Banjo does French Press Coffee

French Press is also known as a 'Press Pot'.

With our latest escapades regarding the Keurig Model B60 coffee machine causing consternation, we have decided to try making coffee via the French Press method.

This will be updated daily, as we work our way through the process of discovery on making the best cup of coffee.

Basis of Comparison
We used to frequent a local Italian restaurant (owned and operated by Iranians' !) that simply had the best coffee we have ever had.  Unfortunately, in a recent trip there, their coffee had lost all of its exquisiteness.  We have fond memories of it, and it will constitute our basis for comparison.

Ingredients

• Coffee: Starbucks brand.  Whole bean, which we ground in the store.  Note: the coffee bean chosen has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, impact on the flavor of the coffee.

Method
This is where the majority of the variation will occur, so the different tests will center around the various aspects of preparation.  Some of the elements associated with method are:

• Bean choice - Starbucks Espresso Roast Whole Bean Coffee
• Grinding method (e.g., using the in-store grinder will mean you have some carryover flavor from other, previous grinds.  Same with at-home grinding, but you can better control how much of the previous grind is cleaned out).
• Size of grind (how fine the coffee beans ground)
• Water temperature.  Currently, we are bringing it to a full boil before placing into brew carafe.
• Water choice.  We have the option of using tap water, filtered tap water, bottled distilled water, branded bottled water.
• Amount of coffee grinds placed into the carafe.
• Length of time coffee grinds sit in carafe with hot water.
• Heated utensils.  E.g., whether the carafe, plunger, cups are all heated prior to use (prior heating will keep the utensil from cooling down the coffee)
• What the coffee is stored in.  We have a vacuum sealer, so I may try to get the attachment that will allow us to place the coffee into Mason Jars and then vacuum out the air between each use.  Currently, we are using a big ceramic jar made for storing coffee (it has a clasped lid with gasket), but does not provide the ability to remove air.

 Tests
Note: our tests are not scientific - they are just documenting our search for our perfect cup of coffee; see links for other sites that may offer you more information. 
8/1/11:

• Coffee: Starbucks Espresso Roast Whole Bean, ground at grocery, course grind.
• Water: Filtered tap water.
• Number of cups: 2
• 8 scoops (7 gram scoop) placed into French Press
• Cups and French Press preheated with hot water.
• Water brought to boil, then poured over coffee and cap placed on.
• Mixture stirred with wooden spoon
• Timer set for 4 minutes.
• Results: a little too strong for us, but not bitter.

Links
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09113/964681-51.stm
http://www.coffeegeek.com/guides/presspot

Banjo's Insight - why does a grill have a dome, and when would I use it?

Better grills have domes.  But when do you use one?  It depends on what you are trying to do!

A grill, by itself, is a single point of high energy heat.  It will cook the bottom of a piece of food, subjecting the food to a blast of high heat.  Meanwhile, the top of the food is not being subjected to any heat energy, so it is not being cooked (OK, a little bit by hot gasses moving past the food as the heat move upwards).

By placing a dome onto our grill, we create an OVEN.  And when we are in oven mode, we are cooking food from all sides - by the heat source, which may be directly under the meat (but can also be on the other side away from the food - which would even more closely simulate an oven), as well as from the metal walls, lid, and air.  So with the dome on, we have an oven, and it cooks like an oven.

So when would you want to turn the grill into an oven by placing the dome onto it?  Primarily, when you have large pieces of meat that require a long time to cook, so you want to transfer the heat at a rate that will allow the heat to migrate through the entire piece of meat.

So when would I want to  use the grill as an oven when I've already got an excellent oven inside?  You would definitely want to use the outdoor oven when you are wanting to import any flavors from the heat source, such as from lump charcoal, wood chips, etc.  Also, if you are quick browning the outside of the meat, you would want to place the meat directly over a high heat source when you browned it, then transfer to the side of the grill not directly over the heat source, close the lid to create an oven, then allow sufficient time to allow the interior of the meat to come up in temperature.

By the way - a better way to cook steaks, but seems not to be understood, is to first cook the meat in oven mode until it is almost at the desired temperature, then move it directly over the fire to blast it with high heat for a short amount of time - not long enough to over cook the interior.

Banjo's Insight - why we cover pans and pots

Why do we cover (put a lid on) pans and pots when cooking?

Well, certainly one reason is to reduce the splatter - to contain it within the pot instead of having it splatter all over the stove.

However, from a broader perspective, we place a lid on a pan or pot in order to:

• Keep the moisture from evaporating.  If we cook mashed potatoes on the stove, but didn't cover, then all of the water could evaporate before we actually got the food cooked to the point where it was tenderized.
• On the stove, it creates a small oven so all of the food is cooked from all sides.  The lid will keep the moisture in the pot, where it will collect between the surface of the food being cooked and the walls and lid of the pot.  This water vapor will contain more energy than will dry air, so the top of the food is being cooked both by heated air (instead of having the heated air escape up and out of the pot to be replaced by incoming cold air to replace the air that moved up and out), as well as being cooked by the heated moisture in that heated air.  So we are cooking the food from all sides, not just from the bottom.
• So why do we cover a pot in the oven, which is already an enclosure?  It's because it will allow the moisture to stay in the food's environment instead of evaporating into the oven, and to reduce the splatter inside the oven.
• So why do we use terra cotter bowls to cook some foods in, inside the oven?  The clay absorbs heat energy from the surroundings, which it radiates to the food.  Since it is closer to the food and surrounds the food, it is possible to more evenly heat the food, while retaining the moisture. 

Banjo's Insight - Heat migration in food - oven vs pan

Heat migrates.  That means it moves.  The popular notion is that the heat moves from the heated part to the coldest part.

Douglas Baldwin, in his book "Sous Vide for the home cook" has some formulas which you can use to determine the amount of time needed for heat to migrate from the outer point to the inner point.  But that's more detail than I'm trying to convey.

I'm just trying to convey the concept, so you know how to use it in your cooking.

When I first started cooking, I didn't understand why sometimes we cooked items in an oven, and other times we cooked it on the stove.  I also didn't understand why we covered it sometimes, and left it uncovered other times.

If we put a big piece of meat in a pan and place it on the stove, then turn the heat up on the stove, the pan will get hot, it will transfer the heat to the outer surface of the meat where it is in contact with the meat.  Soon, some oil and fluids will come out of the meat and coat the pan, which will improve the rate at which heat is transferred from the pan to the meat.  Before long, the outside of the meat will be browned, and we will need to rotate the meat if our purpose is to brown the entire outside of the meat.  However, if we were to cut the meat open at this point, it would be almost as cold as when we started.

So we have meat that has become much hotter on the outside where it has contacted the pan, but virtually no heat has made its way to the center of the meat.

We have applied too much heat, in too short of a time.  The outside of the meat has absorbed virtually all of this heat, while almost none of it has moved (migrated) to the center.

If our goal is to heat the entire piece of meat, then we need to apply the heat at a rate that better approximates the rate the heat can be transferred from the outer surface to the inner part of the meat.  Our solution here is to slow down the rate at which we apply heat to the meat.  This can be done in several ways: we can reduce the heat applied to the pan, or we can move the meat into an oven.

An oven applies heat to meat in a manner different than that of  a pan. A pan obtains heat directly from flame, so it can get hot really fast.  An oven however, first heats the air in the oven, then the walls of the oven are heated by this air at the same time the air is heating the meat (by the way - this is why we preheat the oven; we do it to get the walls hot).  Once the air in the oven, and the walls of the oven are all up to the heat, the meat can begin to absorb heat energy from the air and walls.

This energy is not transferred to the meat nearly as fast as from the pan.   Think about this: you can't put your hand into boiling water ( a temperature of 212 dF at the pressure of sea level), you can't put your hand onto a pan heated to 200 dF (ouch!), but you certainly can stick it into an oven briefly, as long as your hand is only in contact with air - as soon as you touch the rack, pan, or wall, you've been burned).  So you've just demonstrated to yourself that the heat isn't transferred as fast within an oven as it is on a stove top.  It's possible to get the pan up to 400 - 600 dF.

So, if we've got a big piece of meat, placing it on a pan on the stove will transfer too much energy too fast to the surface of the meat - faster than it can migrate to the center of the meat.  By moving the meat to the oven, we slow down the rate of heat transfer from the oven to the meat, so it more closely approximates the heat transfer rate of the meat.

We want the inside of the meat to reach the desired temperature without over cooking the outside surface of the meat.

So we cook in the pan for minutes, but cook in the oven for hours.

If we want the meat browned, we can then introduce the broiler once we have cooked the meat - this blasts the meat with a high amount of energy, which causes the surface of the meat to be browned (it's getting heated really fast, and that's heat's not really transferring into the center of the meat very quickly).  So the outer surface will brown, giving us that great flavor.

We can place meat in a pan in a liquid, such as water, to increase the area of the meat that is being subjected to the heat (braising).  The water spreads the area of the meat in contact with the water out considerably, as compared to the single points of meat in contact with the pan with no other liquid.  So this helps transfer more of the heat energy into the meat.  However, we adjust the heat so the temperature of the water is below boiling, to a simmer, which is around 185 - 200.  So we are again reducing the amount of heat being applied to the meat while in the pan, from 600 dF to 200 dF, which allows for more time for the heat to migrate to the center of the meat.

Banjo's Insight - Searing the meat to lock in juices

A lot of old cooking and grilling references will tell you to "sear the meat to lock the juice/moisture in".  This is hogwash.

But I don't want you to just take my word to this - I want to lead you through a thought process that will prove to you this is hogwash.

I know that you already know that if you heat something, it expands (except ice heated up until it melts to water - it shrinks in size).

A piece of meat is made up of lots of cells.  Each cell contains fluids, which are held in by a cell membrane.

If you have a piece of meat, and you heat it up, then the fluid in each cell is going to expand as it heats.  Ultimately, this expansion will be too much for the cell membrane, and the membrane will rupture, allowing the fluid to escape out of the cell.

Fluids flow from high pressure to low pressure (well, anything actually moves from a point of high pressure to low pressure, not just fluids, providing you apply enough pressure to overcome the resistance holding the item in place).  Heating a fluid creates a higher pressure in the fluid, so it both expands out of the membrane, and flows out of the meat (which is heated and therefore at a higher pressure) into the surroundings.  So the fluid is going to flow out of the meat.

Since all of the meat is being heated, all of the muscle fiber (which is what meat is) is expanding, so there's no where for the fluid to go except to go out of the meat - it's sort of like you squeezing a water-soaked sponge - the fluid is going to be forced out of the sponge.

When you 'sear' the outside of the meat, all you are doing is heating the cells on the outside surface to a high temperature much faster than the cells deeper within the meat are being heated.  This means the outside cells next to the heat source are going to rupture first, spilling their fluids.  This fluid will evaporate in the high heat, leaving behind any non-water substances that will stay on the meat; these will brown (Maillard Browning).

However, these browning substances aren't water tight - they will actually dissolve in water.  If you heat the meat up enough, all of the water will flow out of the meat, and the meat will be dry, dry, dry.

As the interior of the meat heats up, the meat will heat up and expand, those cells will rupture, and you get the same reaction as squeezing the sponge - the space holding the water (the meat) is expanding, forcing (wringing) the water out of the cells, and out of the meat.

So searing doesn't "seal in the juices".  It does, however, cause the browning, which increases the flavor.

So we sear to increase the flavor.

Sous Vide - Vacuum Pouch Insight

When I first received my Sous Vide Supreme, it came with their vacuum sealer.  Note: they've since come out with a vacuum chamber sealer, but it's too expensive for me - I hope it's chump change for you!  I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to use the vacuum sealer without sucking fluid out of the meat and into the vacuum.

You do not want to suck fluid out of the meat and into the vacuum!  It will coat the inside of the vacuum pouch, preventing the ability to heat it enough to seal the bag, and it can destroy the vacuum motor, air seals, and will harbor bacteria, so don't do it!

I was very frustrated by this.  I did a lot of searching on the web, and found some insight, which I'm going to present here as well as have some links for you.

In using the vacuum sealer that came with my machine,  there are several approaches (this works for any type of FoodSaver vacuum sealer device):

• If the meat contains a lot of fluid, then place it into the refrigerator to chill it enough so the fluid is more viscus and will move slower, hopefully it will take so long for it to move to the top of the bag while sealing that it will have sufficient time to draw the vacuum and seal the bag before the fluid coats it.
• Make your bags longer, and place the meat as far away from the sealing point as possible, so the fluid will have further to travel before it gets to the area where you are sealing.  Longer distance to travel = longer time to get there.  Making my bags longer helped a lot.
• Tilt the front of the vacuum machine up, so it creates a hill to climb for the fluids.  This won't stop the fluid from climbing because of the force of the pressure flowing out of the bag and into the vacuum sealer, but it will take longer, and longer time to travel helps.
• Place a folded up paper towel between the meat and the seal point so it will absorb the fluids.  Hopefully, it will absorb enough so none is left to get to the seal point.  Or, it just might slow the fluid down long enough in its travel.
• Freeze the fluid into cubes and drop into the pouch to seal.  They won't unfreeze fast enough to cause a problem.

If none of those methods work, then switch to a Zip Lock Freezer Bag and use the Water Immersion method.  This involves placing water in a deep bowl, deep enough to hold the water and most of the Zip Lock Freezer Bag.  Close most of the Zip Lock Freezer Bag (leaving one end open to let air escape from the bag), then slowly immerse the bottom of the bag into the bowl containing the water.  Tilt the Zip Lock Freezer Bag so the open end is at the top, then immerse the bag.  The water will exert pressure on the side of the Zip Lock Freezer Bag, forcing the air out.  Just before water will flow into the Zip Lock Freezer Bag, finish sealing the bag.  Here's a video of a person doing this (about 2:00 minutes into the film).  

Banjo's Recipe: Brining Pork Spare Ribs

Why do we brine?

We brine meats in order to impart moisture, and sometimes flavors, into a meat.  This is particularly useful for meats such as turkey breast, which can be very dry after cooking.  In this case with pork spare ribs, I've cooked them many times but I have never tasted how one tastes after brining, so that's what I'm going to do!

Brining Vs Marinating

Brining adds moisture into a meat by osmosis, which is the cell's attempt to balance it's internal salt content with salt content outside of itself.  The meat is put into a liquid bath that contains a high percentage of salt.  As the cell attempts to balance the salt levels, moisture is drawn into the meat, swelling the cells with the additional moisture.

Marinating is similar to brining, but has a higher acid content, in an attempt to tenderize the meat.  Since my meat will be cooked via Sous Vide, which will tenderize the meat via time and temperature instead of acid, there is no need to marinate the meat.

I had wondered whether or not a brine would contain worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, as both are high in salt.  I have a lot of worcestershire sauce that is getting close to its age-off date, so I was interested in using it before having to chunk it.  However, in my research, I kept coming across worcestershire and soy being used in marinates, but not in brines.  Since I know both to be high in salt, I began to wonder, what is the difference between a brine and a marinate?

Research showed a marinate to be high in acid in an attempt to tenderize meat.  I checked a USDA source for the ph level of foods (ph is a measurement of acidity), and found that both worcestershire sauce and soy sauce are about as acidic as vinegar, so that explains why they don't show up in brines (salt, not acid) but do show up in marinates (acid and salt).

So, while either worcestershire or soy sauce can be added to a brine for flavor, I don't want to add so much that I've changed it into a marinate.  Dang - thought I was going to use up that worcestershire sauce!

Ingredients


Note: I prefer to use distilled water as our water has a lot of fluoride in it.
Note: I do not have a 6 qt lexan container, so instead I use a water cooler.  I use a water/ice mixture (just enough water to fill up to the ice) in the cooler instead of just water.  This also means I don't have to find room in the refrigerator!

Time
I'm going to brine the pork spare ribs for 48 hours.

Steps

1. Mix the brine ingredients into a container large enough to hold two (2) racks of pork spare ribs, about 9 lbs of ribs.
2. place spare ribs into brine container
3. Place container into refrigerator, which should be at a temperature of 40 dF or below.
4. Leave in brine for 48 hours.
5. At the end of 48 hours (or there about - not critical), remove ribs from brine.
6. Blot ribs dry with paper towels (do not rinse off).
7. Your meat is ready for use!

Brine Recipes

Alton Brown's (note: we are using his Boston Butt recipe):

Brine:

• 8 ounces or 3/4 cup molasses
• 12 ounces pickling salt
• 2 quarts bottled water
• 6 to 8 pound Boston butt
• Combine molasses, pickling salt, and water in 6 quart Lexan. Add Boston butt making sure it is completely submerged in brine, cover, and let sit in refrigerator for a minimum of 8 hours. 12 hours is ideal.

Douglas Baldwin's 

Brine in a 7–10% salt, 0–3% sugar water solution (70–100 grams salt and 0–30 grams sugar per 1 liter) in the refrigerator for 12–24 hours.

Links

• This is a very good, informative link to cooking pork spare ribs Sous Vide, along with brining the ribs.  BTW - Douglas Baldwin, who made the video this link points to, has an excellent site for cooking Sous Vide, as well as an excellent book.

Banjo's recipe: Pork Spare Ribs with Sous Vide

Meat
I picked up a package of Spare Ribs from Costco.  The package weight about 9 lbs.  This contains two (2) whole racks.

Preparing

• Prepare the brine (Banjo's Pork Spare Ribs Brine).
• Cut the pork spare ribs into sections small enough to fit into several vacuum pouches.  I will not place into the vacuum pouches at this time because I want to brine them first.
• Place the spare ribs into the brine.
• Place brine into the refrigerator for 48 hours
• After 48 hours, remove spare ribs from brine and blot ribs dry.
• Prepare any special sauce and place sauce into vacuum bags where you will be putting your spare ribs.
• Place ribs into vacuum bags and seal.  
• Note: if you have difficulty with this step with applying vacuum without sucking fluids out of pouch, then use Zip Lock Freezer Bags gallon size to put sauce and ribs into, then use 'water immersion' method to evacuate the air, or leave the sauce out.
• Note: if you prefer, you can put a dry rub on the meat instead, which should allow you to use your vacuum device to seal.

Brining
I will be brining the pork spare ribs.  Here is Banjo's Recipe

Cooking

• Cook for 48 hours at 135 dF.  
• Note: if this is your first time cooking Sous Vide, or low temperature cooking, then don't get alarmed about the low temperature for pork.  We are cooking the meat for a long enough time at this temperature in order to pasteurize the meat and to also tenderize it.  It will be slightly red in color because it will come be medium well when we take it out at 135 dF.  There are two things associated with this cooking - pasteurization and tenderizeation.  Per Douglas Baldwin's book, pasteurization will take 1 hour at 130 dF for meat 1.25 inches thick.  Notice we are above this temperature, and at a much longer time, so we are definitely pasteurized!  However, we are going this extra length of time in order to tenderize the meat....it will be "falling off of the bone tender" when we are through.  
• If you will be 'toasting' the ribs on a grill-with-a-dome, then 30 minutes before taking them out of their pouches, heat up the grill, placing your charcoal on one side of the grill while leaving the other side open so your ribs won't be directly over the hot coals (indirect heat).  I try to get my dome up to 400 dF or hotter - you aren't going to cook the ribs because they are already cooked - you are just trying to toast the outside, so hot and fast!
• In inclement weather I will toast our ribs under our oven's broiler. Simply place them in a pan to catch the drippings, meat side up, about 4 inches below the coils.  Place it on "hi", and monitor.  Since they are already cooked, I'm just toasting.  I leave the door open so I can watch to decide when to pull off.  This probably took at least 10 minutes (sorry, I forgot to time this).
• Remove ribs from  vacuum pouch.  You can either eat them at this point, or continue on with 'toasting' to brown.
• Toasting: Rinse the ribs off so you get the salt off of the meat.  (I didn't do this the first time, and they were too salty).  Blot the ribs dry, (this is important as it help speed up the process of toasting the meat) then place the ribs onto the side of your grill opposite the hot coals.  I like to put a aluminum drip pan under them to keep the oil from getting all over my grill.  Toast for about 10 - 20 minutes, or they acquire the browning you desire.  Your goal is to not leave them in the dome for very long, as you are wanting to toast the outside without additional cooking on the inside.

Links

• Banjo's Pork Spare Ribs Brine
• This is a very good, informative link to cooking pork spare ribs Sous Vide, along with brining the ribs.  BTW - Douglas Baldwin, who made the video this link points to, has an excellent site for cooking Sous Vide, as well as an excellent book.

Low Temperature Cooking - Some Safety Considerations

Note: See References below for links.

General
Cooking safely should be the goal of all of us that cook for ourselves as well as others.  It's easy to assume we cook safe, but unless we use an accurate thermometer, and also know the length of time a food has been cooked, our assumptions may be incorrect.

Low Temperature Cooking
Low temperature cooking offers us a method of cooking that:

• can tenderize foods.  We can choose cheaper cuts of meat that are tough and make them tender.
• retain moisture and fat for a more flavorful experience
• be convenient

Some important concepts
(Note: a lot of the insight in this section is provided by Douglas E. Baldwin's excellent and well researched book A practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.

• Heating food: the center of the food should reach at least 130°F (54.4°C) within 6 hours to prevent the toxin producing pathogen Clostridium perfringens from multiplying to dangerous levels.  Your heat should be sufficient, for the size of the cut of food you are cooking, to heat to a temperature of 130 dF, or higher, within 6 hours of removing the food from the cooler.  Since larger pieces of food require the heating temperatures to migrate a bigger distance before reaching the center of the food, larger pieces of food will take longer to reach 130 dF than will smaller pieces of food.  If the size of the meat is so large as to preclude the heat from reaching a temperature at or greater than 130 dF within 6 hours at the center of the food, then a higher cooking temperature must be used, or the food should be cut to smaller thicknesses.    [A practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking]
• Placing warm, large pieces of food into a refrigerator may take a long time to cool sufficiently to reduce the chance of problem bacterial growth.  Thus, the food should be cooled via a water-ice mixture (50%/50%) in order to quick chill the food.  You can place the food into pouches, such as Zip Lock, removing all or most of the air so the food isn't insulated from the cool water by the air, in order to prevent dilution of the food with the water-ice mixture.
• Raw or unpasteurized food must never be served to highly susceptible or immune compromised populations. Even for immune competent individuals, it is important that raw and unpasteurized foods are consumed before food pathogens have had time to multiply to harmful levels. With this in mind, the US Food Code requires that such food can only be between 41°F (5°C) and 130°F (54.4°C) for less than 4 hours.  [A practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking]
• A refrigerator (not the freezer section) should be set to maintain a temperature at or below 38 dF.  Foods held below 41 dF can retard bacterial growth sufficiently so that the food is safe for up to 10 days.  Foods held below 38 dF can retard bacterial growth sufficiently so the food is safe for up to 31 days.[A practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking]

Testing Thermometers (future section)

References (future section)

• Book Website: A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking by Douglas E. Baldwin  To purchase from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/product/dp/0984493603/
• 
  

Connecting the Dots - Insight into Sous Vide Hamburgers

I'm working on a recipe for Hamburgers / Cheeseburgers.  But I wanted to share some interesting insight while I'm testing a recipe.

I already had "one dot" on slow, low temperature cooking - the tenderization of tough foods (think slow cooked BBQ here or stews) through low temperatures for an extended length of time.

I also was aware of "another dot" that allows one to cook to lower temperatures but for longer periods of time in order to pasteurize foods.

What I had failed to do was to connect the "two dots".

In recent years, the USDA has recommended higher cooking temperatures for things like ground beef (hamburgers), eggs, etc, to elevated temperatures of 160 dF or so.  In other words, past well done - think charred little tooth-breakers.  They wanted us to do this in order to pasteurize the meat so it did not represent a health hazard.

Which means we need to talk about pasteurization a little bit - not too much, but a little bit.

To pasteurize is not to sterilize - sterilization means to kill all of the 'bugs', whereas pasteurization means to reduce the amount of them, something like 1 million to 1.  So  to pasteurize is to reduce 'the bugs' to the point where their numbers are able to be handled by our bodies.  So in particular where something is cooked, like ground beef, it is important to pasteurize the food before consuming.

However, in the case of hamburger, cooking at normal temperatures, pasteurization is done by heating the ground beef at a temperature high enough to kill the 'bugs' in the short amount of time the hamburger is cooked.

However, there is more to pasteurization.  The way the 'bugs' are killed is temperature and time.  A very high temperature, for a very short time, will pasteurize the food.  A medium temperature for a medium length of time will also pasteurize the food.  And, a low temperature for a long length of time will also pasteurize the food.

From making sure I was producing safe BBQ, I knew all of this from the research I had done.

The Sous Vide method (the translation means, literally, to cook in a vacuum), at its simplest form, is place the food within pouches, then immerse the pouches into a water-bath with a precisely controlled temperature, then cooked at a low temperature for a time sufficient to pasteurize the food.  Cooking it for a long period of time does not over cook the food, it just brings the food up to that temperature.  Cooking it for an extended length of time, typically way past the point of pasteurization, makes the food very tender.

I have been focused on tenderization of the food as the main benefit of cooking in the Sous Vide style, which requires fairly long times.

The two dots that I failed to connect were the cooking long enough to pasteurize, but no longer, as depending on the food itself, I may not need to tenderize.

So this is where the hamburgers come in (as well as any other food like soft-cooked eggs, etc): I can cook them at rare, medium rare, medium - all that would have been below the USDA's recommendation - but still end up with safe, pasteurized food.

So think about this - safe pasteurized foods attainable at lower temperatures but cooked for longer lengths of time:

• hamburgers at medium rare.
• runny eggs.
• chicken breasts that have juice.
• pork that has juice (BTW - the new USDA recommended temperatures for pork is 160 dF).
• home made mayonnaise, which uses raw egg - the eggs can be pasteurized now.
• turkey breasts that are juicy.

We are cooking our first batch of hamburgers right now using our Sous Vide Supreme, and are using a target temperature of 137 dF - about medium rare.  I'll finish them in an iron skillet to toast them.  A better choice may be to finish on the grill, or if you are lucky enough to have one, a Big Green Egg smoker.

I can't wait!

UPDATE: The hamburgers were moist and very flavorful!  I expect this will be the way we cook hamburger going forward.

USDA Lowers Pork Cooking Temperature to 145 dF

USDA Revises Recommended Cooking Temperature for All Whole Cuts of Meat, Including Pork, to 145 °F Cooking Temperature for Ground Pork, Beef, Veal, Lamb remains at 160 °F

Banjo's NC Style Pulled Pork BBQ using the Big Green Egg

Note: after posting this, I found a lot of formatting issues because I copied it from a document. I'm working to correct this problem.  Also, please note: I've realized my post was poorly written previously, and thus caused some confusion regarding temperatures - confusing meat temperature with egg chamber cooking temperature. I'm working to correct that and am sorry for the confusion I have caused.


This isn't an approach to cooking fast BBQ. It's an approach that yields the most flavorful and moist BBQ. This requires extended times at lower temperatures. The times must be extended because the lower temperature takes longer to make the meat tender. Thus this cooking method targets 24 hours at 180 - 190 dF for the egg chamber while maintaining the meat temperature at about 160 dF. Note the USDA (5/24/11) has just recommended 145 dF as a safe temperature for pork - this is the meat temperature, not the egg chamber temperature. I've not cooked it in the Big Green Egg at this meat 145 dF temperature yet, as it would probably take 48 hours to get it both tender and pasteurized at this low a temperature.


Goal

You are trying to solve several things when you cook BBQ:

• Pasteurize the meat.
• Tenderize the meat
• Retain moisture
• Retain fat
• Smoke the meat to add flavor

This post is designed to produce the most flavorful BBQ while being tender, and higher cooking chamber temperatures don't meet that requirements - it results in dried out BBQ.

Start around 6:00 PM Day 1, Pull Off around 6:00 PM next day. Elapsed time approximately 24 hours.

Wind
during cooking time should not be high and/or gusty, as it will cause excessive temperatures.I like 24 hours for personal preference. I find it works well, and the start and stop times are convenient enough I can do it during the week if I want.

Note: This doesn't include a rub, and doesn't include a sauce. If using a rub, put on at least 2 hours before placing meat onto grill. Try tasting all of your BBQ without a sauce. If it needs a sauce, then it hasn't been cooked properly.



Cooking with the BGE:
With the lid closed, the BGE is an OVEN that burns charcoal. Repeat after me: With the lid closed, the BGE is an OVEN! I have a lot of people ask how to cook a turkey on a BGE - I tell them: With the lid closed, the BGE is an OVEN so cook times and temperatures just like you would in your kitchen OVEN.  However, if you have air flowing through the cooking chamber at a high rate, then it functions more as a convection oven than a regular household oven.  Convection ovens, because of the air flow, are moving hotter air by the food all of the time, instead of having it just layered around the food; this can reduce the amount of time necessary to cook some foods.  It can also cause foods to dry out faster than a regular oven.

Hot fires give off a lot if infrared energy, which can be absorbed by the part of the meat facing the hot coals. So usually you will need something to block the infrared from directly reaching the meat - aluminum roasting pans work well. The bottom damper controls the amount of air coming into the BGE. This determines the amount of oxygen allowed to reach the fire and thus the amount of combustion from taking place. Too much air results in a too hot fire. Too little air will result in a too cool fire. Too little air can cause fire to die.

Restarting a fire is a big hassle, and to be avoided - you'll have to take the meat off, the grill off, relight some charcoal - avoid it.

The top damper controls the amount of air leaving the BGE. It too controls combustion. If you have the bottom damper right, but the top too closed, then not enough exhaust air can escape, therefore not enough fresh oxygen can enter, and the BGE can go out.

The top damper should be open slightly more then the bottom damper. This is because air expands when heated, thus the exhaust needs a bigger opening then the inlet damper in order for the same weight of air to move through both dampers. At the temperatures we are cooking in, the dampers are really close to being shut. If you have an old BGE, then your seals around the lid and base units may leak too much, and allow too much oxygen air flow into the BGE, resulting in too much heat. The bottom damper (the whole slide arrangement, top, sides and bottom) in particular needs to be watched for air leaks; if you can't get your temperatures down low enough, the inlet air damper is probably leaking air around the seals. No seals are encountered with the exhaust damper.

Currently, none of the exhaust dampers supplied or purchased from the BGE company will allow you to shut down the exhaust enough. Some, even though they appear to be completely closed, are so constructed that even when they appear completely closed, oxygen air will start to go down one side to feed the fire, and exhaust up the other side with a too high temperature.  For this reason, you need to find something else that isn't combustible, like a flat piece of steel, or a ceramic tile.

When cooking, the outside of the BGE will be too warm to leave your hand on for more then 5 - 10 seconds, but won't burn you just to touch. It will take it a while to reach this temperature, maybe 30 minutes. Calibrate your hand! Do this by moving your hand through the exhaust flow, each time at the same speed and height. Learn to use this instead of a thermometer. The air inside the BGE can become stratified, and thus fool a thermometer; the exhaust is pretty well mixed, and gives a better overall temperature indication. Thermometers can fall out of calibration - your hand never will.

After you've placed your meat on, the temperature should stabilize in about 10 minutes. That's when you would make adjustments. Don't make big adjustments - tiny tiny adjustments. Adjust, wait; adjust, wait. Opening the dampers increases the heat; closing makes lower temperatures. Having too open a top exhaust damper can cause a low pressure in the BGE, causing air to pull in more air through the bottom inlet damper. It will also pull in from leaks around the bottom damper, bottom damper seals and lid seals even though the bottom damper is completely closed. Wind and gusts also cause this same event, so in windy times, close down the inlet damper more then usual. If you've completely closed the bottom damper (with no air coming in, the fire will starve for air and go out - if your seals are good) and the temperature stays too hot, then you've got air leaks.

The BGE is an OVEN. You are cooking in an OVEN. Nothing you are doing here is magic - you can do the exact same thing in your kitchen oven, if you can get the temperatures low enough, but without any smoke flavor. You can cook turkeys here, at the very same temperatures and time as in the kitchen, because both are OVENS.

Learning to Cook BBQ
Get a notebook of some sort - spiral wound small is better. In it, record the date, the environment (windy, temperature, rain, etc), the weight of the meat, the cost of the meat, the starting time, the ending time, how easy/hard it was to pull apart, how much moisture, how much smoke. Use this to troubleshoot and make corrections.

Cooking in strong gusty wind should be avoided, as it will cause big temperature swings as more air is sucked out of the BGE, thus drawing more fresh oxygen air into the combustion chamber.

Never, ever, let your lid stay up causing a hot fire! If you do this, and then close the lid, you have a hot fire that is starving for oxygen. If, at this point, you were to open the lid, the oxygenated air would rush in, the fire would flash and you could get burned! I've lost hair on my hands and arms from this!

If you let the BGE get too hot, it's difficult to bring the temperature down, and will take considerable time. That's because, if you were to shut the dampers down now to cool down the fire, you may starve the fire too much, with the result that it goes out. So you should  step-down-close the dampers - close a little, wait 10 minutes, close down some more. However, you may have already toasted whatever you were trying to cook.

At the start of cooking, when the meat is cold, the meat is more forgiving to temperature swings then if at the end of cooking.

I prefer to use deboned pork so I can put the maximum meat onto the grill surface. It's also a lot less work and faster to prepare after cooking has finished.

On my BGE, there are 4 total ceramic inserts. The bottom most (1), then a small plate with air holes (2), then a larger ring collar (3), then a final ring collar (4). I place charcoal up to the top of the larger ring collar (3) and bottom of the final ring collar (4).

Cooking BBQ:
BBQ is Pork. BBQ is Pork Shoulder (whole shoulder, or split into two pieces, it becomes the 'Butt' and the 'Picnic'). Pork is cooked done at 145 dF per new USDA guidelines, but the references in this post will refer to 160 dF as the internal meat temperature target. At some point I intend to do some testing at the lower temperatures, but have not done so yet.

Use a meat thermometer.

Good BBQ has a lot of moisture. Fat is flavor. Fat renders out at increased temperatures, just like butter out of the fridge - it runs out. Lower temperatures retain more fat. I use very lean pieces of Pork, and need as much of the fat to be retained as possible.

The higher the temperature of the BGE and the longer the cooking time, the higher the internal temperature of the meat. The meat will reach a plateau temperature and will hold there as long as there is enough moisture remaining to wick away heat. As soon as the moisture is gone, the internal meat temperature will start to climb. This is the same way your body functions - moisture wicks away heat, keeping you cooler. If you loose all of your moisture, your internal temperature will climb.

Too low a cooking chamber temperature and without long enough time will result in the meat not being pasteurized, which is dangerous.  Therefore, you need to have the meat come up to the 160 dF temperature for a sufficient length of time to pasteurize it (see USDA for details on this).

The lower the temperature you cook at, the longer it takes the meat to reach the desired temperature and to tenderize. However, cooking for too long dries out the meat. Your goal is pull-apart tender, and maximum moisture. Adjusting temperatures and length of time will affect this. Better meat is always produced at lower temperatures that yield safe pasteurized meat, and will require longer times. Since we want the meat to reach a temperature of at least 160dF, then we need an oven temperature more-then 160 dF.

The meat is muscle; the muscle fibers have a protein wound around them. This protein is tough.

The best BBQ doesn't need any sauce. Learn what it taste like before adding sauce. I recommend leaving sauces and rubs off when just starting out, so you can better judge the quality of your cooking efforts on the meat.

I always take the skin off. I do this because it otherwise adds a lot of grease to the BGE, it keeps the outside 'bark' from forming where the skin is intact, and it keeps the smoke from getting to all sides of the meat.

Moisture that moves from the inside of the meat to the surface (sweating), will dry there (Maillard Browning). There is a lot of flavor here! This is called 'bark', as in 'tree bark'. It will be a little tough, like beef tack or jerky.

Smoke will produce a pink ring on the inside of the meat, just below the surface. This is done; the pink indicates smoking, not rawness.  It is a chemical reaction from the smoke.

Lump charcoal is preferred. Briquettes sometimes have chemical binders to keep it together. You can make your own lump if you want to - ask me how!

Do not use lighter fluid, use olive oil instead, sprayed onto a couple of pieces of paper, balled up and put under a chimney lighter.

When pouring the charcoal into the BGE, try to keep all the fine dust particles out - they inhibit air flow at first until they burn away.

Big pieces of meat don't change temperature real quick, so some temperature excursions can be tolerated without ruining the BBQ. For that same reason, you can also add/subtract time without too much of an impact. For instance, maybe you'd prefer to pull the meat off at 22 hours instead of 24 hours, or go to 25 hours - both should work out fine.

 Take the meat out a couple of hours in advance and leave it on the counter uncovered, placing into a pan or foil 'boat' to capture any runoff. The internal temperature straight out of the refrigerator is around 36dF to 40dF, which is really quite cold to start cooking with. Any bacteria build up during this time will be killed off during the cooking/pasteurization process. I generally avoid punching or pushing holes into the meat for spices, as that would transfer some of the outside bacteria into the inside; however, cooking long enough to pasteurize should prevent a problem if you like to put herbs into the meat, or inject the meat.

I don't like to handle raw meat as you will contaminate everything you touch.  Envision it has having paint on your hands, and everything you touch will have a blot of contaminated paint on it.  I always wear latex gloves. I go through multiple gloves during one cooking session. I never want to touch anything with gloves that have touched raw meat. Sometimes I put on multiple pairs of gloves, other times I just pull off a dirty pair and put on a clean pair. This also keeps the meat clean - I'm not moving some contamination to the meat. 

When checking internal meat temperature, always insert the probe into the middle of the meat, at the thickest point of the meat.

Materials:

• 2 - 10# bags of lump charcoal. Publix carries Duraflame, which works well, if you prefer briquettes. They also sell lump charcoal. One bag is more then enough.
• Hickory chunks
• Olive Oil (used to soak paper placed under chimney starter)
• Charcoal starter chimney
• 2 boneless pork shoulders from Costco. About 12 - 15 lbs total weight.  Will cost around $25 - $30. About 1/3 of the weight will be lost during cooking. No skin.
• Zip-Lock Freezer bags. Quart size recommended.
• Large aluminum roasting pans from Costco. These are very large, and will need to be collapsed somewhat in order to fit on the BGE.
• Ceramic tile large enough to use as an exhaust damper.
• Work gloves that will allow you to work over coals. Preferred length is up to elbows. Can be bought at BBQ Galore store.  
• Pliers to remove grill from BGE. (optional)
• Some sort of rack to sit into roasting pan to keep pork from making direct contact with roasting pan.
• Needle nose pliers to poke some 1/2" holes in roasting pan.
• Heavy Duty aluminum foil.
• Chlorox wipes for wiping up counter surfaces where raw pork may have made contact.
• Very large forks (2) used to pull meat apart after cooking. You can use your hands instead, but it will be very hot. (optional)
• Large mixing bowl - large enough to hold 10# of meat for mixing in spices and sauce.
• Chef's large knife used to cut some outside 'bark' as it can sometimes be tough. (optional)
• Large chopping block
• Small cooler and ice to hold raw meat for transport from Costco to home. Meat can be held in this for several days if preferred.
• Enough ice to replenish as it melts. Drain off liquid so meat isn't swimming. Will need to be sanitized afterwards.
• Hamburger buns.
• Food tongs.
• Small, instant read digital meat thermometer for checking internal heat temperature.
• We are going to be cooking at very low temperatures, with a very low air-flow, so it's important that the BGE be clear of ash to start with so nothing restricts the air flow, except the dampers.
• The fire will, for the most part, burn in the middle of the charcoal, in an inverted cone shape. As it burns down, some charcoal will fall inwards from outer edges. Hickory chunks should be placed near the center, intermixed with the charcoal from the bottom up.

Prep:
Cleaning BGE: - completely clean out. Remove grill and all ceramic inserts, then pull out all ash. Does not need to be washed. Reinsert all ceramic components.

 Spread some aluminum foil on your counter, large enough to hold the roasting pan. Form a 'boat' (lip all the way around) so no juices will run out onto counter or floor. Place pan into 'boat'.

Punch 1/2 inch holes all around bottom of aluminum roasting pan (needle nose pliers work well) so heat and smoke can bath meat from bottom up. Put the meat onto the rack in the roasting pan. Make sure the two (2) pieces of meat don't touch each other (or minimize best you can). Don't stack or overlap, as this will slow heat and smoke transfer to meat.

Fill BGE with lump charcoal up to the top of the ceramic first ring collar (3 - see 'Cooking with BGE' above if this isn't clear ). Intermix Hickory wood chunks or shavings as you add charcoal.

Open completely the inlet air damper (bottom of BGE) for starting charcoal. Be sure to slide to almost closed (about 1/4 inch opening) later as temperature starts to climb towards your cooking temperature of 180 - 190 dF.

Remove any exhaust dampers while starting charcoal. Be sure to slide to almost closed (about 1/4 inch opening) later when smoking meat!!!

Place grill onto BGE. Fill chimney starter with charcoal. Loosely ball up 4 - 5 paper towels. Soak paper towels with a small amount of olive oil, then place under starter chimney, placing chimney onto grill towards center of grill. With lid open, light the paper towels. OK to slide towards back if BGE handle is in path of exhaust. After flames die down, it's OK to close the lid of BGE. Leave in chimney with BGE lid closed, checking periodically, until all coals are ignited. It will take about 20 minutes to light all charcoal in chimney. Remove chimney and set on non-flammable surface. Charcoal is still in chimney. Using pliers (grill will be hot), remove grill so you can add charcoal from chimney. Pour lit charcoal into BGE, trying to keep concentrated in center of BGE. Set empty chimney starter aside on non-flammable surface.

Using pliers (grill is still hot), place grill onto BGE. Close lid immediately - your goal now is to keep the charcoal from running away into a high heat, so you want to control the amount of air allowed in to BGE. Close bottom damper, leaving 1/8 to 1/4 inch opening. Close top damper, leaving about 1/4" inch opening. Leave to settle out for about 10 minutes.

Open lid. Quickly place roasting pan with meat onto grill. You may need to collapse in ends of roasting pan to get it to fit. Make sure the BGE lid can completely close. Quickly close lid. Recheck dampers to ensure proper setting: 1/8 to 1/4 open, with exhaust damper slightly more open then inlet damper.

You can put a thermometer in the lid if you like. Temperature should be somewhere in the range of 180 - 200, but not more then this. Some thermometers can get out of adjustment easily. Run your hand through the exhaust to feel the temperature. Always do this, at the same height and speed, so you can 'calibrate' your hand and begin to know what's normal for this style of cooking.

For the first couple of hours, run your hand through the exhaust every hour, to ensure it's not too hot. After 3 - 4 hours, you can pretty much be confident it will work for the remaining time without any further damper adjustments.

Unless the wind changes, you should not need to make adjustments to the dampers after the first hour or two, but sometimes you may need to make an adjustment.

Always make slight adjustments, then wait 10 minutes before determining if this was enough or too much. First thing in the morning, again check your exhaust temperature by running your hand through the exhaust. Adjust dampers as needed. See 'troubleshooting' below if your fire has gone out.

Sometimes, when you place the meat into the BGE, if it's been deboned, smaller pieces can be moved away from the main meat piece. Those will cook quicker, so you can take those off around noon, which would be 18 hours.

At around 6:00 PM, remove roasting pan with meat, quickly close lid and close all dampers tight to preserve charcoal for future use. Your goal here is for the coals to go out, so you want to starve the fire by eliminating inlet oxygen.

Take roasting pan and place into some aluminum foil, otherwise the holes will let grease leak onto everything as you walk to kitchen. Place aluminum wrapped pan onto something in kitchen to keep from direct hot contact with countertop, such as cutting board.  I sometimes put it onto top of stove if stove isn't in use.

Take the internal temperature of the meat and record it in your notebook. It should be at around 160dF. Let it sit for 10 - 20 minutes for meat to cool down some. This reduces internal expansion of hot liquids in the meat, so less fluids will drain out.

Set meat onto large cutting board, one piece at a time. Using two very large forks (salad serving style), one in each hand, pull in forks in opposite direction to separate meat into small sizes suitable for placing onto hamburger buns. Place into very large mixing bowl. After all meat has been pulled apart, add whatever spices and sauces you want on the meat, using forks to pull up from side bottom and onto top of middle, going around the whole bowl several times until thoroughly mixed.

Using food tongs, fill up each Zip Lock Quart bags about 3/4 full with meat, until all meat has been placed into bags. You can keep out any for immediate consumption if preferred. 

Decide how much you want to freeze. On those bags, push meat flat into bag until bag is as flat and wide as possible. This will aid cooling in freezer and allow it to freeze faster. Place bags to freeze into freezer, do not stack on top of each other. Try to arrange so air can touch all sides of bag for fastest freezing.

Eating
It's best when hot off of the smoker. If you would like to reheat, place onto platter, put into microwave, heat at 20% - 30% power, so you don't heat up too fast. This allows maximum moisture retention, which is your goal.

If you've redone several times and it's getting dry, then you can add a little bit of melted butter or bacon grease - better would be to throw it away and cook up another batch! Figure on 1/3# per person, twice that amount for active teenage boys.

Troubleshooting
Bottom of meat is rock hard - over cooked: Too many holes in roasting pan, fire too hot, fire too near roasting pan.

Meat is dry: Take meat off sooner, or cook at lower temperature, or both. Cooked at too hot and/or too long, or both.

Meat doesn't fall apart. Not cooked long enough or cooked at too low a
temperature or both.

If you've overcooked and it's dry, throw it away and start over. If you can't do that, add melted butter (better yet is bacon fat grease) and mix it in prior to adding spices and sauces.
Meat has a bitter taste on the outside. This is creosote, and if whole chunks of wood are used, is caused by not allowing enough air to feed the fire. Use less wood chunks, or burn the fire hotter.

Everything was OK when I went in for the night, but on checking in the morning, the BGE exhaust was cold - my fire had gone out (I've only had this happen once). Well, this won't be your best BBQ, but you will want to try and salvage it. Close all dampers. Open the lid, using the meat thermometer, read the temperature of the meat. If the temperature is very low (say around 100 or lower), you may want to refire the grill using the methods above,
starting with lighting charcoal in the starter chimney, or move to a kitchen oven at finish at 325dF. If the meat is at 120 or more, then I would probably move it into the kitchen and finish in the kitchen oven at a lower temperature setting.

If you use the kitchen oven and your goal is still to make pulled pork BBQ, then set the thermostat for the lowest setting, and place an oven thermometer onto the same shelf as the meat so you can get an idea how it's cooking.  I would set it for at least 220dF, as kitchen ovens can vary around a lot - sometimes as much as 50dF. You may not end up with pullable BBQ; you may have to slice it or chop it instead. Continue to heat until you get the internal temperature to 160dF, then take off and prepare. Higher temperatures will cook quicker, but I would suggest not exceeding 275 or 325, depending on how big a hurry you are in. I can't give you any estimated times, as there are too many questions about how long it may have already cooked before the fire went out.  If the temperature was below 100dF and you don't want to wait, then set the temperature to 325dF, and cook until meat thermometer indicates 160dF, at which point you can take off and chop the
meat. The longer you can leave the meat cooking at 220dF, the more tender it will be, being careful not to dry the meat out (internal meat temperature will start to climb without oven
temperature being any higher).

Final - Test of Low Temp Oven

Today, at noon, we tested the results of the Low Temperature Oven.

The meat, a 6.1 pound Top Round piece of beef, has cooked for 2.5 days (60 hours). It started at a temp of 200 dF for 3 hours. then switched to a setpoint of 140 dF. Because of a high deadband (134 - 146) due to the 'dusk-to-dawn' (DTD)limitations, I later lowered the setpoint to 137 (131 - 143).

We just had lunch with the meat.

The meat was cooked to a perfect medium rare. The meat itself was tender, but most of the gristle had not been converted.

The meat was not overcooked anywhere. There was at most 1 Tbsp of fat drippings in the pan. As noted previously, this is a very, very lean cut of meat. It therefore did not have any fat to carry flavor, which resulted in the meat being bland.

The test itself is a successful test of the concept and the equipment. Because it was a test, we used the cheapest cut of meat we could find, a tough, very lean piece of Top Round. It is not a cut of meat I ever intend to use again by itself. It may make good Philly Steaks, and/or sandwiches. We intend to cut thin slices and make sandwiches with some of the remaining meat.

Will conduct a later test, I intend to use a better cut of meat with more fat in it, cook it at a higher temperature (this was a little too rare for our likes), (I'll try 145) but not for a longer time.

Because this is a oven with no air circulation going on, it does not transfer heat to the meat as fast as a Sous Vide water immersion bath does, so it takes considerably longer to tenderize the meat. This same cut of meat cooked in our Sous Vide cooker would have been fork tender, and all of the gristle would have been converted.

The crust on this was too dried out. It was just tough, not a 'crust'.

So, results: equipment worked great. Bad choice for a meat cut. Temperature a little low for our tastes.

3rd Day - Low Temperature Oven Test

It's 10:40 AM, Thursday April 7, 2011. I started the test at 10:00 PM on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. So I am 36 hours into the test. I plan on going to noon tomorrow, for a total of around 60 hours, or 2.5 days.

So far, the temperature controller has worked flawlessly. However, the 'dawn-to-dusk' (DTD), as mentioned in the previous post, appears to have been designed so as to have a deliberate delay. This delay is causing the temperature to swing a little wider (known as deadband) than I would like - it's settled out at +/- 7 dF. Because of this, at a setpoint of 140, the temperature was getting up to around 146, which is too high. So yesterday I lowered the setpoint to 137. With this setpoint, the highest reading to date is 143.95, which is rare to have happen.....most of the time it gets up around 141, while the low temperature has been 130.65, and most of the time gets no lower than 133.

I forgot to mention it, but the temperature controller is taking a temperature once per second, and thus making decisions on whether to heat (250 watt bulb in oven turned on), or coast (bulb in oven turned off).

Also, in the past, for my BBQ air inlet damper controller I developed (1999), I used Atmel AVR microcontrollers. I'm still using those, but now in the form of an Arduino. The Arduino, which has an Atmel AVR on it, really only gives me a hardware platform, with a thermocouple 'shield'. My previous development used an AVR 12-bit ADC and relays, so I had to do more development to convert microVolts to temperature, and it used some relays to control the damper motor rather than the DTD commercial product I'm using for this test. Not sure yet which direction I'll go for future product of low temperature oven. This is the Arduino UNO, which uses an ATMEGA328 microcontroller.

So things appear to be on-track for a successful test.

Test results will be eaten at noon tomorrow!

2nd Day - Low Temperature Oven Test

Yesterday, I worked on the software until I got it complete enough to use. It's not 'production ready' yet, but close enough for use as a test.

I spent several hours running tests without any meat in the oven. The first test had a 100 watt bulb placed into the oven, but it was unable to get the oven temperature up past 175 dF or so. I needed a new, higher wattage bulb. Since we are on a vacation island (Edisto Island), things are a little difficult to come by, but I was in luck - the Ace Hardware store, located about a mile off-island, had 250 watt heating bulbs (the guy said they were for keeping biddies (young chickens) warm). I bought one, along with a 200 watt bulb (total was $11.50!) and came back and plugged it in. With the 250 watt bulb, I was able to take the oven up to about 230 dF, so since my starting setpoint was going to be 200 dF, I was in business!

So, at 10 PM, I got the beef covered in a rub, then popped it into the oven.

The starting temperature is 200 dF. I intended, after about 3 hours, to lower the setpoint to 140 dF (when I get home where I have more electronic components, I intend to automate this step too). The oven, which had been at 200 dF from an earlier no-meat test, took 1.5 hours to come back up to 200 dF. This effect was caused by: 1- having to leave the door open a long time while I worked with getting the meat in the door (the bulb takes up the bottom half of the oven - it's a very small condo studio oven), and 2- the meat, at 6.1 pounds, is a big heat soak. So anyway, the oven was back at 200 dF at about 11:30 PM.

I let the meat cook at this temperature until 2:00 AM, at which point I lowered the oven temperature setpoint to 140 dF.

Observations on the first test:
1- Ovens aren't all that efficient. They could use more insulation.
2- the temperature controller I had designed, coded and built, worked perfectly.
3 - The 'dawn-to-dusk' (DTD) controller I was using as an optical switch (my controller outputs light from an LED taped to the DTD photocell) to turn on/off the oven heat source (the 250 watt bulb), has a long delay built into it. For instance, if I turn my LED off, which will result in the DTD turning on it's switch to supply power to the oven bulb, there's about a 1 minute delay before this happens. It's the same in the other direction - when my controller turns its LED on, the DTD takes about 1 minute before it turns the oven lamp heater bulb back off. I think this is probably designed on purpose into the DTD, as it makes the DTD less sensitive to transient light in it's designed use: e.g., a passing car's lights wouldn't cause the DTD to cycle off-on as it passes. When I get home, I'll pop this device open and have a look at the electronics - I'm expecting a simple capacitor-resistor timing circuit to be in place to slow down the response time.

This built-in lag time on the DTD is resulting in larger-than-desired deadband, or temperature swings between high and low. The deadband is about 10 dF. With a setpoint of 140 dF, the lowest reading is about 134 dF, while the highest reading is about 145 dF. This is too gross a control, so I'll improve it before I'm finished with this project. I want to have a deadband of +/- 1 dF.

I'm planning on letting the test run for a total of 48 - 72 hours. I would like to go the whole 72 hours but we've got some friends coming in to visit, and the 72 hours may not be a good fit, so will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the test is going, and smelling(!) great!

Edisto Beach Test - Low Temperature Oven

Today, I'm planning on starting a new test with a low temperature oven.

Yesterday I went into Charleston to Home Depot in order to buy the parts necessary for the test oven construction.

First, I'm going to modify the existing code I wrote for the temperature controller. This controller is using a thermocouple and a microcontroller. The temperature controller will drive an LED using inverse logic; when it doesn't want heat, it will turn the LED on; when it does want heat, it will turn the LED off.

The LED will shine into a 'dusk-to-dawn' photocell switch I bought at Home Depot for less then $10. When the 'dusk-to-dawn' switch sees light, it switches off its electrical output; when no light is present, it switches on its electrical output, and thus the reason for the reverse LED output above.

I plan on driving a simple 100 watt bulb for the heat generation. This may not be enough, so I can add additional bulbs if necessary, up to 600 watts, before I start hitting the first of the current limits.

While here on vacation, I'm limited to what I can use or build for an oven. At home I have a large clay pot (ala Alton Brown) that I use for an oven, but I didn't bring that with us on our vacation trip. So I've been scrounging around to figure out something cheap and safe to use. Since my temperatures are so low (it won't exceed 200 dF), anything can be used, even a cardboard box. However, we are so cramped in this little studio condo, I don't want to put anything else in here. I can't do it outside because the dang raccoons are getting into everything! I did buy a small cooler for the task, but on the drive back home, I realized I could just use the oven in the condo's stove and be done with it. I'll just place the bulb in the bottom of the oven, and control the heat in the oven this way.

My test will consist of a large piece of beef round tip, 6.1 pounds.

I plan on cooking it for at least 2 days, possibly 3.

I'm going to modify my controller so it will maintain a 200 dF temperature for the first 4 - 6 hours, until the internal temperature of the meat comes up to 130 dF, then switch to a lower temperature of 140 dF for the oven, which I will maintain for the next 2 - 3 days.

I'll post an update later today on the oven construction and software mods. My wife needs the oven through lunch today, so it will be early afternoon before launch.

A BBQ Book

While adding my recent low temperature BBQ post, I could not seem to quit adding stuff. It finally occurred to me, I need to put this into a book.

So yesterday, using a great free tool - FreeMind, I've mapped out a book on BBQ. I'm calling it (at least right now):

Souther BBQ - An Engineer's Perspective.

While I haven't written a word yet, I can say, so far, it's mapped out to 14 chapters! Seems a little long to me, so it may be too granular; time will tell!

BBQ and Low Temperature Cooking

This blog actually started out somewhere else that I was going to go, but it took on a life of its own, so I just started following it. I hope to get to the direction I was heading in a future post!

If you've been reading this blog from the start, then you will be aware that I have been cooking BBQ for a long time - I started trying (!) in 1986. It was hard back then because we were living in Florida, there wasn't any BBQ insight available that would lend insight on how to make it, and there wasn't any Internet (although I did have a usenet feed via uucp to a UNIX system I was running at home - circa 1989).

BBQ, for the uninitiated, is cooking tough cuts of meat, at a low temperature, for a long period of time. Since, as all God's chosen (Southerners) know, BBQ is only pork - it ain't beef, and typical cuts are the shoulder , which when split yields the Picnic and the Boston Butt.

Butt butt butt you say, I thought the butt was at the rear end of the pig! Nope; it's at the shoulder/neck, where the shoulder butts up against the neck. The rear end is the Ham, and that's a whole different creature.

While you will see references as high as 250dF to cook BBQ, this is a poor way to make it. People that smoke their Pork at 250dF are doing it because they are in a hurry, and don't mind sacrificing quality for speed. Well, go to McDonald's and get a McRib. You'll also see references to 225dF, which is better, but no joy yet. Real BBQ has to be done below 212 (at sea level; lower if you live higher).

Think about this: I'm sure you've seen a pressure cooker in action. That pressure is created by boiling water, and water boils (at sea level, lower temperatures at higher elevations) at 212 dF. You've got to put a lid on that pot and lock it down to be able to contain that pressure - it's trying to burst out!

So what's going to happen to meat that you cook above 212 dF? It's going to heat the water in all the little cells, cause them to expand, burst through the cell walls, and flow out of the meat where it will evaporate. You just lost a lot of moisture.

But flavor is transported by fat; so what happens to the fat when you cook at 250dF? Pork fat [rules]starts to render out of the meat at 140 dF. The higher the temperature, the faster it renders. So if you are looking for low-fat BBQ, then continue to cook at 250 dF, or 225 dF.....and you are tossing a lot of that flavor out of the meat.

So why are people cooking at 250 dF and at 225 dF? It's because they are in a hurry. Well, I'm cooking BBQ for FLAVOR and I'm not in a hurry to get it!

Note that we are concerned with two different temperatures here. The first temperature we are concerned with is the temperature of the oven, while the second temperature is the internal temperature of the meat. The temperature of the oven determines, ultimately, the highest internal temperature the meat will reach. For instance, if I cook at an oven temperature of 145 dF, then the internal temperature of the meat can not ever go above 145 dF, regardless of how long we leave the meat in the oven....2 years later and it will still not be above 145 dF.

So the oven temperature determines the following things: it determines how fast the internal temperature of the meat will come to your desired temperature; it determines what the maximum internal temperature of the meat can reach; it determines the temperature difference between the outside meat and the inside meat; and, since temperature determines the amount of time you can leave the meat in the oven, it also determines the tenderness of the meat.

The higher the temperature of your oven, the faster heat will be transferred to your meat. It can only be transferred by going from the outside of the meat into the inside of the meat. So the outside of the meat is going to get hotter and this hotter temperature will gradually be transferred into the interior of the meat. The higher the outside temperature of the meat, the higher the difference between the interior of the meat, and the faster the transfer. If the meat is left in the oven long enough, then at some point, the interior temperature and exterior temperature of the meat will reach equilibrium, and no further transfer will take place; the whole of the meat is at a steady uniform state.

When people look at cooking temperature vs. time charts, for example when cooking a Thanksgiving Turkey, they are interested in two things: the oven temperature, and the time to leave the turkey in the oven at that temperature. That temperature and time solution is solving the following problem: trying to cook the turkey in the shortest time, while getting the interior of the turkey done. Too long at too high a temperature and the surface is dry and hard while the interior is just right. Too short at too high a temperature and the surface is just right while the interior is still raw. So the temperature that is chosen is that which will satisfy the need to have the surface not too dry while the interior has had enough time for the heat to migrate into the interior and bring it up to a safe, good temperature.

The larger the piece of meat, the greater the distance from the surface to the interior middle of the meat. The larger this distance is, the further the heat has to travel, and the longer it takes for the heat to do so. So big pieces of meat takes longer for the heat to migrate into the interior - another way of saying this is it takes longer for the meat to get done.

This is the reason fast food hamburgers are wide and thin - the heat migrates all the way through in just a few minutes; the whole thing is done, at the same temperature, in a really short amount of time, so you can blast it with a lot of heat. Thicker pieces and you've got to lower that temperature and cook it for a longer time to allow the heat to migrate to the center.

Harold McGee, in "On Food and Cooking" remarked that the real way to cook something would be to cook it at the desired temperature you want it to end up at. In other words, if you want your BBQ to end up at 160 dF, which the US Government says is safe, then you want to cook it at 160 dF. However, Alton Brown says that pork is at it's prime at 145 dF.

That means I may want to cook mine to 145 dF, as that is probably the best temperature for flavor. But I haven't tried this yet, because I haven't had an accurate enough low temperature oven and temperature controller yet....but I'm changing that! I have cooked a Chuck Roast at 165 in a low temperature oven. It came out tender and moist.

Pork cooked to 145 or even 160 won't look very appetizing; it will look gray - dull, and unappetizing. To improve that, you'll want to place that Pork into an oven (a smoker is an oven, just with some smoke in it) at 325 - 400 dF after cooking at 145 or 160, in order to create a Maillard Browning effect. But at 325 - 400 dF for how long? I'm not sure yet, but I'm researching; so in the meantime, you'll have to just put 'er in and watch till it gets to the point where it looks like you want it to look!

But back to how long to cook the Pork meat at 145 or 160 dF?

That brings us to Low Temperature Cooking.

Sous Vide has pioneered low temperature cooking for the average cook. However, we've already seen that BBQ is the basis for low temperature cooking, and Sous Vide is just adapting this approach, by putting it into a plastic bag, removing the air, and cooking it low and slow.

If you read about Sous Vide cooking, you will note one similarity with this approach and BBQ - how tender the meat is.

So, if our goal is to cook BBQ and have it at it's peak (which for me is 145 dF), and at it's NC style Pulled-Pork tender, then you need to cook it for at least 2 days, and maybe 3 days...I don't know yet, but I'm going to experiment to find out, and when I do I'll post an update here.

Which leads me to the post I actually wanted to make - low temperature cooking, which will be in a future post.

I'm designing and building a low temperature controller for a low temperature cooking oven.

When I've got it completed, I will post it here.

More Sous Vide Cooking

I originally built my own equipment for controlling the inlet-air dampers on a smoker (a Big Green Egg [BGE]). This worked really well, and was very consistent in the smoking temperatures it provided. I sometimes still use it today, but generally now just forgo that approach, as on low-wind days I find the BGE is close enough without the extra controls.

Sometime back, I became aware of Sous Vide cooking via the book 'Cooking for Geeks'. Given my BBQ background and slow smoking BBQ, I grasped this was the approach I first came across via Harold McGee's book 'On Food and Cooking'. This was too big to pass up now that I was retired!

So I gave it a try. Rather then buying any of the expensive commercial Sous Vide equipment, or even any of the other DIY less-expensive approaches, I adapted my thermocouple controller, which had built to control my BGE, to control a hotplate where I placed a large iron Dutch Oven (Lodge) and filled 3/4 with water. My first attempt was cooking 2.5# of Brisket. It worked out great! But the Dutch Oven was a little small for the larger Briskets, so another approach was needed, and it was sort of kludgey using my controller in the kitchen.

When my wife wasn't looking, I grabbed her electric 'Roaster Oven', a 20 quart beast that operates on 110 AC household electricity. My wife had lost confidence in this roaster when her Turkey came out way-under-cooked one Thanksgiving, but I hadn't been ready to throw the roaster out yet. Fortunately we had tested the temperature of the turkey with an internal probe and found it very low, so we moved the turkey to our main oven to finish.

For the Roaster Test, I filled the roaster 3/4 full with water, then inserted a remote sensing temperature probe (Taylor's Gourmet Stainless Steel Thermometer with Probe from Target) into the water. Setting the temperature to 150 dF as indicated on the dial of the Roaster, I waited patiently for the temperature to come up to 150 dF. It never did. I checked the temperature with the Taylor probe, and it was low, really low, around 100 or so instead of 150. That pretty much explained the turkey fiasco of a previous year! The printed temperatures on the roaster were way, way off! Using the Taylor, I spent the next day finding the proper dial position to obtain 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350 and 400 degree placements and marked those with a Sharpie perm pen.

I tested the markings for 2 days - they held consistent, so while the markings were way off, the Roaster's thermostat was capable of holding a temperature +/- 1 dF, which for me was more then adequate for doing slow cooking of Brisket.

So using my new markings along with the Taylor to monitor, I set a temperature of 142 dF for a new trial run of Brisket Sous Vide. I refilled the Roaster 3/4 full of water (about 4 gallons), and brought it up to temperature over a couple of hours to ensure it stayed there.

Meanwhile, I browned both sides of a 5# Brisket in an large iron skillet. It was too big to place into a single 1 Gallon Ziplock storage bag, so I sliced it into 2 equal portions, cutting with the grain, and inserted each half into a seperate Ziplock, then carefully submerged while leaving a vent for air to escape. This is important, as you don't want any air pockets to separate the Brisket from the surrounding water bath, as then it won't cook evenly. When the water level came up to the Ziplock opening, I sealed off the Ziplock, and let it sink to the bottom of the Roaster.

On one Bricket, I placed a whole bottle of A-1 brand meat marinade; on the other Brisket, I left it unchanged. Both were then closed off and placed into the water bath.

BTW - the Ziplock company has stated (per Cooking for Geeks) that their bags are good up to 170 dF, although they don't recommend using them.

That was yesterday evening. I've checked every couple of hours or so, and the temperature is holding constant between 141 and 143 dF.

Tomorrow night will be the test! That will be 48 hours at ~142 dF Brisket!