The Captain is back

Wouldn't it just figure? Seems like there's always someone trying to keep a good superhero down. Spider-man had to deal with J. Johan Jameson. Bruce Banner had to keep hashing it out with the U.S. Military every time he turned into the Hulk. Well, seems like Captain Gourmet had already found his arch-nemesis....Blogger.com. Just days after the first post here, Cap got flagged with a terms of service violation. Nice, huh?

Well, anyhow, never fear good citizen, the Captain is back and ready to post about gourmet adventures in the last couple of weeks. Ahh, but there have been two weeks worth of heroic antics, so where do we begin?

Let's start out with Sous-Vide, a cooking technique which essentially uses plastic bags submerged in hot water to cook foods. The method was developed in the mid-70's, but lately, Captain Gourmet has noticed that it's hinting at being a possible trend in cooking. Several blog entries, a quick spot on FoodTV, and the emergence of tools for Sous-Vide cooking seem to be popping up everywhere. Obviously, we needed to discover if the technique would prove to be friend or foe to the every day culinary citizen.


When our beloved hero stumbled upon the Sous-Vide scene, he quickly tried to assess this method and deduced that it could be broken down into a very simple combination of items, a plastic bag capable of an airtight seal, food, water, and something to heat the water. It sounded simple enough, but the Captain couldn't be fooled. There had to be more than this. Indeed. Temperature of the water as cut and texture of any meat had to be taken into consideration. Well, the Captain opted for the first couple of passes to try to factoring this in to keep it simple while he learned any techniques that existed.

So, our captain decided to try this method of cooking using a few different cuts of meat. He rounded up a very delicious looking New York Strip steak, a pork shoulder, baby back ribs, and a veal shank. Obviously, each cut of meat had to be seasoned. So, our hero figured that were Batman to try a similar experiment, he would keep things simple. The Captain decided to follow Batz's example and kept seasoning to a very modest combination of salt, pepper, and paprika for each cut of meat. Our clever adventurer also included a pat of butter as well to provide some flavorful love.

Next, the Captain needed some plastic bags capable of maintaining a seal. The problem was solved quite easily by using a handy dandy vaccuum sealing gadget that he picked up off a Ronco infomercial a few years ago. It worked like a charm until the machine broke on sealing the last item, the steak. Captain Gourmet had to pause and mourn the passing of his faithful companion, but shortly afterwards, he moved on to heating the water.

The Captain was shocked to find out exactly how low the water temperature needed to be. Different foods required different temperatures, of course, but 160 degrees seemed to be the average mark. Maintaining that temperature was going to be difficult, but not impossible. Few of you true believers may know this, but even our hero's alter ego is that of a software engineer, he's had some experience with electrical hardware as well. So, off to radio shack and a few other stores for our hero in his guise of a software engineer. Let's make this long story short. He's know how to solder, but he sucks at it. So, kiss one mangled slow cooker and a handful of parts good-bye and the Captain is back to a tricky dance of maintaining the ideal temperature for water on his stovetop.

The Captain then proceeded to cook the selected cuts of meet Sous-Vide style until they were done, which at 160 degrees, the Captain warns you can take quite a while. In the end, though, our Captain was less than impressed with his moderate victory over Sous-Vide.

The meats were not very consistent all the way through. For instance, while the pork shoulder was very tender, it was very dry in some places and reminiscent of the turkey dinner from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The steak was tender as well, but the process had cooked it all the way through. With Captain Gourmet being a big fan of a rare steak, this just didn't go over well. The steak also lacked brownness as well as that certain degree of flavor you get from pan searing. Even a quick sear after the cooking process to add color didn't do the job. The veal shank started off promising, but was very gamey. It seems that the fat that melts off of the meat during the cooking process didn't have a chance to cook off and continued to add the gamey flavour upon serving. The ribs did turn out quite well, given the limited seasoning they started off with. The ribs did not get dry like the other meats. It did lack color, but that's nothing a little sauce and quick pass under the broiler couldn't handle. The thing is that it took hours to cook the ribs. If that much time if going to be put into it, just BBQ the damned things.

Well, good citizen, the Captain is still trying to decide upon the merits of Sous-Vide cooking, but currently is not impressed. Hopefully, another chef might provide more insight into the process. Perhaps, it's best suited for particular recipes our Captain is not aware of. Regardless, a hero's work is never done. So, he will continue to examine this more to protect you, rightful law-abider, from suffering from the pits and perils of a partially dry Sous-Vide style pork shoulder.

Stay tuned. Same Cap time! Same Cap channel! The captain will return with more chronicles of culinary adventures.