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Showing posts from June 28, 2015

Red-Boat Vs Red-Boat "Steak Faux Aging Experiment"

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This is overdue!!! Contestants take your positions and hold on for a Fauxtastic Ride. If you've been following my posts, you know I love to  Faux Age steaks  with Red-Boats Fish Sauce and Fish Salt, so this new post shouldn't surprise you. I've already concluded that my family likes the  Fish Salt version of Faux Aged steaks over the Sauce version , but this could change. In the linked versions above I used 3% but now have determined that I prefer 1.75%-2.25%. Also, I will be contrasting three more versions of Red-Boat sauces.  First, a little about RED-BOAT: this is taken from their Web-Site.  After moving to the United States, Cuong Pham was hungry to recreate the tastes and smells of his childhood in Saigon. But not even the vibrant Asian markets of San Francisco offered the intensely fragrant   nước mắm nhi   that Cuong remembered from Vietnam. So in 2006, Cuong decided that if he couldn't find it, he would make it — and started Red Boat Fish Sauce. Ret

Low Temp (LT) 2 Stage Sous-Vide Cooking- aka Warm-Aging

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"Warm-Aging-Meat w/ Sous-Vide was my previous post title, but I think the new one really reflects what it is we are doing.   The technique uses a SOUS-VIDE Circulator to promote the Calpain and Cathepsin Enzymes' activity through the manipulation of temperature. Say What? Exactly!!! Words can't even come close to what I was thinking. I knew I had to explore this technique through experimentation. I am not a scientist; however, I know how food is supposed to taste and look. So here we go!!! See some of my experiments  HERE . This is an updated paper… The first one was  HERE .  _____________________________ So What is Warm-Aging? The story goes like this... By bringing up the temperature of the meat to  103 f  (I have read 104 f is also used, and that's what I use) Degrees for  X   amount of time, you increase the activity of the Calpain and at  120 f   (I have also read that the upper range is 122 f)  the Cathepsin. These are the same enzymes that are prese