all. Therefore, I think it's important to shock the roulade and stop the cooking process. The other reason I've been given is that for the roulade to hold its shape in the pan, it needs to set quickly for the denatured proteins to hold their new shape. Then again, I've mostly done this in restaurants, where we tend to shock everything as it's usually picked up later on during service, so maybe there's no real reason to do it, but I don't buy that.
I'm not a particularly big fan of sous-vide cooking, except for making potato puree, braises and for cooking poultry, but in restaurants I've worked in where we did sous-vide meats, the portioned meat sits in the water bath during service until ready for pick-up, and then of course it's seared and served. Since it sometimes sits around, already 'cooked' for periods of an hour or more, is that a problem for the bacteria issue? I know that that was one of the reasons that most NYC restaurants had to stop using cryovacs and immersion circulators. Still, it's not like people were getting food poisoning...
(In other news, let's do something after new years. These last few months have been devoted to finding a job...then I'm headed to France for a bit, but after the new year, seems like we should cook something grand.)
Posted by: Jon F. at December 15, 2008 12:42 PM
And of course I meant:
"You can cook a steak on the stove top to 135 degrees pretty much throughout with good technique, and yet the meat tastes and looks very different than meat brought to 135 in a sous-vide process."
Posted by: Jon F. at December 15, 2008 1:08 PM
i completely disagree about my level of impressability (yes, i just made up that word). fresh herbs are of course a plus, but i'm not completely un-wowed by your fancy kitchen science. it's just that it's such a common thing now for you to do something new and cool with food or chemicals that it takes more to impress me or make me care beyond the level a girlfriend usually cares about what her boyfriend does.
i've also become a lot more difficult to impress with just good meals because, for the most part, you've stopped fucking things up in the kitchen. it's easier to impress when you aren't as good at something. now that you are so good at things, you have to try harder to really make standouts.
Posted by: jeanette at December 24, 2008 4:04 PM