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spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






If sous vide would be a food safety issue with large cuts of meat so would low & slow BBQ.

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life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

spankmeister posted:

If sous vide would be a food safety issue with large cuts of meat so would low & slow BBQ.

I read Meathead’s book and it was really food-sciencey, but I just wish he’d touched on sous vide at all. Not surprising he didn’t because all he does is talk about BBQ and meat science and bust myths but even after I got my sous vide I had to do a ton of research on the web to figure out the pasteurization thing and know that the food would be safe to eat

Anne Whateley
Feb 11, 2007
:unsmith: i like nice words

spankmeister posted:

If sous vide would be a food safety issue with large cuts of meat so would low & slow BBQ.
I don't have a smoker (tragically!!) but my understanding is even low & slow barbecue happens at a higher temp, so the center reaches a safer temp faster and then more of the time is spent hanging out at temp. It would be interesting to see probe graphs compared.

I'm not sure how long a whole shoulder would take to pasteurize; Baldwin's tables don't go up to anything so big. I'm sure it'll hit temp, the question is just how long it spends in the danger zone beforehand.

I just feel like, if it's in one piece, the downside is potential games with listeria -- and if it's cut up, the downside is more bark, which is an upside imo! If you have it in 3 pieces, I'm sure it'll be fine.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Anne Whateley posted:

I don't have a smoker (tragically!!) but my understanding is even low & slow barbecue happens at a higher temp, so the center reaches a safer temp faster and then more of the time is spent hanging out at temp. It would be interesting to see probe graphs compared.

I'm not sure how long a whole shoulder would take to pasteurize; Baldwin's tables don't go up to anything so big. I'm sure it'll hit temp, the question is just how long it spends in the danger zone beforehand.

I just feel like, if it's in one piece, the downside is potential games with listeria -- and if it's cut up, the downside is more bark, which is an upside imo! If you have it in 3 pieces, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Naw it’s not one 6lb hunk, it’s three 2lbs hunks. 24hrs should plenty of time regardless, the time matters a lot I think.

E: also agreed, I want lots of bark. Bark is what I’m going for—I plan to dry off the meat tomorrow when it’s done in the sous vide then add more rub before smoking

life is killing me fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Feb 6, 2021

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

Any tips on keeping a tomahawk bone from poking through the bag? I know fancy restaurants have like pads of some kind. Can I just use a paper towel? Or double bag and pray?

Got some nice ones at Costco and my schedule tomorrow means sous vide and sear on a hot grill (otherwise they would go in the 900F pizza oven).

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Ultimate Mango posted:

Any tips on keeping a tomahawk bone from poking through the bag? I know fancy restaurants have like pads of some kind. Can I just use a paper towel? Or double bag and pray?

Got some nice ones at Costco and my schedule tomorrow means sous vide and sear on a hot grill (otherwise they would go in the 900F pizza oven).

Can you shave the bone down?

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

Anne Whateley posted:

I don't have a smoker (tragically!!) but my understanding is even low & slow barbecue happens at a higher temp, so the center reaches a safer temp faster and then more of the time is spent hanging out at temp. It would be interesting to see probe graphs compared.
Meat in a smoker is also usually covered in a dry rub or something like that, meaning it's much more salty than the typical slab of protein in a puddle machine.

And most wood smoke has a fairly low pH. Depends on the the material being burned and the combustion conditions, but unless you're doing something very silly with marinades the conditions in a smoker are going to be more acidic than the conditions in the bag in a puddle machine.

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

life is killing me posted:

Can you shave the bone down?

So you mean just feel if there are sharp parts and make them less sharp? I feel really stupid now if that’s reality all I would have to do.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Ultimate Mango posted:

So you mean just feel if there are sharp parts and make them less sharp? I feel really stupid now if that’s reality all I would have to do.

I don’t really know for sure. If you have a Dremel or a rasp/file you could just dull the sharp parts. It’s what I’d do, as long as I could be reasonably certain it wouldn’t still puncture the bag somehow.

If you have vacuum bags, it might be less likely to puncture once you file the sharp parts because some of them at least are thicker than ziplocs. That is, if the tomahawks aren’t loving monster steaks and too big for a normal vacuum bag.

I have Sous Bear bags, they come with zipping clips plus some clips to clamp the bags to the container and a hand pump. Easy to pump the air out, and the bags are thick

Sentient Data
Aug 31, 2011

My molecule scrambler ray will disintegrate your armor with one blow!
Why not just wrap the tip of the bone in a couple layers of paper towel?

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

life is killing me posted:

From what I read HDPE should be good for a short time at temps over boiling, and below boiling point it should be fine for longer periods, but I was still a little hesitant to use the bucket. It’s just the only thing I had that could fit all three 2lb cuts.

get a cooler or something

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

Sentient Data posted:

Why not just wrap the tip of the bone in a couple layers of paper towel?

that’s what I asked

Wasn’t sure if the paper towel would disintegrate or worse soak up all dat bag juice

Sentient Data
Aug 31, 2011

My molecule scrambler ray will disintegrate your armor with one blow!
Oh, duh, I forgot about the juice inside the bag. Disregard that suggestion

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Paul MaudDib posted:

get a cooler or something

I have one, but I was concerned about the sous vide controller and where I’d put it. It has a clamp but not one that could clip to the cooler. The bucket has been doing fine so far

NE: and also was concerned about whether the plastic in there could handle the heat, and had less information at the time than I had about the Home Depot bucket

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

Sentient Data posted:

Oh, duh, I forgot about the juice inside the bag. Disregard that suggestion

Ribeye with a reduction of semi virgin wood pulp.

Zarin
Nov 11, 2008

I SEE YOU

life is killing me posted:

I have one, but I was concerned about the sous vide controller and where I’d put it. It has a clamp but not one that could clip to the cooler. The bucket has been doing fine so far

NE: and also was concerned about whether the plastic in there could handle the heat, and had less information at the time than I had about the Home Depot bucket

For the coolers I use, cutting has been involved.

They've worked great for what they do! I've found that there's been a bit of nuance to it, and I've had to modify designs slightly over time. The worst part about coolers in my experience is that you can't see through them to see how the bag is doing.

I've considered going back to clear cambros and trying to figure out some sort of semi-permanent insulation solution. I don't know how to sew, or I'd probably just make some insulated wrap for the thing with a flap I could pull back to look in the side as needed.

halokiller
Dec 28, 2008

Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves


Ultimate Mango posted:

that’s what I asked

Wasn’t sure if the paper towel would disintegrate or worse soak up all dat bag juice

There's always foil or butcher paper. Or double bag.

Hopper
Dec 28, 2004

BOOING! BOOING!
Grimey Drawer
cling film can usually withstand up to 150C, a sort of cap of that on the tip of the bone should help.

Inspector 34
Mar 9, 2009

DOES NOT RESPECT THE RUN

BUT THEY WILL
In regards to sous vide vs smoking and temperatures, yeah smoking tends to be higher temp but convection & radiation are also a lot less efficient than conduction. It would not surprise me at all if a 170 degree sous vide hit safe temps in the interior faster that a 225+ degree smoker.

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






Exactly, anyone who's ever put a probe in a piece of meat being smoked knows it takes hours and hours for the center to come up to temperature.

The salt in the rub and higher temperatures in the smoker are moot because with SV the surface reaches target temperature very quickly. It's not about surface bacteria at all.

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.
You said: "If sous vide would be a food safety issue with large cuts of meat so would low & slow BBQ."

The two situations are too dissimilar to draw any such conclusion. The differ by temperature, time, pH, salinity, which have all been mentioned, and there are other differences that haven't been mentioned (e.g. enzymatic activity).

It is also false that it isn't about surface contamination. It's always about surface contamination because that's where almost all of your risk originates, and contamination that starts out on the surface can end up elsewhere due to handling or cooking.

And your surface contamination problems don't go away at s-v temperatures. They don't even necessarily go away if you submerge the food in boiling water. It depends on the pathogen and its response to the environmental stress--C. jejuni, for example, gets much more heat tolerant after surviving a thermal shock.

spankmeister posted:

Exactly, anyone who's ever put a probe in a piece of meat being smoked knows it takes hours and hours for the center to come up to temperature.
Hours and hours to hit your target temperature, yeah. But internal temp of meat in a 225 smoker'll hit 140 in a couple hours. Here's a random graph from a bbq forum that's conveniently labelled:



That's ~40F to ~140F in a slightly under temp smoker in ~2 hours. Compare that to a s-v time vs thickness chart:

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

life is killing me posted:

I read Meathead’s book and it was really food-sciencey, but I just wish he’d touched on sous vide at all. Not surprising he didn’t because all he does is talk about BBQ and meat science and bust myths but even after I got my sous vide I had to do a ton of research on the web to figure out the pasteurization thing and know that the food would be safe to eat

I’m really curious to hear how the SV+ smoked pork shoulder works out for you.

I’ve smoked a few pork shoulders now, but the inconsistent time drives me crazy. However, if I can lock down the cook time with sous vide and still get smoke+great bark, then it’s worth a shot.

Lawnie
Sep 6, 2006

That is my helmet
Give it back
you are a lion
It doesn't even fit
Grimey Drawer

nwin posted:

I’m really curious to hear how the SV+ smoked pork shoulder works out for you.

I’ve smoked a few pork shoulders now, but the inconsistent time drives me crazy. However, if I can lock down the cook time with sous vide and still get smoke+great bark, then it’s worth a shot.

36-48 hours in the bag, remove, pat dry and reapply rub, smoke at a pretty high temp for 2 hours to get some nice bark and smoke flavor. I’ve been very impressed both times I’ve done it this way, and it’s definitely better and more consistent imo.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

nwin posted:

I’m really curious to hear how the SV+ smoked pork shoulder works out for you.

I’ve smoked a few pork shoulders now, but the inconsistent time drives me crazy. However, if I can lock down the cook time with sous vide and still get smoke+great bark, then it’s worth a shot.

Hopefully it’ll all be fine but I have to be somewhere starting just after the time at which the pork shoulders will be done in the water bath. For two hours I must be at this place, and when I come back I’ll have to rush these things in prep to get them dried off and rubbed and into the smoker in time for dinner.

So I think the trick is to dry them off and then rub them with seasoning again because the initial seasoning rub will come off in the bag while it’s in the water bath, and if you don’t dry it off it’ll not want to form bark. Honestly I’m not unconvinced it might even cause a temperature stall if it’s still wet

Lawnie posted:

36-48 hours in the bag, remove, pat dry and reapply rub, smoke at a pretty high temp for 2 hours to get some nice bark and smoke flavor. I’ve been very impressed both times I’ve done it this way, and it’s definitely better and more consistent imo.

So you’ve done it before? Was the time in the smoker and/or the temperature affected if you put it in the fridge or otherwise didn’t put the meat in the smoker ASAP?

Because given I have somewhere to be, I thought I’d take it out of the bath at 23 hours and then give it an ice bath before refrigerating it because I won’t be able to get it smoked before I have to go. Didn’t know if I should change anything there with such a short smoking time compared to simply smoking.

life is killing me fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Feb 6, 2021

Erwin
Feb 17, 2006

SubG posted:

It is also false that it isn't about surface contamination. It's always about surface contamination because that's where almost all of your risk originates, and contamination that starts out on the surface can end up elsewhere due to handling or cooking.

Isn't trichinosis the main issue with pork, and found throughout the muscle?

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Erwin posted:

Isn't trichinosis the main issue with pork, and found throughout the muscle?

I thought selective breeding had severely reduced the possibility of trichinosis.

But again, re: sous vide, time and temperature = pasteurization is my understanding. The internal temperature of pork should be 165, I would think it would achieve that in 24 hours in a water bath at that exact temp; plus the time spent at a higher temperature in a smoker.

But of course, there’s the issue like mine where if you can’t get it in the smoker ASAP there may be time for bacteria to start growing again, which is why I’m wondering if an ice bath might inhibit this and then getting it in the fridge or freezer right away.

Lester Shy
May 1, 2002

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!
Now this has me worried that I'm doing something unsafe.

My typical setup for large cuts of meat is 24 hours in the water (165 for pork shoulder, 155 for brisket) -> let the bag sit in cold water for a few minutes until the meat is cool enough to handle -> a few hours in the fridge before going into the oven for two hours at 275. Now I'm going to have nightmares that zigzagging the meat between high and low temps is keeping the center right in the danger zone for too long.

asciidic
Aug 19, 2005

lord of the valves


I'm cooking two hefty butts right now, one in the smoker, and the other SV'ing at 165 for 24 hours, then into the traeger at 300 tomorrow for finishing. I'll let y'all know which butt is better if I don't die.

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

The US has pretty strict regulation on the big pork producers. I don't worry overmuch about grocery store pork carrying T. Spiralis cysts, but I'm a bit more wary of any kind of low-volume, boutique pork products.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

Lester Shy posted:

Now this has me worried that I'm doing something unsafe.

My typical setup for large cuts of meat is 24 hours in the water (165 for pork shoulder, 155 for brisket) -> let the bag sit in cold water for a few minutes until the meat is cool enough to handle -> a few hours in the fridge before going into the oven for two hours at 275. Now I'm going to have nightmares that zigzagging the meat between high and low temps is keeping the center right in the danger zone for too long.

Just read a SeriousEats article on exactly what I’m doing: sous vide for 23-24 hours and then finishing in a smoker or oven to get the bark.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt doesn’t really mention any concerns with the temperature of the center, and even mentioned the option of chilling the cooked pork in the refrigerator for a number of days before smoking or roasting. Not sure that covers adequately your concerns of zigzagging between high and low temps but if there’s a chef I’ll listen to it’s JKL.

No recipe for doing what I’m doing which I’ve found online has mentioned these concerns, either—yeah I know a lot of these are the usual “I first had pulled pork as a child and I’ve always loved it so here’s my life story you’ll have to skip over before you get to the actual ingredients and recipe” but many are more reputable sites that seem to take food safety a bit more seriously than others, which if they don’t mention this concern there then it seems like we can have a reasonable expectation the food’ll be safe to eat when done. Hell it’s getting cooked twice, not entirely sure we have to worry quite so much

toplitzin
Jun 13, 2003


Here's a couple of whole shoulders on the smoker.
I called out when the probe says the center hits 165ish.



Submarine Sandpaper
May 27, 2007


There is a good bit of mass in the bag so you really ought to ice bath to cool rather then let it slowly get cool in the fridge. You are likely increasing the temp of everything else in your fridge as well which is probably the bigger concern.

Lawnie
Sep 6, 2006

That is my helmet
Give it back
you are a lion
It doesn't even fit
Grimey Drawer
You can cool the pork shoulder after SV but before smoking just fine. It’s fully cooked at that point, and it makes no difference if the meat surface is 65*F or 135*F when you’re shooting to get it hot enough to caramelize for a couple hours.

I’ve done butts at 165 for 48 hours before and had delicious results, and I never thought twice about whether or not it was safe to do. I’m fairly confident that even a 5” thick piece of meat is adequately pasteurized in that amount of time.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

I just took mine out...

https://imgur.com/gallery/nvfOCaA

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

Erwin posted:

Isn't trichinosis the main issue with pork, and found throughout the muscle?
It's one issue, although it's mostly wiped out in commercially-produced pork (although it's been making a bit of a comeback due to small farm pork and wild pork). But all you're worrying about with trichinosis is ever hitting a safe temperature (and holding it for long enough)--it's not something where you're creating a problem if the meat stays in the "danger zone".

With most foodborne pathogens what you're worried about is that the food contains some contamination (e.g. spores of some kind of bacteria that'll make you sick), and that the food will linger in a temperature range between ~40 F and ~140 F for long enough for the spores to germinate, producing a population of active bacteria in the food, that population reproduces producing more bacteria, and eventually when the food is consumed the larger population of the pathogen causes sickness.

Trichinosis is a roundworm, and the thing you're worried about is consuming viable cysts which can then develop into larvae in your GI. You want to hit 165 F for at least 15 seconds to kill them (and/or hit some similar point in a time/temp curve), but if the food loiters just under 165 for awhile you're not going to have T. spiralis (or whatever) roundworms breeding all through your pork butt. So the risk (from trichinosis) doesn't change much, assuming you eventually hit your target temperature.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

SubG posted:

It's one issue, although it's mostly wiped out in commercially-produced pork (although it's been making a bit of a comeback due to small farm pork and wild pork). But all you're worrying about with trichinosis is ever hitting a safe temperature (and holding it for long enough)--it's not something where you're creating a problem if the meat stays in the "danger zone".

With most foodborne pathogens what you're worried about is that the food contains some contamination (e.g. spores of some kind of bacteria that'll make you sick), and that the food will linger in a temperature range between ~40 F and ~140 F for long enough for the spores to germinate, producing a population of active bacteria in the food, that population reproduces producing more bacteria, and eventually when the food is consumed the larger population of the pathogen causes sickness.

Trichinosis is a roundworm, and the thing you're worried about is consuming viable cysts which can then develop into larvae in your GI. You want to hit 165 F for at least 15 seconds to kill them (and/or hit some similar point in a time/temp curve), but if the food loiters just under 165 for awhile you're not going to have T. spiralis (or whatever) roundworms breeding all through your pork butt. So the risk (from trichinosis) doesn't change much, assuming you eventually hit your target temperature.

I mean if you’ve killed the worm(s) already, wouldn’t it even be safe to skip the ice bath and put directly in the fridge since there would be no living roundworms left to propagate/reproduce?

I’m really interested in food science, but I don’t know much and the microbiology stuff that goes into making food safe to eat is new to me beyond knowing the safe internal temperatures for food cooked in the more ubiquitous and traditional ways. The time/temp curve is something I’m learning a lot about because doing sous vide necessitates this, and it sounds like I have much more to learn

E: unrelated but one of my vacuum bags popped it’s vacuum at some point during the 24hr cook, so it had a larger amount of liquid that had gone inside compared to the other two. No idea how. What popped was the vacuum valve itself, so I had to throw the bag away. Otherwise they can even be cleaned in the top rack of the dishwasher, but I’m disappointed. Thankfully that valve is toward the top of the bag, and the bags were clipped and not totally submerged, so it wasn’t too much water that got in and it doesn’t seem to have messed up the meat.

life is killing me fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Feb 6, 2021

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

life is killing me posted:

I mean if you’ve killed the worm(s) already, wouldn’t it even be safe to skip the ice bath and put directly in the fridge since there would be no living roundworms left to propagate/reproduce?
If trichinosis was your only concern that would work, but trichinosis shouldn't be your only concern.

Say you've got some random bacteria on the surface of the meat. You check the time/temp pasteurisation table and hit that number. What does that mean? It means that you've reduced the number of active microorganisms (usually some specific pathogen that's most of concern for the type of meat you're looking up, or sometimes some amalgam of common pathogens) by some specific factor--6.5 log10 or 7 log10 being common, representing a survival of only 1 in ~3M or 1 in 10M (respectively) viable bacteria. This means that, assuming your food wasn't a petri dish swimming with C. whatever in the first place, it's safe to eat now.

But give it another trip through the danger zone and maybe you're going to get that 1 in however many millions that did survive the chance to reproduce and make you sick. Or maybe the specific foodborne pathogen sporulates when it receives an environmental shock, the spores can survive the cooking temperatures, and so you've got no germinated bacteria on the meat but a whole field of bacteria seeds waiting for the opportunity to sprout. Or whatever.

The big punchline is that things like food safety are always stochastic processes--under the hood they're deterministic, but the large-scale behaviour (which is what you really care about) is the net result of millions or billions of individual rolls of the dice. So what you're always trying to do is rig the dice in your favour, and mininimise the number of times they get rolled. Keeping food out of the "danger zone" is one way of doing that.

Ultimate Mango
Jan 18, 2005

Tomahawk update: The bones turned out to be a total non issue.

Salted them for an hour or so on a rack, pretty generously since they were thicc.

Single bagged with thyme and garlic powder, didn’t pull too hard a vacuum, but hard enough (that’s what she said).

The Tomahawks were two hours at 137. Prime NY Strips at 134 for two hours. Finished on a hot grill.

I with Awful app would post pictures from the iOS camera roll. It was a thing of beauty.

asciidic
Aug 19, 2005

lord of the valves


asciidic posted:

I'm cooking two hefty butts right now, one in the smoker, and the other SV'ing at 165 for 24 hours, then into the traeger at 300 tomorrow for finishing. I'll let y'all know which butt is better if I don't die.

Both butts had their fat caps trimmed a bit, were rubbed vigorously, vac sealed and left in the fridge overnight. The SV butt was cooked at 165 for 24 hours, dried, dusted with more rub, then finished in the Traeger at 300 for 75 mins. It didn't look quite as good as the smoked pork shoulder (not as barky, no smoke ring), but it managed to be better in both flavor and texture. One thing I would probably do differently next time is not add the extra rub between the bath and smoker because the crusty bits were a little salty.

And now I have just an unreasonable amount of pulled pork.

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swickles
Aug 21, 2006

I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just some QB that I used to know

asciidic posted:


And now I have just an unreasonable amount of pulled pork.

I don't understand.

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