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July 17, 2011
Pork Chops: Initial Thoughts
(Pictured Above: A Basic Thick-cut Pork Chop With No Accompaniement)
Today the subject is pork chops, and like so many other steaks, chops, etc. type proteins, my basic approach is as follows:
1. Cook it in a water bath en sous vide to achieve a perfect internal temperature;
2. Remove from the water and vacuum pouch and let it sit for 10-15 minutes (I have found that immediately finishing it off per the methods below sometimes leads to overcooking in the middle);
3. Finish, preferably over a grill with hardwod charcoal and flavoring woods (like apple, hickory, mesquite, etc.) but certainly over some kind of high heat.
Ah, you might ask, but what heat for the water bath? Well, as always, there are two considerations: safety and taste.
First, let's consider safety. Along with all of the other nasties associated with proteins, pork is particularly prone toward parasites that you do not want to eat alive. Chief among these is Trichinella spiralis (i.e. trichinosis). Trichinosis is said not to be that common in today's pork, but even if this is true it is not a guarantee and is just about probabilities. Why needlessly take a chance with it?
You will read on the internet about various temperatures required to kill trichinosis (e.g. 138°F (58.9° C) is frequently suggested). My understanding, however, is that it is a question of temperature and time.
Wikipedia mentions (or at least at one point mentioned) USDA Title 9 section 318.10 Table, which provides the following temperature/time combos for beatin' this little worm:
| °F | °C | Minimum Time |
|---|---|---|
| 120 | 49 | 21 hours |
| 122 | 50.0 | 9.5 hours |
| 124 | 51.1 | 4.5hours |
| 126 | 52.2 | 2 hours |
| 128 | 53.4 | 1 hours |
| 130 | 54.5 | 30 minutes |
| 132 | 55.6 | 15 minutes |
| 134 | 56.7 | 6 minutes |
| 136 | 57.8 | 3 minutes |
| 138 | 58.9 | 2 minutes |
| 140 | 60.0 | 1 minute |
| 142 | 61.1 | 1 minute |
| 144 | 62.2 | Instant |
The second consideration is taste, and in this case I think the main concern is achieving maximum juiciness. Visually, I am looking for a faint, haunting pink to the meat; if it is white I find that it is overdone. You could shoot for a more rosy pink (in which case you would set your water bath below the temperature I use) but in my experience this involves a potential cost (many of your friends/guests/family might be off-put by really pink pork since there is a deep, instinctive human fear of under-done pork) for little gain (it really is not much juicier unless it is basically rare).
This calls for a relatively, but not ridiculously, low heat for the water bath.
Now, all this being said, I am not going to tell you what is safe, only what I do myself (so, no guarantees of safety implied):
I tend to cook my pork chops en sous vide in a water bath heated to 133-134°F (56.1-56.7° C) (specifically, 133.5° F (56.4° C) is where I typically set my circulator). And I cook it thus for at least 3-4 hours (because my chops are always thick cut; if they were thin cut I might go only 2 hours, though I have never tried this).
The result of my process is pictured above. This chop is unadorned by anything and was finished with a grill over simple Whole Foods real wood chunk charcoal (with no added wood for a particular flavor) for about 90-120 seconds per side. I could have finished it more or less intensely on the grill (that is a matter of personal preference; I usually do look for a bit more carmelization). If you do want to experiment with different levels of grill finishing just do so by altering the heat. So, for instance, if you want more char and grill hash, do so by building a hotter fire, and not by lengthening grill time: whatever degree of finish you prefer, you do not want this to spend a long time on the grill since it will start to undue that magic of sous vide by cooking it internally.
Below, you see the same chop with a piece cut out. Notice the perfect internal faint pinkness of this chop. It was very juicy. It could have been made even more so by brining, which was not done in this case but is generally recommended.
Here is a close-up that captures the faint pinkness:
If you want it just a shade more or less pink, adjust the temperature of the water bath, respectively, down to 132.5° F (55.83° C) or up to 134.5° F (56.9° C). (Note: Use a Polyscience emersion circulator for this kind of edgework: it is a little too tight in terms of temperature tolerance for the Sous Vide Supreme (SVS). The SVS is better for less lean cuts of meat, like ribeye steak, that are slightly more forgiving of 1° F fluctuations.)
Posted by dag at July 17, 2011 2:02 PM