This was great, but I've since perfected the technique on the short ribs. On a recent catering gig I changed up the plating a bit and ended up with a much better presentation.

Here's what I do now, for nicely glazed short ribs that are perfectly medium-rare and tender inside, but are nicely square for a pretty presentation:

I take each short rib off the bone, then salt and pepper them and vacuum seal them with a knob of butter, three or four per bag (however many fit). I cook them for 36 hours at 60C (140F). Once the 36 hours are up, I take them out, chill them quickly, and refrigerate them until they're completely cool. Then I remove them from the fridge, cut open the bags, and trim the ribs into a perfectly rectangular shape. I trim nearly every side. This causes the yield to go way down, but makes for a beautiful presentation. You can't trim them before they cook, because they deform as the proteins denature while cooking. Then I re-bag them. If I'm doing it for a dinner where everyone will be served the course at once, I put four or five per bag. If I'm doing it for a to-order situation, I bag them individually. During service, I toss the bags into the circulator at 60C. Ten minutes out from plating, I melt some glaze or demi-glace or something like that in wide pans on the stove. When I'm a couple minutes away from plating, I take them out and dump the contents of the bags into a big bowl or something. I put the ribs directly into the glaze, turn them a few times to coat them in the glaze, leaving them in the pan for no more than two minutes or so. Then plate. Sometimes I lightly sear them before adding them to the demi-glace.

In this case, the picture shows a rib that was trimmed before cooking. You can see that it ends up in a wonky shape that is not very attractive. It still tasted great.

I served them in this case with a beet sauce, cannellini bean puree, roasted baby beet, purslane, beet glass, and some black truffle grated over (which turned out to be a bit of a waste--beet overwhelms the black truffle).

The beet glass was made with 88% beet puree, 12% Pure-Cote B90, sheared in for 20 minutes, poured thinly onto acetate, left out in a dry place overnight, peeled off the acetate and flipped over, then dehydrated until completely dry and crisp, torn into shards, and stored in an airtight container with some desiccant packs.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 18:52 | Comments (2) | Food Additives, Lazy Bear, Meat, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

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