mirin Archives - that Other Cooking Blog

main entrees, meats, recipes, roasting, sous vide recipes

Sous Vide Blade Roast Marinated in Mirin and Garlic. 12h 52C 24h

September 20, 2015 No Comments

I’m officially kicking off fall cooking season with this super quick post. To your relieve it will be extremely short. Actually the recipe and the instructions are pretty much in the post title so if you choose to, you could stop reading here. If you’re still here, let me tell you that it doesn’t really get any easier than cooking with 3 ingredients, ok 4 if you count salt. Add an electronically super accurate immersion circulator to the equation and then it’s literally cheating. After it’s done I like to let this little guy rest in the fridge for a couple of days and then use it as cold roast beef in sandwiches… ok, that’s a lie… the sandwich part. I eat this thing straight and right away. No diversions. I know no other way.

Ingredients (makes 6-8 servings):

2 lb beef blade for roasting.
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Cup Mirin wine
2 Tbsp fresh minced garlic

The marinade step. Place all the ingredients but the beef in a ziplock bag. Shake well until the salt has dissolved. Place the beef cut in the bag, remove as much air as possible and seal. Allow to marinade in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

The water bath cooking. Don’t discard the marinade and keep it in the baggie. Sous vide in a water bath at 52C for 24 hours.

The awesome golden crust. Discard the marinade. Dry the meat with paper towels. Deep-fry for 1 min at about 400F. Or achieve the equivalent in a very hot skillet.

Told yah this was cheating! Happy 2015 autumn days people!

main entrees, meats, recipes, roasting, sous vide recipes

Boneless Pork Center Loin Cut Sous Vide 136F 6h : Mirin and Garlic Marinade 12h

July 31, 2015 19 Comments

Boneless Pork Center Loin Cut Sous Vide. I didn’t even want to eat this thing it looked so damn pretty. Awesome roast..well, a roast of sorts. Having to roast in the oven or in a grill is fun and I love it with all the inaccuracies involved, they still yield delicious results. In the 80F degree weather, this approach isn’t so lovely anymore. My tiny apartment heats up so easily. The radiation from the sun alone can heat the place up above 80F (I have an AC unit now, tiny portable one thanks to my land lady, and that helps but still) Running the oven would be suicidal. Sous vide comes to the rescue.

Roasts don’t require a lot of temperature to cook, in fact, most animal protein can be cooked roughly around the 122F-140F degree range with some exceptions. That range is bellow what conventional ovens can deliver anyways. The nice browning on the outside crust is the catch. Sous vide can’t give you that. That requires a great deal of heat, specially if you wanna achieve it quickly. That can be easily done by searing, grilling, torching or in this case, deep frying.

Anyways, quick post today. Super easy recipe actually. The title is the recipe basically. I marinated the pork overnight in some minced garlic, salt about a cup of mirin wine which is super sweet and delicious. If you ever had kakuni this will sound familiar. Mirin will help with the caramelization of the crust too because of the high sugar content. Ok, let me write this down in the form of a recipe:

Ingredients:

3-4 pound Boneless Pork Center Loin Cut
1 C Mirin wine
3 Tbsp of garlic.
3 Tbsp kosher salt.

Marinade. For 12 hour at least. I placed all the ingredients in the sous vide bag overnight. That’ll do the trick.

Sous Vide. Rinse the pork cut well and remove the marinade from the bag. Place the pork cut back in the bag. Vacuum seal. Water displacement method works just fine. Cook @ 136F for 6h.

Deep fry. … or sear or torch. For a few minutes until the surface looks amazing. Allow to rest before slicing the meat. I actually deep-fried the meat cold from the fridge. Extra warranty that the core is protected from the infernal heat being applied on the outside. If you want to make sure the meat is warm before serving. Place it back in the sous vide back, and stick it in the water bath for a good 10 minutes at the same temperature you cooked it. That should do it. I used this type of roast as a cold cut though. Works great.

enjoy the weekend!

main entrees, meats, recipes

Braised Pork Belly (Kakuni) : Mirin : Ginger : Dashi : Leeks : Soy sauce

May 30, 2013 3 Comments

I had some extra pork belly in my freezer, and it was time to try something new. There is one recipe I’ve always loved eating a restaurants but never tried to cook at home, I actually thought this would be impossible to reproduce, mostly due to my own ignorance about japanese cooking, it is very foreign to me but at the same time it isn’t, living in LA, I’ve been exposed to Japanese food for over a decade, but one thing is eating it, another completely different thing is cooking it but I had to give it a shot. I have to say that tonight’s experience making Kakuni, was’t disappointing, and the familiar taste of this delicious dish was pretty much there, the sweetness, the umami, the ginger, all there, I had to adjust things a bit as I was going, but in the end I had a pretty awesome dinner and leftovers. Here’s what I did to get this melt-in-your-mouth pork belly dish:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb. pork belly
1/4 cup mirin
2 cups dashi
1 leek
3 Tbsp soys sauce (more to taste)
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp ground dry ginger
2 Tbsp peanut oil

Gear:

knife and cutting board
pressure cooker
small sauce pan
medium sauce pan
roasting pan
aluminum foil
oven
measuring spoons and cups

Method:

01: line roasting pan with aluminum foil
02: place pork belly in it, coat with some peanut oil
03: roast at 500f for about an hour or until golden *
04: remove from oven and let rest
05: cut leek in half, reserve white part
06: green part, cut in half lengthwise
07: place pork belly in pressure cooker
08: add green leek part to pressure cooker
09: add ginger to pressure cooker
10: add water to just cover pork
11: pressure cook at 15psi for 45 minutes
12: remove pork belly from vessel
13: reserve stock for something else (this is a great stock btw)
14: discard leeks in pressure cooker
15: reserve pork, set aside
16: add 2 cups of dashi to a medium sauce pan (kombu, bonito flakes broth)
17: add sugar, soy sauce, mirin
18: in separate small pot, hard boil a couple of eggs
19: after 5 minutes, remove from boiling water
20: chuck in cold water and peel
21: place eggs along with pork in the medium sauce pan
22: simmer for about 5 minutes ( eggs should turn a nice brown color on the outside)
23: serve some of the broth on a bowl, along with eggs and pork chunks
24: garnish with juliened leeks (white part) and finely chopped green onion

I believe this is my first Japanese recipe on my blog, hope to get better at this, also hope you enjoy if you try making this!

and if you needed information on how to make dashi, I would check this great link on how to make homemade dashi!